Muse: The Night of Sin

The silver shadow,
casts on my pillow,
...the night breaks..

Muse: The ... in everything

He sees the sun in the moon,
the breathless charm on the skin of eggs,
a prophecy in an ellipse.

Muse: Thirst

God wills that He thirsts for souls.
What kind of god asks that He be loved?
What could we possibly have done to ever deserve Him
other than that He wills that His love, since He always loves first, be put to the test.

Yes, no other faith asks us to believe in a God, so omniscient, so benevolent,
that He himself can be exhausting, asking, thirsting for the most essential answer Man
has ever wanted from anyone, Do you love me? . When Christ says "I thirst" (one of his Seven Last Words), this is His fifth word. Perhaps one could see this to be the fulfillment of all the five books of the Law (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), that in fact, it is God who thirsts for us. Not the other way around. He then goes on to say, "It is finished" and "Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.

What a strange and profound gift He leaves us. A request. That He is thirsting to be loved. And in that fifth word the entire question of our purpose and need is thus answered. God loved us first. Had he not, He would not have thirsted for us to love Him in return.

We are obsessed with the conundrum of whether God exists. And often, our understanding of God seems to necessitate that either He does something or we do something to prove His existence. But, God simply is. All that we do simply does not add or subtract to what God is. But when we do so, we are simply doing something in response to that first Thirst.

Muse: Ignorance

If by sin, some might call ignorance...
the first sin, which sums everything thereafter is the ignorance of Love.

Sin is the error of loving first when Love's first 'condition' is that He is received.
You cannot love an other or even oneself if you are not 'in' Love.
It is impossible that man can love God, alone, on his effort. Man cannot beget Love.

Muse: Stranger

How strange...
Where Love is, there is no stranger,
for Love recognises His image even if he does not.

Muse: Listen

Listen, listen, listen...
Listen when you want to speak...

Muse: Craving

Craving, craving...
craving to be craved.

What else does man need other than to be loved.

The first sin of man is that he felt he ought love first, when love begot him.

Beauty and/as Sacrifice

The nature of sacrifice is never enclosed into a simple transaction. It is never truly a this for that. On the contrary, sacrifice for all its humiliation or punishment accords both parties an equal respect because it demands an exchange of self(ves). It is giving and receiving simultaneously for the good of both and its currency, while only superficially utilitarian and economical, the cause and effect of its exchange is none other than the work of two for one. In simpler words, the giver(s)/receiver(s) enter into a covenant that binds them into the promise of uniting and dissolving into one another.

It is here where Death again comes knocking on our doors. How and why can Death be indeed a muse for us and perhaps the real and only inspiration for anything that is Beautiful? Quite succinctly, Death reminds us of the stark deficiency of the temporal, the now of everything we see, touch, taste, smell and hear. Our vision of it can be likened to an astronaut or sea explorer who gazes into an abyss. One knows that it runs deep but one can't possibly know how deep it runs or at what point that which is immediate becomes profound. Similarly our fascination with death is not so much in knowing that it comes but when it comes and whether or not eternity begins then, or before? I have always remarked that in facing the future we get anxious in not knowing when the present ceases to be so and gives way to eternity. Just when does eternity begin?

Beauty is not a supplement. It is truth. But our knowledge of her is limited because of the displacement caused by Time. We perceive her, but only partially. We know her but we have limited faculties to know how lacking our experience of her is. We are moving to her nonetheless because 'reason' compels us to. The perfect ordering of creation is not static, it tends to a resolution in the future. Thus, we are sailing in an ocean of misery but we have Beauty to hope for and Art as our rudder.

We now return to what this has got to do with architecture. Time and time again, I have found the most profound analogy between the visible and the invisible realities of Beauty are in the words of Jean Luc Marion's "Crossing the Visible". My continuous meditation on his hypothesis of the idol and ikon have nourished me throughout my early 'career' in seeking and opening a window to the unfathomable divine in the earthly.

In his 'treatise' concerning the fundamental differences between the ikon and idol, he sums up that whereas the gaze towards the idol is fixed upon the tangible qualities, the vision of the ikon is an unveiling journey of seeking the divine when the divine also seeks us. He makes comparisons between icons even and makes some poignant remarks about faith. For example, he comments that a religious experience of the one who gazes into an icon of our Lady is only realized when he who beholds the 'image' is also conscious of the gaze of the Madonna on him. In fact, his words (I am merely paraphrasing here) are so profound that one can perhaps extend this same understanding to the appreciation of all art forms besides the visual.

Furthermore, this knowledge concerning the religious experience of 'ikonic' beauty can also be deepened with its thematic coupling with the sacrificial nature of beauty. After all, can we not also conclude that the covenant of sacrifice and the ikonic properties of it complement each other so well, such that without sacrifice there is no ikonic vision and vice versa? Without this 'self-sacrifice' to the divine, we cannot hope for the divine to gaze on us. If the artist does not sacrifice his interests to the Divine Author, his work falls short of the worthiness of our eyes, both visible and invisible. In addressing what John Tavener calls the Dark Age of Art, he proposes that artists must learn once again to be vulnerable, to meditate and to act under the dictates of inspiration. He further supplements his argument by his vehement criticisms of post Renaissance art in the western world. He strongly opines that never before have the 'practical' uses of music as both artistic skill and healing been so divorced. It would be absurd to any Middle Age man or Sufi or mystic to suggest that music wasn't divinely inspired, he says.

The more one contemplates Beauty the more one realizes the interweaving of all things 'necessary' to practical human life. It is only in the past 3 centuries that the interdependence between the divine and earthly has been so severed that humans have erroneously begun to believe that these two 'polarities' cannot work together, nor should they be allowed to. And with the supposed 'death' of religion it is easy to see how values such as sacrifice and hope seem to find little place when we consider what pleasures us in our societies and in our own personal spheres. We conveniently forget that beauty,pleasure and delight in their broadest sense has not only until recently been always the common pursuit of the Divine and the earthly. We have severed ourselves from the primordial nature of Beauty as the feast that pleases both us and the Divine. Is this not the real Life meant for us? The Life that we were meant to live abundantly?

(next: The limited joy of our idolatry)

Carving the Cave - Inside Out

Following the previous thread on death, we now arrive at its relationship to Beauty; and by that, dare I say also involves Truth. In the words of John Paul and John Tavener (the contemporary) what is Beauty but the splendour of the True?

What is this Truth that I am speaking of here? What is true about Death, following my previous 'argument' on the necessity of Beauty to cross the threshold into eternity? It concerns Depth. The most primordial characteristic of Beauty has always been depth. By this I mean to say that the subject is always conscious of the object of desire as being an external to himself. The magnanimity of this truth goes beyond the relative affection between the beholder and the beloved. It also concerns the epiphany of separation, that of having a premonition of the union of all creation as prototype and culmination. The beholder in a sense, realizes that he is both Beholder and Beloved but because of time, they are separated.

As such, it can be said that Life is the displacement of Time and Beauty. We sense these in all things beautiful; a kind of force that runs toward an Eternity that has neither a back nor front, though we are conscious at the moment that we are in an intermediate location that encompasses both time and space. We see it's beauty as proceeding from something, somewhere else and that somehow the vision of it appears predestined, the guest and host find themselves invited to an unknown feast by an Other.

And we crave for it, not so much because we crave for eternity but because all separated things naturally seek reunion. We are separated, Beauty and Truth are now separated from Time because of Life. It is this depth, this potential that announces to us that our Beloved while real and true is clouded, veiled for now but will be unveiled at a later Time. And all beautiful things which proceed from the Beloved, this Only Beauty while distracting us by its temporal beauty, upon closer contemplation only signifies a later, a fuller Beauty in the next; a next we can only meet after Life has come to its close.

All we behold to be beautiful is now both sign, a foreshadowing and a premonition because of Depth. And how may we approach it more, since Truth always attract the beautiful other than by carving ourselves a cave so that the deeper we get into it the more we understand what Light/Truth is because of its relative absence. Enlightenment only arrives out of sacrifice!

Tomorrow: Beauty and Death 1

Somewhere before this post, I 'postulated' that a great many works of contemporary architecture seem rather impotent due to its inability to handle theological realities. I had a nocturnal epiphany a couple of nights ago, which helped me understand this more by 'enlightening' me to what great depths man's heart longs for beauty.

Death, the fear and admiration for it was a muse to me.

Needless to say, this is not something new. Death too, is not something new, nor something we can speak too much of. But there is nonetheless a resistance to its mystery. Constant, it is in the human heart. It knows us, but we know it not. The more we speak concerning it, the greater the premonition of isolation and this abyss anchors our minds deeper and deeper since we know not the depth of an inverted sky.

If it were only always this simple, the two polarities in view of eternity are as such, those who fight against eternity and those who fight for eternity. The notion that eternity does not exist, does not arise here since those who do not labour for an 'after-life' which they disbelieve in, do after all wish nothing else but to save themselves before death. This implies a race against time, a race against what surely comes which is already the now - the eternity which 'is' ongoing.

The 'thread' that fights against eternity preserves not for a tomorrow but for a now. In a sense, it is truly living in a tomb whose tombstone is not designed to be removed. It is concerned with the immediate and identifies himself and his environment as mere commodity and resource. This does not mean that there are no emotional and spiritual connections between these bodies but that in the 'reality' of his viewpoint, his fears suffice to comprehend these as such.

Conversely, those who embrace eternity, let not their temporary pleasures, rich as they seem cloud their vision of their true destiny. Sacrifices come to them as a type of necessary hurdle for a better, a fuller person. As a result, while this is common to both traits, people of this category are not content with the present, not out of greed but because the ultimate 'reality' is a place they believe can only exist on the other wing of death. Thus, there is an incessant longing for another, an Other, but that attainment of it does not come out of an original effort, rather a compelling force like a magnet which tugs its servant to that One whereby all that is false is carved out from the interior of its soul.

Carving a cave inside out (...next)

Muse: Ought nots

Once upon a time...
There was a time,
we ought not love,
the things...

Some things,
I mean people,
we ought not love.

...since,
we may then cease being lovely,
after all...
and what a fall 'for' Love, that would be.

Love's bitter pain. (to paraphrase George Herbert)

Muse: Being watched

She walks,
no...she crawls,
under shades of green.

Like being watched,
like beheld by a constant eye,
as Love who beholds His Beloved.

And somehow,
under dark canopies,
some tangible, others sublime,
the need to be loved is satiated.

(walking under leaves at Frim)

Muse on Draft 4: On this road

Take me on a route,
to purpose-driven places,
...spaces

I mean places,
where life is not,
always on transit.

A home whose stilts,
rest not on networks...
in betweens we can't live in...

This time..walking home, enough of the wheels.

Tomorrow: Architectural "Services"

Following my last post concerning the plagued world of current architecture, I'd also opine that while not the only, the notion that architects provide architectural 'services' is very damaging.

Yes, we do work with aims and objectives, Yes, we ought to keep clients at the least, reasonably happy. But no, (and this is thanks to the commercialized structure of modern relationships) I do not think that we can create something beautiful if we just meet 'your' goals.

The most 'truthful' indicator of the meta-physical and ethical health of society is through the kind of music it listens to. There is no art 'form' that 'strikes a chord' so persistently, persuasively with a magnanimous moral force as music. And by that I honestly mean 'good' music. While we pride ourselves (architects) of being 'producers' of the more responsible art form, I think there is more harm that can be done to the human psyche through bad music than through a horrible building. This tells us a lot about our auditory diet. It is why Holy Mother Church also declares, "The musical tradition of the universal Church is a treasure of inestimable value, greater even than that of any other art". (Art 112, Sacrosanctum Concillium, Second Vatican Council)

As architects we ought to sometimes ponder on the development of acceptable 'norms' now creeping into our profession. It will do us great justice to rid ourselves from a lot of jargon that pervades the entire retail world as it stands today.

We need to think more like musical composers, I feel. A work is commissioned, it isn't requested. A work is not complete until it is so. It should rise above the dictates of 'value for money', customer satisfaction or 'modern contemporary living'. The work that we do ought to be something that is compelling and that which emanates and animates in us the desire of sacrifice for its' sake.

And dare I say, it has to be both conciously and subliminally beautiful, beautiful insofar as it is merely a type of the Divine.

Muse: My Love

Come my Love,
where there is pain and sorrow,
I shall be that dew...

To welcome Love's pain,
and to hide my Beloved
from the hurt she inflicts on herself

My beloved,
A little while,
is all I ask...

Tomorrow: Architecture

More and more, it occurs to me, that the greatest problem concerning architecture today, is not it's crises of ideas or concepts. This malaise, this alienation from places that we feel stem from the inability and inadequate desire of architects to handle theological realities.

It is the escapism- the fleeing away from confronting the aesthetics of Truth and existence that forces architecture to recoil on itself, a sort of self-idolatry which I have often lamented.

Man, by his very existence, through the proper orders of perception does not reveal flesh alone, but the divine. It is the divine... this is where art tends to.

Forget about notions of high and low art, all artists were called to do 'ere before time began was to open the veil to the other side.

The architect-mystic must be ushered in. The clocks have swung back.

Draft 3: Where the streets have no name

The alarm clock falls with a 'ding' and a 'crack' on the dark floor. 3:47 am it reads.

She sighs in usual anticipation of a sleepless night. Only 3 hours of sleep and apparently the house tells her it's enough. A slight whispering breeze floats in, feeling like some kind of soundless chime, echoing some distant meaning.

It beckons her to her window. No stars. Just streetlights, and little boxes of light from other sleepless rooms. While cars of big proportions seem to sleep so soundly under porches. The envy.

All of a sudden, she can't remember if she's been living here for long. There's a certain familiarity with the unfamiliar. "The consistency of the manufactured," she calls it. It's always been here in a way, and yet it takes no colour from our presence.

How is it so empty, when it's so full of our things, our precious things? With her head hung low, she tries to ponder on a window jamb. No moon to light the darkness of silhouettes even.

Draft 2: Where the streets have no name

"Run, run, run" , said the house.

"Run, from the haste of making dreams out of lies. Run, from the desire to shrink and shirk histories from the grains of your heart. Run from me, for I am but a one in a thousand, just some 'concept' derived from man's greed for purpose."

"For I am alone, and those who dwell in me become aliens to their own sinews, their very own hearts."

And the streets, they ran around her in a spiral, not so centred after all but on a trail, still...to a vacuous continent we call, space.

The papers call them homes with a green lawn.

Draft: Where the streets have no name

What windows have we?
those without curtains of dreams,
those devoid of mystery,
or the crumbs of history...

...and...
one wonders if the world looks in,
instead of us looking out through them,
if indeed the world gazes,
into the abyss of our hollow spirits.

Under roof lines,
these windows,
one and all...the same,
under the guise of some manic desire
to control meaning.

Muse: Drops

The night sky,
collects rain from the stars,
into pockets of hope,
we call light.

And light eternal,
guides boats drifting on dreams,
always too fast,
ending too soon.

Goodbye,
today ends,
tonight begins,
the veil drops.

Muse: Only the sun knows

Did you not see?
The clouds sailing on high?
Suspended by hopes unbegotten...

Only the sun knows now...
That moment...
God composed a scene for me...
As blood trickles from His wounds to the ground.

Muse: Super flumina Babylonis?

and...
When you think of it,
after a while,
we don't have to say goodbye's,
it's places that have to.

By the rivers of Babylon,
I waited, waited for goodbyes
but realized i didn't need to.

I needn't because,
I can't say goodbye to myself.

These were my memories
and the others never held it.

Ghosts, everywhere...

Prose: The sun of my heart

How do you capture an entire phrase...spoken? What did you see? Where did you go? In one blink of an eye, where were we? A glass of water, it sits by the window, and the ripples echo, memories still leaving, trying to leave the prison of water, we call it life.

Escaping, trying to escape... like my words. I can't tell you how intense the heat or the rain is, if you keep standing in the shade. But if you could leap with me into a pit, where could those dreams take us?

What I mean to say is...Do you see, what I see?
The sun...the sun.

Muse: The day listens

Listen, listen.
What I am trying to say,
is...
that when doves fly,
the sun sets twice on that day,
the day turns into night,
and the clouds come out to dream.

Muse: Perhaps

Perhaps,
the desert we call depression,
is a luxury we'd like to have,
when dreams can't hold enough,
of our hopes...
perhaps.

Muse: Every

The thought of you,
makes every colour in the sky,
every drop of sweat,
every tear from the clouds,
seem distant, yet so present,
in the vain hope...

you feel it ... too ...

Prose: I hide myself

He hides in a corner, with a lamp by his side. To guide him, no doubt, to and through the abyss of his imagination. Cracks on the wall appear to him as he ponders upon blank stares. Perhaps there is a tear he can escape to, a crevice to hide, a place where the unknown is met and kept secret...

Under the roof, under the mighty sky, under the weight of dreams, floating on the sea of hope. He hides himself.

Muse: You (now asleep)

Stars lit the darkness,
in the recesses of space,
counting the days and nights,
when I still think of you.

My heart grows weary,
from tiring, trying, tying,
myself to the world,
that is you.

Prose: Sarah

Sarah... keep knocking,
Sarah... keep knocking on the door.

The light lasts, but a while,
but the door needs one to open.

Quick!

Muse: By the rivers

Where in lies the heart,
the object of my desire,
is clinging without spree,
and on gentle waters,
murmur the distant shores,
too distant to keep.