Dean Mashburn,
Faculty and Students,
Soon to be alumni, family and friends-

I am pleased and honored to be here with you today, to give you my thoughts on what it means to end one phase of life and begin another. I have been a teacher for many years, and have witnessed many graduations. I have a profound belief that teaching and learning, which begins at the moment of birth, is the most fundamental activity of our species.

A graduation ceremony is one of the best times for everyone.
There are no complaints for the next three hours.
Best time to be a dean, for sure.

To be able to teach is a gift.
To be among students with such enthusiasm, motivation and innocence is a reaffirmation of something right and true in the world.

My colleagues at the University of Houston are committed to nurturing this.
I saw the exhibit of student work a year ago at accreditation and it was impressive--
I felt the positive form of jealousy, which is defined as sympathetic joy.

Graduation is honoring Completion
and
Commencement is celebrating a Beginning.
All of you are on a threshold.

I want to encourage you to be steadfast in staying on the trajectory you are currently on. And, as you grow older, recollect this moment, which is quintessentially one of great promise.

A. The Promise of Youth
With its ideals and optimism which keeps you believing that anything imaginable
is possible.

B. The Promise of Architecture
Which gives form to life in the most positive ways.
Which keeps you believing that through architecture, it is possible to make the world a better place.

C. The Promise of Humanity (NOTE: the audience applauded here...surprised)
Which is to make choices moment to moment that reaffirms your faith that we are inherently good and generous.
That our imprint is to be ALTRUISTIC.
A SUBTLE PASSION FOR GOOD.

So this is what I wrote for you
All of you who are the winds at
my back.

The real people of ancient time,
said that ESSENCE and LIFE
should both be cultivated.

So, this work requires 2 stages:
The path of cultivating LIFE, is
The path of doing / of action.
The path of cultivating ESSENCES is
The path of non-doing / contemplation
The path of doing, is prolonging life, through creative activity
while in communion with others.
The path of non-doing is making the being whole, by
quieting the mind and,
stilling the body while in solitude.
Both are essential.

Our work, as architects, practicing in many different ways,
incorporates both these aspects and exists in two realms:
In solitude and in community.

The creative moment is an intimate and private moment.
We are alone in suspended animation.
We are in the zone of creation.

In BETWEEN all of the extremes
In BETWEEN one place and another.
-One thing and another
-One event and another
Where there is stillness
and silence
ideas emerge and most significantly,
This is where new life emerges.

This is the Horizon- The threshold where the sky and earth became one.
As the Lakota Sioux say, this is where you cry for a VISION.

VISION is the blessing of FORESIGHT- seeing the future w/ greater purpose.
and its twin blessing is INSIGHT- which has the power of penetrating, to a deeper reality within.
This is where you discover yourself in
A UNITY of thought
will
understanding
and compassion that goes beyond words, beyond analysis,
even beyond conscious thought.

As Thomas Merton said,
"In this moment,
We come face to face with ourselves in the
lonely ground of our being.
we confront many questions.
The value of our existence,
The value of our commitments
The authenticity of our everyday lives.
What we may discover, (As Paul Tillich said,)
is the 'Courage to be'
as we are, not as we think we should be
we discover our own voice, our sense of purpose."

What is your sense of purpose?
The first serious question.
Might be:
1. Who am I, and what is my role and responsibilities in the world?
2. What type of life do I want for myself, and my children's children?
There is an ancient Native American traditional time scale for all
significant choices, of 7 generations, not 7 years. (the real estate cycle)
3. What type of society do I idealize?
4. To paraphrase Suzuki Roshi, can I retain the courage and intelligence of a beginner's mind, the mind you had as a student, that sees almost infinite possibilities and imagines all of them to be possible, and not become the 'expert' who sees few possibilities?

As we get older, the key to this place of optimism is to suspend disbelief and re-enter the zone where innocence, wonder and enchantment reside.
Where extreme intelligence is not preconditioned
or pre-judged
or pre-determined
by prior experience that tries to remind us of all our mistakes.
Be reminded of your discoveries not your mistakes
face forward as you move forward.

Be reminded of worlds within worlds
all existing simultaneously,
at all sizes and scales, with their
own cycles and rhythms.
That entrain through harmonic oscillation,
into greater wholes.
INTERDEPENDENCE.
UNITY AND DIVERSITY.
The integrity of each part is sustained
as the greater whole is forming.
This is an aesthetic and a social model.
This is the world that you have imagined up until now.
I know this because,
it is the one I imagined
when I was your age.
And I know of the struggle to retain it.
You are the one; that can still imagine and actually participate
in manifesting a society, a world,
That is a new cosmology.
One that is based in values of joy
respect
compassion
and
generosity.

To try and make a world like this, requires FAITH in yourself and others.

So, in fact faith is an essential pre-condition for creativity to truly be present.
'Why do we create?'
This is an open question that is provisionally answered by experiencing the act itself.
One of my provisional answers is:

"We experience the most profound separation,
and sense of alienation,
when we are born from the womb into the world.
Our creative work,
which is predicated on integrating diverse
and disparate things, the abstractness of ideas
or the concrete-ness of matter, with the belief,
That this is our way of making sense of the world and our relationships with each other.
This is a way of re-connecting
of belonging to a greater whole.”

This makes me feel that,
We do our work, not for ourselves, but for each other.
Although we have our visions, when we are in solitude, when we are alone, we discover, by going deep into the realm of the unknown,
that we are in fact, ONE.

We have always been ONE
But we imagine that we are
not.
What we recover in this moment of insight
is our original unity, as Merton said,
the one that we lived prior to birth.

This is what we can bring into the world
and work, to give form to it.

Vision is individually born, but community realized
This is the responsibility,
we have to ourselves and
to our families
to our communities
and to the world.

We are concerned about many things, above all our very existence.
But, in contrast to other creatures, humans are continually evolving through conscious existence.
We have a great capacity for choice.
We can choose poorly and suffer, yet we can learn.
But, I believe the whole purpose of the human story is to learn the good.
We self correct onto the path of right choice, which is to choose life.
It is a slow process as we have,
to be patient and practice forbearance.

Any age is measured not merely by technological proficiency or advancement.
It is measured by the quality of human conduct and social relations
By some measures we are living in a dark age.
But there is great wonder that lies within-- The wonder of compassion, generosity and sacrifice.
We have been witness to this.

My question is why, this imprint of altruism, which expresses such extreme value towards life, is not present everyday.

It is times like these,
that bring forth the latent powers that are within us.
The power that comes from our capacity to choose the good, and bring it forth
into the world.

Each of you, in varying degree, is on the path of what indigenous people call
the 4 fold way.
The way of the warrior
The way of the visionary
The way of the teacher
The way of the healer.

The quest historically was to bring forth each of these and nurture them.

They all have equal status and significance.
If you experience this type of wholeness, you then can see yourself as part of a greater whole, as some one who feels responsible to others,
and senses the joy that comes from being generous and compassionate.
At various times, you will need to be all of them separately or simultaneously.

If this happens,
then you will experience what is called the infinite power of the
'common ground of being'
---------simply stated, love.

From this threshold,
the one that you are on at this very moment,
until your consciousness is released from your body
you have the opportunity to give form to life, through architecture.

All of us,
who stand witness to your rite of passage
Say, with pride and love,

'We wish you well'

Your future, is the future, of the human race.

PEACE.
Michael Rotondi
Houston
10 May 2003

This is where everything begins, ends and begins again. It is the point of creation and death, no beginning or end.

Zero is infinity’s twin.

It is the point at the center of our being, untouched by extreme, yet embodying their pure essence.

Inner and outer worlds unite becoming one. For a moment everything is simultaneous and has equal status, in particular light and matter.

Here there is a perfect balance.
This is no place and
There is no time here.
This is where two become one.

This is the Stillpoint
of a complex and turning world.

“How does an acorn become an oak?” we were asked.

This was the first time a question triggered our curiosity and visual imagination simultaneously. Systemic thinking - seeing the whole, transformation - everything changed in that moment. The answer was ultimately unknowable yet this was strangely reassuring. We understood that searching for the answer would sustain our curiosity for a lifetime. Curiosity is the mental equivalence of inhaling and exhaling. The question was intended to make us ponder the nature of creation itself. “We can describe what we see, but we cannot really explain it,” he added. We were puzzled by this statement. What was the difference? To us, these words were interchangeable, yet in fact they weren’t. Our intellects were being both expanded and fine-tuned. It was a great feeling. Things changed from that point forward. We began to think and talk a lot about PROCESS (impermanence), ORDER (inter-relationships) and UNITY (inter-dependence). For the tree to emerge and exist, its internal code has to continually negotiate external forces and be responsive, yet flexible, within the limits of its gene pool.

STRUCTURE AND FREEDOM

In its early phases of growth it changed more radically than it would when it reached a more mature, inevitable state.

TRANSFORMATION

In subsequent phases of growth it would reveal one of the wonderful truths of certain forms of organic life - as it changed size, its surface area would keep pace with its volume. There was a relativity of growth and a constant similarity of form. This recalls the logarithmic spiral of the nautilus shell: the golden ratio, the system of proportioning that is one of the central ordering systems of modernism, and the basis of the aesthetic system of our teachers. Embedded within creation (and the creative process) is an implicit ordering system to guide the spontaneous growth of an organism. It does this by setting internal limits (not boundaries) that inform each exchange that takes place internally, with the interface and with the environment in which it was embedded. We had been taught that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

RECIPROCITY

The overall system of choices essential to an organism’s survival, are part of its imprint. The more diverse the system of parts and the more coordinated its response, the greater the duration of life. To ensure survival, it must ‘remember’ all of its prior responses as a frame of reference for current and future decisions. Memory and action need to be in balance. Memory is slow. Action is fast.

CONSERVATION AND CHANGE

All of this conjured (concurrently verbally and visually), the idea of a system of infinite relationships between all things. Worlds within worlds; all with inextricable complexities and with the simultaneous presence of disparate elements that converge to determine every moment. We imagined that the promise of architecture was to weave it together into a manifold and multifaceted vision of the world.

UNITY AND DIVERSITY

We repeated out loud, “We can describe it but we cannot explain it.”
From the moment of conception to the moment of birth, we are the embodiment of creation. For the full term we are in a state of perfect symbiosis. There is a preconscious unity with the environment, an embryonic somatic memory of wholeness and unconditional unity are being imprinted. Two as one. The womb is weightless. It is our “third skin.” At the moment of birth, we experience a profound separation, the most fundamental discontinuity of our lives and one that we spend a lifetime trying to overcome. Our creative work can be a way to reintegrate an apparently complex and discontinuous world, giving us a renewed sense of belonging, a part of a greater whole once again. The birth process can also be one of liberation. The human body’s relationship to the universe may be equivalent to the DNA molecule‘s relationship to the body. 15 billion years may be enfolded into us and a deep core memory of all that we will eventually need to know to exist is present at the moment of birth. If so, we are potentially all-knowing. Through a mirroring of the outer and inner worlds, triggered by light and enhanced by our other senses, an unfolding begins. Every moment is a learning event and we are a learning organism. Our interaction with others and with the world is a spontaneous experiment that enchants us and fills us with wonder. The body has the most extraordinary abilities to sense, process, store, retrieve and act. We can describe it but we cannot explain it. As it moves through space, a subtle transaction exists between the body-mind complex and the world. Everything around us teaches us about the world we create for ourselves. Who we are and who we become are inextricably linked to what we make and inhabit. Our relationships are conditional. The observer is the observed. Architecture has become a “third skin.”

PART 2

Synthesis to Distillation

The projects selected for this book cover a period of 15 years; a full cycle of life experience and expression and half of a generation. The works are products of the same gene pool and reflect certain tendencies, but from the first to the last they represent an evolving world-view and life intentions. The book begins with the New Jersey House, a work that explores formal and spatial propositions within a conceptual framework that sees architecture as a semi-autonomous discipline with its own history, theories, and logic. Our organizational strategies were directed by our curiosities about the notions of order that extend beyond the confines of any particular theory and permeate the whole infrastructure of concepts, ideas, and values. Specifically, we wanted to explore the nature of complexity and our ability to be thrust to the edge where it meets randomness. Our formal interests were focused on a synthesis of diverse elements into a coherent whole. The spaces were abstractly figured and continuous throughout; they had limits but no boundaries. We still practiced with the belief that architecture gave form to life. The prelude to this project is CDLT 1,2, a house with the same intentions but at a much smaller scale. The difference was primarily methodology. For the duration of the project, 5 years, we worked improvisationally at full size and in real time with ‘no erasers.’ If we made a mistake, the rule was to work on it until it looked intentional. We wanted to rediscover the ‘Beginners Mind' Suzuki Roshi spoke of. At the back end is Prairie View. Architecturally, it is a distillation of components into a coherent whole. It is slow and implosive. The creative sequence begins with the body moving through space and then form, back and forth. It is primarily conceived as a place where design is transparent to experience, and all activities, informal and formal, are seen as a curriculum for learning in the broadest sense. The spatial organization, which is primarily open and continuous, is intended to promote cooperation rather than competition. Resistance and interference are the means for creative heat. The pivotal projects between the New Jersey House and Prairie View A&M School of Architecture are the Dorland Mountain Art Colony, Carlson Reges Residence, Sinte Gleska University, Forest Refuge, and Warehouse C. Dorland helped us develop what we call our teaching-practice, a ‘finishing school’ for recently graduated architects. Also, because of the extreme limits of budget and remote location it forced us to make a building with ‘no body fat.’ The residential project was a move towards a more straightforward and construction-based logic where intensity of spatial experience took precedence over detailing. This was also the most fluid collaboration with a client to date. We now believe, from that experience that the quality of the architect-client relationship and the architecture are directly proportional. The University project immersed us into an ancient culture searching for meaning in a contemporary world. This was our first experience with a landscape that was beautiful, vast, and varied; one that could be experienced simultaneously, directly in science and through storytelling. We learned the meaning of a “spiritual landscape.” This project reminded us why we wanted to be architects.

The Forest Refuge project deeply immersed us into Buddhist practice. This was a necessity for doing what we were asked. We had to merge knowledge and practice by ‘living the program,’ discovering through direct experience the middle path, the centerline of gravity, and the stillpoint of a complex and turning world.

We searched for simplicity as it might be on the other side of complexity, one thing nested within another, an implosion, an inversion of the big bang. We began to search for an architecture that moved more slowly in proportion to the cycles, rhythms, and variable speeds of nature and the yogis themselves. The architectural language shifted from a synthesis of articulated elements to a distillation of ‘local’ potential ‘experiences.’ The extent of the unfolding was solely contingent on ones’ consciousness, at any particular moment in a particular place. Now, life gave form to architecture. In meditation, when the mind is quiet and focused, and the body is still, the senses are acute, time and space slowly shift from horizontal to vertical. The yogis in their solitude ‘go deep’ so visual silence is essential. Warehouse C was a jump in scale, impacting the core sector of the city, where people, commerce, government, cars, trains, ferry, and ships converged. Because of it’s size and configuration, we conceived it as an “urban connector” extending from the city center across a rooftop promenade, the length of the wharf to the ferry terminal with its constant flow of people. We integrated conventional land and shipbuilding construction techniques and logistics.

All the work we are currently engaged, whether it is large-scale planning, small design-build, or buildings for education or prayer, has the social and aesthetic values and code of the recently completed College of Architecture, which is an expression of ‘an architecture in slow motion’ which is a distillation of life giving form to architecture. The projects for the next 15 years, will continue to emerge out of a continually evolving world view but we expect they will have three things in common: first, they will be our silent teacher, second, they will be a pretext for our relationships with each other and the world at large, and third they will be vehicles on our quest to make an architecture that recalls the deep imprint of our original pre-conscious experience of unconditional unity.

As Thomas Merton wrote, “In the midst of a divided world we are called on to be instruments of unity. If we can understand something of ourselves and of others we can begin to share with each other the work of building foundations of spiritual unity. We are already one, but we imagine otherwise. What we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.” The promise of architecture is help us discover our common ground of being.

Standing in the grand hall of the Banca di Verona was the best place to pause and look back. I had just walked the entire building with Arrigo Rudi, a longtime collaborator of Carlo Scarpa, the architect who had been commissioned to design the bank. Over a five-year period, Scarpa and Rudi had worked continuously on the project that was now finally complete. Five years of creativity and construction in a continuous feedback loop!

The project had begun in the usual way: the first sketch pure intuition, then a more precise drawing and a model. From that point on, the process was atypical. They worked at scale through drawings and models, defining the scope and function as an aesthetic emerged. Over and over again the process would be generative, analytical and critical, then back again, eventually reaching a phase of refinement and detail. When the creative work was complete, construction began. From that point on, decisions, relatively minor compared to the earlier phases of work, were practical and technical. The architect was expected to make periodic visits to the site to observe and clarify. Why, then, had it taken five years?

Thom Mayne and I built the houses in Venice, California, working with young builders, some of whom had been our students at SCI-Arc. We were adventurous enough then to not have figured everything out in advance. We designed as we went along. Since there had been many iterations of models and drawings, by the time construction began, most of the design work was done. We still made changes as we went along, using the building as our full-size model.

As familiar as these projects of Scarpa’s in Verona felt to me, there was something about them that was intriguingly elusive. Over the next few months, I was able to visit his other projects in the Veneto region and I began to develop a sense of what was different in his work, besides his obvious aesthetic predilections.

Scarpa’s work had a body language bearing a clear trace of his conceptual fingerprints. For me, this was a completely unexpected way to think of a building. Didn’t other buildings have body language? To some degree, perhaps, but these were distinct. These buildings were a visible record of all that they had been through in coming into the world. They held the memory of the creative process, particularly that of their relationship with the architect.

I had been told that Scarpa would start construction before the drawings were complete, while design continued on a parallel track. Each idea was tested full-size in real time, then becoming the impetus for the next set of ideas. The building, the architect, and the builders were all in a special dance with moves that mostly remained embodied in the building. This could be sensed. My body recognized it.

This way of working was freer than any other I knew. It was also risky. What if you did not like what you had done the day before? What if all the decisions did not add up and the whole became incoherent? It was like a chess game that needed basic rules to guide the process without restricting it. In concept, this was how we worked in the studio, but if we did not like what we had just done, we had erasers and more cardboard. Working full size meant no second chance. I wanted to make a building using this process. I wanted to test myself.

After touring Italy for eight weeks, I spent the next eight weeks reflecting at SCI-Arc’s villa in the Ticinese portion of the Southern Alps, overlooking the Lake of Lugano. I studied my sketchbooks, and thought about this type of praxis - completely free from conventional working methods and sequences. How could the work remain coherent as a system, aesthetically and linguistically? I’d read as a student that architecture, like other human utterances, was a language and must be conceived and executed with the intent of communicating to others in an articulate way. It needed a “grammar” and rules. However, if an open-ended, spontaneous approach were taken, rules would undermine the process. But maybe not. I recalled that we had had the same concerns in the early days of SCI-Arc. Without knowing it, we had been embedded in a self-organizing system guided by rules that naturally emerged over time. If we paid attention and remained open to the possibility of changing our minds in light of new experiences, then we might be able to keep it both working and consistent. Now I know that everything has an internal logic that provides structure, as all the parts interact in apparently spontaneous ways. Pay attention and let it be.

Maybe a building had a DNA. I wondered, is it possible that freedom and structure are nested within each other? I’ve come to know this to be true.

Back from my four-month sabbatical, I settled in for a few weeks and then began to work in this way on my family house in Los Angeles, with a carpenter and his two assistants and with my ten-year-old son. We worked off-and-on over the next five years. There were no construction drawings, just sketches and a few drawings that set down the ordering and dimensional system for the surface and volumes.

The system was linear, circular, and sequential, all of which we embedded in the finished concrete slab for reference, if needed. The carpenter would build what was sketched. If it were unclear to him, he’d move on to some other part of the project and place lights on the areas that needed attention. When I returned home, usually after dark, long after they had left, I would turn on the lights and sit looking at the building, then sketch what was needed to keep them going the next day. If there were a “mistake,” we would work on it until it became intentional. Basically, there were no mistakes and no erasers. I discovered the relationship between freedom and fear.

Throughout the entire process, I was interested in my son’s ideas, which I knew would be fresh and radical, due to his inexperience. Not limited by prior knowledge, he would say things that I would not even have allowed myself to think. Working with a young, growing person showed me how we limit ourselves as we get more experienced. I began to remember things I had once known and ways I used to be. I rediscovered, in him, the deep intelligence of innocence. “Beginner’s mind” believes that anything imaginable is possible. Shunryu Suzuki wrote in Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.”

“Dad, can my bedroom be like a treehouse? Dad, can the entire front wall of the room be glass and slide out of the way so I am sleeping out of doors? Dad, can we put a big opening in the roof and make a big telescope so I can see the stars at night when I am lying down, like the stars of my birthday constellation? Dad, can we make the concrete walls look like your photographs of the desert from the airplane?”

My first thought was always “that’s not possible,” but I would keep it to myself and, with some patience and drawing, I discovered that it was possible to accomplish what he suggested. Next, I would have to confront my ego, realizing once again that these were his ideas and I wanted them to be mine. How absurd was my need to be first and original? Who had given me that imprint? What better teacher to have and what better time to let go? Things began to change for me. I learned a lot from him and still do. He made me a better teacher.

I eventually stopped working on the house, and left it incomplete when I moved to another house nearby, but my son asked if he could stay in the unfinished house. I gave him a list of items to be completed and told him that the house would be his if he finished it. He eventually completed the work and added a few new features of his own. The house is now his home.

"A continuous line that runs through the center of every solid and void. In a river, this line is where the water flows fastest, with the least amount of resistance - fewer rocks. This is the center line of gravity. If you stay on the line you will remain dry,” the guide told us.

We were standing on a wide ledge thirty feet above the first rapids, on the Green River in Utah. Two hours earlier, we had entered the river on rafts and kayaks, beginning a seven day trip down a deep, narrow canyon carved out by the river. The amount and velocity of water flow was sufficient for rapid down-cutting, creating gorges that varied between 1,000 and 1500 feet. The river flow alternated between an even, laminar flow that allowed us to see the unusual beauty of the canyon, and turbulent flow, which demanded the highest degree of concentration possible. If your mind wandered, even for a second, you would be out of the flow, literally. It was a very fast-paced relationship. You and the river, mediated by a kayak and a long two sided paddle. As we looked down from the ledge into the turbulent, white water I noticed a tree branch turning over on itself as it was carried downstream. Suddenly it snapped in half and disappeared. I immediately lost my courage and was overcome with fear, yet determined to take this ride. It would be the only way to learn whatever the river was going to teach us. This was the first lesson; the river owns you - you do not own the river. This would be a trip of great humility. To make it through, I would have to strip away any behaviors that might inhibit the spontaneous and sublime play of awareness. Every moment on the water would require my full attention and open-mindedness.

The guide took us back down the path to the rivers edge about 200 yards upstream where we had left our boats. The water was glassy and calm there; a great contrast from what we had just witnessed from the overlook. Before I got in the kayak, I looked to the middle of the river and noticed where the sheet of water was beginning to fold in on itself. There was a visible double curling that produced a line, THE LINE. The line is where everything else is condensed; the eye of the storm. All the power is in the line but the paradox is that this is where there is nothingness and stillness. Then it disappeared in the mild turbulence that was a threshold to the white water. The river was revealing its mysteries to us. I thought of it as an act of generosity, of friendship. The river wanted to play - or was it deceiving us, drawing us in so it could swallow us whole> What an absurd thought.

Leave it all behind. Looking up I saw the gates of Ladore where two 800-foot buttresses mark the beginning of a series of canyons formed by a 71-mile stretch of river. There were no references to scale and the dimensions were massive. The entire region was a part of Dinosaur National Monument; they were the appropriate scale for these volumes. The small thoughts I came with began to evaporate as my courage returned. I looked over at my son, B-man. We smiled, climbed into our kayaks and moved towards the line. The line would keep us dry.

Each morning the guides would describe in detail the stretch of river we would be on for the day, and the best way to maneuver through the rapids. On the morning of the last day, they explained the most difficult stretch. The river was difficult to read because of its changing widths and depths. The surface flow in some areas where it widened was almost flat and appeared slow but below the surface the current was fast and spreading towards a part of the canyon that opened into  an immense grotto. In front of it was a whirlpool that was invisible until you were directly on its horizon. This whirlpool was called the black hole. We all knew the story of black holes. If you go in, you don’t come out. If you should happen to come out then there is a seven-foot fall down to still water. ”If you survive it would be a great story,“ the guide said, as he and the others laughed. The guides insisted we stay clear. B-man and I requested the only two-person kayak thinking it would be the most memorable way to fish this trip together.

“You take the back, dad. I will navigate and you can steer,” he said as we walked to the kayak.

“Stay on the line,” I said. “Remember, use your entire body as one sense to find it.”

“May the force be with us,” he answered back in his usual playful way.

It actually felt a little like going into the unknown, where the most useful tool to get through this would be simple, direct, concentration. Bare Attention.

We were the last ones to enter the water. As we paddled away from the shoreline, heading towards the middle of the river, I reminded B-man to stay focused, do what he had to do - I would watch him and follow suit. I would respond to him as he responded to the river. We didn‘t need to speak except in silence. We were practiced at this after so many years.

“We have to be alert and relaxed. We aren’t looking for any experience in particular. We have to be simply wide awake to whatever presents itself,” I told him. Something he already knew, but I felt it bore repeating.

“Dad, yesterday it seemed that we were old friends, the river and I,” he said as he extended his arms and the paddle directly over his head. “It was as if the river remembered me from the day before. It was easy to stay on the line, and enjoy the ride. I was in fifth gear most of the afternoon,” he said.

The guide was right; the river’s current could not be read with our eyes. We drifted toward the grotto and the blachole. Our paddles were too short to go deep enough to change direction. It would have made little difference - the river “owned us” at this point so we stopped resisting and went with the flow, paying attention to the river. Its shifting surface patterns formed a tense top layer moving in several directions at once. The overlay of patterns read like a moiré. We assumed that the currents below were moving in several directions as well; we could feel them through the bottom of the kayak. It is always a surprise to rediscover how sensitive the human body is in detecting subtleties the eyes are unable to see. For a moment, we were able to feel the layered crosscurrents and make slight adjustments in our direction and speed.
        
A year prior, we were in Hawaii visiting with some Native Hawaiians who had constructed a replica of the canoe that carried the first Polynesians 3,000 nautical miles to the island without maps or instruments. This section of the South Pacific Ocean encompasses the intersection of currents moving at different depths and in different directions. We were told that the navigators had special insights, similar to medicine men and priests. They were able to “read” the water’s surface patterns and color to determine the depth. They could feel the crosscurrents moving at various depths by lying on the bottom of the canoe and using the stars for positioning. These memories came and went in an instant but were reassuring.

We drifted nearer to the cave while searching for the line in the current that was moving in the opposite direction. Without a word, we put our oars in the water at the same time on the same side, pushed once and the cave was behind us. A moment later, we were pulled forward and suddenly our kayak was spun around 180 degrees and sucked into a vortex of water. It felt like we were going down an immense drain. We had just entered the black hole and were deep in a funnel-shaped volume, a void. Our kayak spanned the space like a beam, perfectly level, suspended, silent, and timeless. We had the extraordinary sense of being in a gateway to another universe. The silence was uncanny. We could see the spiraling current, the smooth texture of the water, the perfect form of the volume that had momentarily seemed like a solid. We were weightless.

As quickly as we entered we exited. The kayak shot up and out of the hole and spun 360 degrees as we ascended. I noticed the other members of our expedition standing on the river’s edge watching in anticipation and disbelief as we landed flat in the still waters on the downside of the falls. We were awestruck as we sat there speechless. We each knew what the other was thinking. I could see from behind that B-Man was smiling as contentedly as I was. We had just been somewhere unexpected and indescribable. We had just made friends with the river. It had revealed some of its mysteries to us. The experience would remain our secret for some time.

With our backs to the shore, I whispered to B-Man “let’s paddle in backwards in synchrony. It seemed like the right thing to do. We slowly moved transversely across the river until we felt the bottom of the kayak meet the sand. What a wonderful sound it was. We were both quiet the remainder of the evening, periodically looking at each other, speaking in silence.

finis

QUINCEAÑEROS

Baile de quinceaños in the Citizen’s Hall at 5pm today. Maria read the banner to her mother as they entered into the plaza. Rebecca, her mother, looked at her with a big smile. The Zocalo and palco were festive. Balloons were tied to handrails and children were playing in the background.
                  In all directions
                  the community
                  comes together.

THE MAP

It’s June 1st and Maria has just completed the 5th grade and her first geography class, which she enjoyed. She especially liked looking at maps. Cities, roads, and mountains could be seen in relationship to each other and each place held
a story. Her teacher liked to tell stories. She told Maria and her friends many stories, some imaginary, and some real. All were about people and places, past and present. Maria was excited to see the map embedded in the plaza. There was Pacoima, where she was born and there were the other cities she remembered from signs she read from the car. Her friend Emily’s grandfather was now telling stories about the history of Pacoima. There were a dozen children sitting around listening   
                  In all directions
                  the children
                  come together.

WATER

Maria looked over and saw other children playing in the cooling mist that came up from the shadows of the garage. This wet cloud was the attractor of children seeking relief in the mid-day sun, and the summer heat.

There were sounds of other children playing and people talking at the weekend farmer’s market, where the cars park during the week. Maria wants to eat a plum.
                  In all directions
                  the community
                  comes together.

ELDERS

Elders sitting on benches in the shade, talk to each other and greet the passersby, they remember when they were in a hurry. Now they mostly recollect other things without a sense of urgency. Mr. Echeveria explains why the color of light changes 11 times throughout the day as he gestures towards the orange sky. “Think of a prism,” he tells the young ones. Mostly he sits quietly speaking in silence. Sometimes his long-time friends tell stories. Maria always learns something new when she really listens. Elders are the best teachers, she thinks. 
                  In all directions
                  the elders
                  come together.

CITIZENS

The meeting has begun, Rebecca is on the neighborhood council and they will meet tonight with Councilman Padilla in the Citizen’s Hall. Maria is excited to be here with so many others. The room is filled and there are others standing outside on the PALCO looking in. “I’ve never seen such a big door,” she says to her mom who explains it is to make the room bigger.

As Mr. Padilla speaks she sees him standing in front of the city and the mountains. She likes this view. She can see close and far way at the same time. Her mom tells her the Hall is where democracy is kept VITAL. Maria asks, “What does that mean?”  “Alive and healthy,” it is explained. 

Maria also likes to listen to her mom and the others talk about how to make Pacoima better. They do not all agree with each other but they always work it out. Maria tells her friend, “This is just like my house.”
                  In all directions
                  the CITIZENS
                  come together

THE WALL

Maria and Rebecca have come to the City Hall to meet some friends. It is Saturday and the farmer’s market has ended and the Zocalo is filled with people on the Palco and bridges, the plaza and the café, where students are doing homework, and sending e-mail in the Internet café. Everyone is here to watch a movie on the WALL. It will be a documentary about the murals of Diego Rivera. He was a great Mexican artist who was married to Frida Kalo, who was also a great Mexican artist, and his inspiration. The wall is a big attraction in the plaza. There is always a new mural on the WALL. Four times each year it changes. Local artist and those invited from other countries come to paint while we watch Maria tell her friend, “I want to paint a mural one day.” 
                  In all directions
                  the community
                  comes together

PARADE

Maria likes to come and watch the parade. There used to be only one each year. Now there are two. Sometimes they stand on the street and other times on the PALCO, the skybox. Maria helped her brother get his car ready for the Parade of Cars. There are so many beautiful ones, some dance, some make sounds, some move like a magic carpet. I am so proud of my brother, Maria thinks.
                  In all directions
                  the cars
                  come together.