...invigorated i find myself taking longer, firmer, and faster strides and semi-consciously directing my body, in toto, to specific objects or other sights that attract... (instead of letting peripheral muscles and thoughts determine an easier but less lively walk)...
...a fallen tree and the small gray and red object upon one of its dead branches... when i get close i see it's a dropping of some creature, i imagine a bird...
...then a lake, emptied some months ago, it's now a watery field of marram grass about half a metre high... but why was the lake emptied (lake: enclosed water, having the stillness of potential movement and strength, in the I Ching it is a sign of joyousness)... surely a lake enhances any park, or place, so why drain it?...
...now i see something i remember from childhood (near to our house in Aberystwyth): a bush with rounded leaves and white spheres (diameter about 1 cm) containing a soft white substance - and no seed, insect, or other inhabitant who might eat the soft substance - or is its evolutionary purpose to attract birds?... as children we were told not to eat the white spheres (or other berries that we did not know and which might be poisonous)...
...a modern tent (or shelter), a hyperbolic tension structure, consisting of a single square of fabric, held in double curvature by two poles and two ropes... two opposite corners of the square are attached to the ground and the other two corners are each held high in the air by a pole and a line fixed to the ground... a totally different appearance and structure from that of anything in sight here: the trees, the grass: the clouds, the neo-classic buildings nearby, and the ornamental gardens of rectangularly trimmed hedges and flower beds... (but perhaps the leaves of the trees are also close to being tension structures?)
...this assimilated remnant of nineteen-sixties architecture (and of the free-thinking modernism of the fifties and earlier) is surely more lively than anything since... for instance the post-modernist and neo-functionalist architectures that followed... nowadays fashionable buildings often includes fake tension elements that could be cut without the structure falling down or becoming less stable... oh dear, how pathetic...
...new seats or benches in the park: a modest, thoughtful, and well-conceived design... how rare is such a combination (of humanity and reason with a modesty and simplicity) difficult to attain...
...this two-person seat consists of two cast metal frames, which include the armrests, connected by three smoothly rounded planks for the seat and three more for the backrest, each well-positioned, i think, to fit most people's legs and backs and arms...
it looks easy, and feels comfortable, but i know how difficult it is to attain such simplicity and good service to people... this was my aim when i began in design, in 1950 or so, and even now few people seem to attempt or attain such modest yet possible utopias...yes, there is a long way to go...
p.s.
editing this is my first experience with the Macintosh OSX and i find that i can use it immediately, with almost 'zero learning' (without further instruction)... and with an ease and precision new to me...
...i think it's not true to say, as Neal Stephenson does, that the Macintosh simulated desktop interface is a Disney-like screening of computing from the 'reality' of the command lines of a computer language... would he also condemn any autocode, and recommend the we all work on the raw complexity of the ones and zeros of 'machine language', as did the early programmers of the 1940s and 50s?... i don't think his argument is complete, convincing as it may seem at first!
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© 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 john chris jonesIf you wish to reproduce any of this text commercially please send a copyright permission request to jcj at publicwriting.net