good buys

today is thursday and on saturday morning i leave for berkeley california to attend graduate school. i'll be studying landscape architecture. not lawns, not hedges, but ways we interact with or ignore the layers of information embedded in our environment. patches of meadows, the channel water cuts, animal trails in the woods, city streets, weeds in a vacant lot, they are all manifestations of profoundly vast flows of energy and memory buried in and imprinted upon the landscape. we live and die on the surface of the most fragile, microscopically thin shell, universe-distances below our feet and above our heads. we explore these questions: what happens at that interface? what role do we play as moderators of scale and form? how can we know if we're doing the right thing? how can it matter if we do the wrong thing? can we achieve balance if we think we're creating balance? where is reality created? i hope that investigation into and with the landscape will help me understand the next step with some of these questions. it is one tool of thought. finding the layers, finding the forms, glimpsing the weave.

this entry marks the true beginning of my acceptance that soon i am leaving town and seeking out new adventures in the south. i will miss all of my friends terribly. they have sustained and guided me for 6 years in portland and i have changed and grown with their friendship. i will also miss my best friend and partner, sage. we have grown together in a seamless way these past years, and to have those patterns interrupted is like losing a limb. but loss creates ragged edges and frayed ends that are fertile territory for new growth and new grafts. let the packing commence!