Quadruple one and the creative act

Happy quadruple one! I have resolved to start blogging again this year, to outlet experiences, thoughts, reflections, hopes, expectations along my personal and professional journeys through life, and to channel them through writing, which had hopefully reached its all-time low productivity in 2010.

I did try putting matters into words, but it was awfully difficult, not because of a writer’s block, but more as an outcome of – what dawned on me while reading Aronowitz’ “Against Schooling” – the lack of time and space to create. 2010 was a busy year, as I plunged into what was then a new job: developing and managing quality improvement program for schools in remote parts of Sumatra. Between overutilization of my finite time and limited brain power and underutilization of my best skills, I was mostly left exhausted and uninspired on weekday nights and weekends. “We are all so busy doing things that we never have time for thinking,” summarizes Aronowitz (2008: 58) in a chapter entitled “The World Turned Upside Down – Again” in the previously quoted book.

In this brilliant less-than-eight pages short essay, Aronowitz starts by highlighting the problems of the globalized world – from millions of displaced people unabsorbed by available employments, the availability of less fulfilling jobs despite supposedly better skilled and more intellectual labors, the requirement of lifelong learning as a result of insecure employments, and the strengthening and overpowering of capitalism on almost all public domains. He argues that the need to provide and create alternatives to globalization as a hegemonic system (and other hegemonic systems for that matter) is unfortunately unaddressed in schools: the need to gain self-knowledge vis-a-vis the world-at-large, to know the histories of the self and of humankind, and to have the time and the space to reflect, to invent and to create.

Let’s carve out the time and the space it takes in 2011 to reflect, to invent and to create, in order to find “what the alternatives are to simply accepting things as if they were natural (Aronowitz, 2008: 57).”

Reading 1984 in 2008

“[C]an human nature be changed in such a way that man will forget his longing for freedom, for dignity, for integrity, for love ... ?” asked Erich Fromm in his afterword to George Orwell’s 1984.

In his haunting novel, Orwell described very convincing procedures through which even the most ardent believer in humanity, “a minority of one” in the sea of an otherwise brainwashed society, could be turned into an automaton, made possible by the concept of doublethink.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ... The process has to be conscious or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.

George Orwell, 1984, 1949: 214.

The following remarks are probably personal side effects of being freshly influenced by Orwellian thoughts: Aren’t we all, to differing degree, doublethinkers? Don’t we all maintain contradictory beliefs in our minds as a survival method in evading what would otherwise be too painful of a reality, too unpleasant of a memory, and too feeble of a character?

About (In)visible Traces

For a while I’ve been thinking that the previous title of this blog – Space & (Indonesian) Society – hasn’t quite captured the development of my own thoughts over time. But I couldn’t quite pin point what are the threads of my interests and writings that have been captured within. Yesterday, an idea that has always been there hit me: It’s Italo Calvino’s quotation that I put under the title of my blog, cited from none other than his famous Invisible Cities.

In Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino told a story of the journeys of Marco Polo, as being told to Kublai Khan. The presentation of the journeys was captured under different headings categorized as Cities and memory, Cities and desire, Cities and signs, Thin cities, Trading cities, Cities and eyes, Cities and names, Cities and the dead, Cities and the sky, Continuous cities, and Hidden cities, with five different journeys for every heading. The beauty of this work, apart from its exquisitely imaginative story and structure, (and I recommend you skip this next part if you haven’t read the book) is because all those journeys describe a city none other than Venice. One city, fifty five presentations/ interpretations: All trailing along different parts and perspectives of Venice.

While this blog is anything but about one subject matter, it is a continuous effort to shape my own thinking and interests, trying to find what connection there is, what may emerge from all this. And without realizing, I have been utilizing the same method that I’m most familiar with as a trained architect, but using a different language: Tracing in words what I used to trace in graphics.

In the world of architecture, to trace is to make lines over and over an older or another drawing (usually a site or an already existing or established design), trying to give a new form to the emerging design, to get to a point when suddenly all the elements seem to fall into place and the solution feels most right and logically elegant. Among its many other descriptions, some definition of “trace” and “to trace” captures many of the things that I’ve been trying to do: copying and quoting other people’s writings, going over certain topics over and over again, and, less often but more personally desired, making correlations among seemingly divergent topics – be they clear and visible or otherwise invisible to everyone including myself.

While I don’t expect to become Marco Polo or Italo Calvino, I do hope, at the end of it all, I will find my Venice.

So, as a tribute to Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and my ingrained method of a previous life, I have decided to change the name of this blog to (In)visible Traces. For those of you that have links to this blog using the old name, please kindly revise, and I hope this will happen even less frequently in the future.

On Age

In memoriam, 1999:

A man’s age is something that creates an impression. It is the epitome of his whole life. It has accrued slowly, the maturity that is his alone. It has come together in the teeth of all the obstacles conquered, the grave illnesses overcome, the pains that flesh is heir to, the despairs surmounted and the risks courted, of most of which he knew nothing at the time. It has come about by way of so many desires, hopes, regrets, forgettings, love.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Letter to a Hostage, in The Little Prince (1995: 112)

Between Collins and Dawkins

I recently finished reading Francis Collins’ “Language of God” (2006). Having read Richard Dawkins’ “God Delusion” (2006), albeit belatedly, I am now able to contextualize TIME Magazine God vs. Science debate conducted almost two years ago now.

For me, Collins’ writing is more accessible and kinder (more politically-correct) than Dawkins’, although Dawkins’ emotional and carefully worded rant (which I’m sure most but the very open religionists would find highly offensive) at times is quite amusing to read.

Collins simplifies several major ‘players’ in the big debate of God vs. Science as such:

1. Atheism and agnosticism (when science trumps faith) – where Dawkins is obviously one of the main proponents.
2. Creationism (when faith trumps science)
3. Intelligent Design (when science needs divine help)

and proposes the fourth position: BioLogos (science and faith in harmony) – where he is one of the main proponents.

While Collins’ attempt to seek balance between and to certain extent justify his (and help others justify their) position as a scientist and a believer may hold its virtue in bridging the opposing players, in my view, he is probably more successful in convincing believers about science than he is in persuading scientists (and atheists and agnostics) to become believers. This is mainly because he does not really bring in a new argument to the table, but simply reinforces C.S. Lewis’ logics (and quotes his words throughout the book), specifically his questioning in “Mere Christianity” of where does human morality comes from (if not from God).

Dawkins’ response to “why are we good” question is:

“First, there is the special case of genetic kinship. Second, there is reciprocation: the repayment of favours given, and the giving of favours in ‘anticipation’ of payback. ... third, the Darwinian benefit of acquiring a reputation for generosity and kindness. And fourth, ... the particular additional benefit of conspicuous generosity as a way of buying unfakeably authentic advertising” (Dawkins, 2006: 219-220).

I have my own reason why morality should not be defined as closely aligned with religion, as it would almost ‘allow’ those without religions to be immoral.

And as offensive as Dawkins can be for religionists, his closing response to the TIME Magazine debate is worthy of contemplation:

“My mind is not closed, as you have occasionally suggested, Francis [Collins]. My mind is open to the most wonderful range of future possibilities, which I cannot even dream about, nor can you, nor can anybody else. What I am skeptical about is the idea that whatever wonderful revelation does come in the science of the future, it will turn out to be one of the particular historical religions that people happen to have dreamed up. When we started out and we were talking about the origins of the universe and the physical constants, I provided what I thought were cogent arguments against a supernatural intelligent designer. But it does seem to me to be a worthy idea. Refutable--but nevertheless grand and big enough to be worthy of respect. I don't see the Olympian gods or Jesus coming down and dying on the Cross as worthy of that grandeur. They strike me as parochial. If there is a God, it's going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed” (my italics).

On Waiting

Nothing could better capture the agony of waiting - the very state I am in at present:

"His mind and flesh were incapable now of enduring any uncertainties. Quivering like a piece of fruit inside a dish of jello, he waited impatiently for the moment when the gelatine would kindly harden. It seemed to him that the coagulation of the world would have to be completed before he could look up to the blue sky with an easy mind and admire to his heart’s content the sunrise and sunset and the rustling of the treetops."

Yukio Mishima, After the Banquet, 1963: 261-262.

The Will of the Mind

Happy New Year everyone! I have been away these past few weeks, reading Steven Pinker’s “How the Mind Works”, and came across this following passage, which only confirms my previous posting on “The Fittest of Human”:

Nature does not dictate what we should accept or how we should live our lives. Some feminists and gay activists react with fury to the banal observations that natural selection designed women in part for growing and nursing children and that it designed both men and women for heterosexual sex. They see in those observations the sexist and homophobic message that only traditional sexual roles are “natural” and that alternative lifestyles are to be condemned. For example, the novelist Mary Gordon, mocking a historian’s remark that what all women have in common is the ability to bear children, wrote: “If the defining quality of being a woman is the ability to bear children, then not bearing children (as, for instance, Florence Nightingale and Greta Garbo did not) is somehow a failure to fulfill our destiny.” I’m not sure what “the defining quality of being a woman” and “fulfilling your destiny” even mean, but I do know that happiness and virtue have nothing to do with what natural selection designed us to accomplish in the ancestral environment. They are for us to determine. In saying this I am no hypocrite, even though I am a conventional straight white male. Well into my procreating years I am, so far, voluntarily childless, having squandered my biological resources reading and writing, doing research, helping out friends and students, and jogging in circles, ignoring the solemn imperative to spread my genes. By Darwinian standards I am a horrible mistake, a pathetic loser, not one iota less than if I were a card-carrying member of Queer Nation. But I am happy to be that way, and if my genes don’t like it, they can go jump in the lake” (Pinker, 1997: 52).

Between Work and Family: A Faustian Bargain?

I recently heard from a friend that someone I know is going through a rough family crisis. He is one of the most curious, driven, insightful, and intense architect and thinker that I know in person, and I have always wondered at what personal cost he does these with.

Coincidentally, I am reading Nelson Mandela’s “Long Walk to Freedom” (1994) , and reaching the part where he went through a very rough time in his life, and was about to divorce his first wife. This is what he wrote:

“I wondered – not for the first time – whether one was ever justified in neglecting the welfare of one’s own family in order to fight for the welfare of others. Can there be anything more important than looking after one’s ageing mother? Is politics merely a pretext for shirking one’s responsibilities, an excuse for not being able to provide in the way one wanted?” (Mandela, 1994: 212).

In “Creating Minds” (1993), Howard Gardner studied seven highly creative people: Gandhi, Einstein, Freud, Stravinsky, (Martha) Graham, (T.S.) Eliot, and Picasso and revealed that in their personal lives and relationships, these otherwise geniuses were treating their families and friends from “disregard to simply sadistic”. Einstein just wanted to be left alone to do his work, whereas Picasso was driving several people into psychological trauma and suicides. (!) According to Gardner, these highly talented, top of the crops human seemed to think that they might not be able to achieve what they had in their lives without the luxury of time and unnecessary ‘distractions’ of normal family and social lives.

But I’m wondering whether certain disciplines are also more prone to what Gardner terms as Faustian bargain than other disciplines of knowledge. For example, people in the business- and economic-related fields seem to have more normal family and social lives in comparison with the disciplines of knowledge covered above (politics, science, arts, language). Or maybe I just haven't heard of it.

Do you think there is such a thing as a Faustian bargain between work and family (or social) lives? If so, do you think this spreads across the disciplinary board? Or, are certain disciplines more prone to it than others? And, to bring up and rephrase Mandela’s question: Is it ever justifiable? Or is work merely a pretext?

Debating Outsourcing

Outsourcing. Flattener #5 in Thomas Friedman’s list of ten forces that flattened the world (2005), and how it changed India:

“There are currently about 245,000 Indians answering phones from all over the world or dialing out to solicit people for credit cards or cell phone bargains or overdue bills. These call center jobs are low-wage, low-prestige jobs in America, but when shifted to India they become high-wage, high-prestige jobs. …

[In India,] applicants who are hired at a call center is … [entered] in the training program, which they are paid to attend. It combines learning how to handle the specific processes for the company whose calls they will be taking or making, and attending something called “accent neutralization class.” These are day long sessions with a language teacher who prepares the new Indian hires to disguise their pronounced Indian accents when speaking English and replace them with American, Canadian, or British ones – depending on which part of the world they will be speaking with.” (pp. 24-26)

Great. Or is it?

Arundhati Roy doesn’t seem to think so. Here’s what her thoughts on the same subject, in “Algebra of Infinite Justice” (2002):

“… [in] a “Call Centre College” in Gurgaon on the outskirts of Delhi … [one could see] how easily an ancient civilization can be humiliated and made to abase itself completely. … On duty they [the call center operator] have to change their given names. Sushma becomes Susie, Govind becomes Jerry, Advani becomes Andy. … Actually it’s worse: Sushma becomes Mary. Govind becomes David. Perhaps Advani becomes Ulysses.

Call Centre workers are paid exactly one-tenth of their counterparts abroad. From all accounts, Call Centres in India are billed to become a multi-million dollar industry. Imagine that – a multi-million dollar industry built on a bedrock of lies, false identities and racism.” (pp. 160-161)

One story. Two opposite ends.

Moral & Religion

The debate on God has apparently warmed up again. From Goenawan Muhammad to Steven D. Levitt, the question of belief and disbelief has triggered a lot of interests, mine included.

My interest in the topic was triggered none other by 9/11. A specific book that I purchased then was Mark Juergensmeyer’s “Terror in the Mind of God” (2000), for the reason that, in Juergensmeyer’s words:

This book is about religious terrorism. It is about public acts of violence … for which religion has provided the motivation, the justification, the organization, and the world view. … I do want to understand them and their world views well enough to know how they and their supporters can morally justify what they have done.

Mark Juergensmeyer, “Terror in the Mind of God”, 2000: 7, my emphasis.

With the rise of religious fundamentalism, terrorism, debate on Evolution vs. Creationism/ Intelligent Design, and closer to home is religious indoctrination in educational institution(s), I got Richard Dawkins’ “God Delusion” (2006) and Franz Magnis-Suseno’s “Menalar Tuhan” (2006). These books were one way or another also triggered by similar vein of inquiry as Juergenmeyer’s.

My own stand in this debate is: How much does religion really matter? Or do moral and humanism that matter more? This diagram explains my take:

One can have zero to maximum amount of religious belief, but we’ll get fundamentalists when one’s belief in relation to the wider context of moral/ humanism is in the low range (the grey area in diagram).

Democracy with Sanction

Here's an interesting news from Kompas today:

The Commission for Election DKI Jakarta wish all institutions in DKI Jakarta to submit to government's request to let all of their employees to take a break on August 8, 2007. If not, they could be suspected to prevent people from using their voting rights in the election for governor and vice governor of DKI Jakarta.
...
According to the jury, those [institutions] who did not submit could be sanctioned with ... one month to six months in prison and/or fines between Rp.200.000,- to Rp.2 million,-

The head of Association for Computer Company in Indonesia, Henky Tjokroadhiguno was quoted in saying "For the sake of development of democracy, the issue of having a vacation on that Wednesday need not become too big of a deal."

Hey, I don't mind having a break. But for the sake of democracy? What democracy?

Politicians & Paranormals

The top 10 advertising expenditure by brand in print and TV in 2004 (in Indonesia) were, not surprisingly, for the promotion of products (shampoo and skin, cigarettes, oil lubricants), mobile phone providers, and political campaign.

And guess what comes directly after this top 10?

It's paranormal (!!!) - at 121,596 million Rupiah (13.5 million USD.)
If you are wondering whether or not this data is credible, the research was conducted by AC Nielsen Media Research and Media Scene.

Intriguingly, the category was missing from the 2005 list, along with political campaign. The latter is obviously expenditures related to election year, but the former? I can't help to question whether or not the two are related ...

"Neutral" Education

I am often reminded by a professor that as an academic, I should always attempt to be neutral (he senses that I am not). Thus, I'm glad to have re-read this following excerpt:

"There is no such thing as a neutral educational process. Education either functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes "the practice of freedom," the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world."

Richard Shaull, in Introduction to Paolo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed", p.34.

The Power of Words

"... words were consequential in a way ... [that] pictures were not. The pictures belonged to their instant; though they could serve memory, they were not the same as memory. You could not quarrel with the pictures. You could not change what they insistently and irremediably saw. But as the words rushed in in torrents, as they proliferated, becoming more and more various and removed, some broke through the gates of memory into the freer fields of parable, myth, analogy, symbol, story. And where memory was fastidious in honoring history, story turned to the other muses. Where memory was strict, fiction could be lenient, and sometimes lax. Where memory struggled for stringency of historical precision, fiction drifted toward history as a thing to be used, as imagination's stimulus and provocation."

From "The Rights of History and the Rights of Imagination", in Cynthia Ozick's "Quarrel & Quandary", 2000: 105.

Writing/ Reading

From Margaret Atwood's "Negotiating with the Dead":

I would like to begin by talking about messengers. Messengers always exist in a tringular situation - the one who sends the message, the message bearer, whether human or inorganic, and the one who receives the message. Picture, therefore, a triangle, but not a complete triangle: something more like an upside-down V. The writer and the reader are at the two lateral corners, but there's no line joining them. Between them - whether above or below - is a third point, which is the written word, or the text, or the book, or the poem, or the letter, or whatever you would like to call it. This third point is the only point of contact between the other two.
...
The writer communicates with the page. The reader also communicates with the page. The writer and the reader communicate only through the page. (p.113)

But how does blogs change this relationship? Through blogs, the readers become other writers/ contributors. All writers communicate through the webpage. Although there are other readers who only read, don't blogs change not only the relationship between writers and readers but also their definitions? Where does one role end and the other begin?

Writing/ reading? Writing = reading? Writing =/= reading? Writing is reading when ...? Reading is writing when ...?

On Sorrow

Sorrow, piled on my pillow, what is your shape?
Like waves in rivers and seas, you endlessly churn.
How long the night, how dark the sky, when will it be light?
Restless, I sat up, gown thrown over my shoulders, in the cold.
When dawn came at last, only ashes remained of my hundred thoughts ...

That poem, believe it or not, was written by Mao (taken from this book). All humans are subject to sorrow.

The Value of Lives in a Flat World

A child in Morocco, his life ended by gunshots.
A Japanese teenage girl, drowned by her own sorrowful thoughts.

Babel. Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu's.

The American couple was saved by a U.S. helicopter from a remote Moroccan village.
Their Mexican nanny was soon deported from the U.S.

What is the value of a life?
Is it depend on we the living?
Or on them who govern nations and decide upon how much lives should be valued?

Bono in his introduction to Jeffrey Sachs' “The End of Poverty”:

“… the idea of equality. What is happening in Africa mocks our pieties, doubts our concern, and questions our commitment to that whole concept. … Deep down, if we really accept that their lives – African lives – are equal to ours, we would all be doing more to put the fire out. It’s an uncomfortable truth.”

A shooting incident that linked them all.
Inarritu’s way of interpreting and representing the world that to Thomas Friedman is flat?

And Jeffrey Sachs’ own words:

“Am I an optimist? Optimism and pessimism are beside the point. The key is not to predict what will happen, but to help shape the future.”

Fresh Angles (from a Sick Bed)

I had been pretty much bedridden with fever for three days since Tuesday – which I used as yet another excuse to read non-work related books. The first one is a continuation of Junichiro Tanizaki saga: “The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi” [1], and the second one is a science book my friend dropped for another friend, but which I confiscated out of necessity at least for the time being: Richard Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene”.

By the title and the cover, their difference couldn’t be starker. Yet, upon finishing Tanizaki and starting Dawkins, it is their similarity that is most striking: it is how each author deliberately set up their work by looking at an old issue from a “fresh” angle (the books are written in 1931 and in 1976 respectively, thus the quotation marks capturing the word fresh).

Tanizaki experimented on how most Japanese history books were traditionally written: very matter of fact, focusing on the male figures, leaving out the role of females and the private lives of the heroes. In “The Secret History”, Tanizaki created a novel precisely where these history books left off: by looking into the private lives of the heroes, and focusing specifically on the role of females in making ‘history’. He even went as far as fabricating two historical sources he quoted over and over throughout the novel. The result is a bizarre yet comical, ahistorical yet wildly imaginative, piece of literature [2].

Dawkins in “The Selfish Gene”, on the other hand, presented Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and the famous ‘survival of the fittest’ with a new light by asking a question: survival of what? Is it the species, the group, the individual, or the gene? The title obviously gave out Dawkins’ version: it’s the survival of the gene. So that takes care of the third word of the title. The second title word, selfish, represented his other unorthodox argument: that human beings are innately selfish, not, as many would like to believe, altruistic [3].

Not completely convinced how significant a fresh angle can be?

In the preface to 1989 edition of the book, Dawkins, an etymologist and a professor of zoology at Oxford University, illustrated his intent to present a new angle in presenting the theory of evolution by using the metaphor of the Necker cube. In his own rather long words:

“This is a two-dimensional pattern of ink on paper [and now pattern of dots on your computer screen], but it is perceived as a transparent, three-dimensional cube. Stare at it for a few seconds and it will change to face in a different direction. Carry on staring and it will flip back to the original cube. Both cubes are equally compatible with the two-dimensional data on the retina, so the brain happily alternates between them. Neither is more correct than the other. …

I now think that this metaphor was too cautious. Rather than propose a new theory or unearth a new fact, often the most important contribution a scientist can make is to discover a new way of seeing old theories or facts. The Necker cube is misleading because it suggests that the two ways of seeing are equally good. To be sure, the metaphors gets it partly right: ‘angles’, unlike theories, cannot be judged by experiment; we cannot resort to our familiar criteria of verification and falsification. But a change of vision can, at its best, achieve something loftier than a theory. It can usher in a whole climate of thinking, in which many exciting and testable theories are born, and unimagined facts laid bare. The Necker cube metaphor misses this completely. It captures the idea of a flip in vision, but fails to do justice in its value. What we are talking about is not a flip to an equivalent view but, in extreme cases, a transfiguration.”

Richard Dawkins, “The Selfish Gene”, Oxford University Press, New Edition, 1989: xviii-ix.

Note:
[1] If you’re wondering where is the best place in Jakarta to get Japanese novels, you definitely should go to Periplus in Sudirman Place. They sell Japanese novels from Rp. 15.000,- to Rp.40.000,- per book! Not sure if this is applicable in other Periplus outlets, though.
[2] His other essay within the same book that I haven’t read, “Arrowroot”, is apparently based on actual historical accounts.
[3] I’ve only read about a quarter of the book, so can’t quite elaborate yet on the specifics of the book.

On Calvino and Tanizaki

Two literary works that are often referred to by architects are Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” and Junichiro Tanizaki’s “In Praise of Shadows”. These past few weeks, out of procrastination, I read other works by these authors, namely Calvino’s “Marcovaldo, or The seasons in the city”, and Tanizaki’s “Naomi”, and “The Key”.

After reading Tanizaki’s novels, followed by Calvino’s, the contrast between the two is indeed striking. Tanizaki is definitely a master (along with Yukio Mishima and Yasunari Kawabata) in capturing beauty in tranquility, perversity, and sadness, revealing the darker side, psychologically repressed life. Meanwhile, Calvino (like Umberto Eco) is a master in finding humor, irony, wittiness, quirkiness in an otherwise mundane and even death-threatened life (think of the movie “Life is Beautiful”). Could these reflect the particularity of Japanese and Italian societies?

Here’s how Tanizaki pictures the built environment:

“I found the house easily. For a few minutes I walked up and down the street in front, studying the layout. There was a fine stone gate, beyond which the grounds were densely wooded. A gravel path weaved through the trees and shrubs to a secluded entrance. The faded writing on the nameplate, “Okubo Villa,” and the mossy stone wall surrounding a spacious garden gave the place the look of a venerable estate, rather than of a summer residence.”

From Tanizaki, J., “Naomi”, 1924. Translation by Chamber, A.H., Tuttle Publishing, 1985: 138.

Here’s how Calvino depicts the city:

“The city of cats and the city of men exist one inside the other, but they are not the same city. … in this vertical city, in this compressed city where all voids tend to fill up and every block of cement tends to mingle with other blocks of cement, a kind of counter-city opens, a negative city, that consists of empty slices between wall and wall, of the minimal distances ordained by the building regulations between two constructions, between the rear of one construction and the rear of the next; it is a city of cavities, wells, air conduits, driveways, inner yards, accesses to basements, like a network of dry canals on a planet of stucco and tar, and it is through this network, grazing the walls, that the ancient cat population still scurries.”

From Calvino, I., “The garden of stubborn cats”, in “Marcovaldo, or The seasons in the city” 1963. Translation by Weaver, W., Harvest Book, 1983: 101-102.

Learning from Everything

I finally got my own copy of the classic “Learning from Las Vegas” and finished reading it over the break. Here’s an excerpt from the book:

There is a perversity in the learning process: We look backward at history and tradition to go forward; we can also look downward to go upward. And withholding judgment may be used as a tool to make later judgment more sensitive. This is a way of learning from everything.
Venturi, Brown & Izenour, “Learning from Las Vegas”, revised edition, The MIT Press, 1977: 3.