7 Wochen Ohne / 7 Weeks Without

7 Wochen Ohne

Several important calendar dates seem to have all come together this week; they are important for different people and for different reasons.  For the Chinese, tomorrow is the beginning of the Lunar New Year, this time, the Year of the Sheep.  For Catholics, today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, a period of soul searching, fasting, and praying, which lasts till Easter Sunday.  You wonder how, and what, I know about Lent and its religious meaning; the truth is I know very little but what I found on the web.  However, I've recently picked up quite a bit of information about how German people celebrate this religious "season" -- I call it a season for it literally lasts more than three months -- for 2015, it is 19 weeks and 5 days to be exact, beginning officially from 11.11.14 at 11:11.  I have no idea how that specific date and time came about, but this is how the germanic traditions go. 

Another bit of interesting information I picked up is how the German Evangelical Christian communities have transformed this quintessential Roman Catholic tradition of fasting and penance into a popular movement for concrete actions which aim at changing one's habits, presumably those which one wishes to be rid of.  And instead of the usual 40-day fasting, they've turned this into a 7-week event of "doing without" -- a kind of self-imposed privation which can help kick start the forming of a more commendable habit.  

Every year they come up with a motto, a call to action which the German Protestants can all participate in.  For 2015, their motto is "Du bist Schön!  Sieben Wochen ohne Runtermachen", which I translate as "You are Beautiful - Seven Weeks Without Telling Somebody Off or Running Down on Somebody".  I take this to mean without bashing somebody or making disparaging remarks about someone, here, concerning someone's looks, though I presume it can extend to other aspects of a person, and that the idea of bashing can include deprecatory remarks aimed at oneself.  Maybe a more colloquial translation of "Runtermachen" would be "trash-talking," or talking somebody down.  Whether "bashing" has reached a dangerous level in German society, which calls for a collective action to readdress, is something I can only speculate about.  Taking a curious look at their mottos from previous years, I think, would be interesting for social psychologists.  For example, for 2012 the motto is, "Good enough! Seven weeks without false ambition", and for 2013, "Riskier, man!  Seven weeks without caution."  What did they mean?!

This, however, reminds me of the practical advice which William James offers to help with forming a new habit of the will in his essay called Habit .  He said: "Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day.  That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test." 

Kirk and I have taken a pledge ourselves to participate in this collective consciousness of self-denial.  Our motto is "6 Wochen ohne Fleisch, ohne Völlerei!"  I'm not going to translate it here, in case we don't make it.  

X House

Site Plan

It's funny how architects like to name their house designs with the alphabet.  I've encountered many such names in design publications, while I've done three myself--"L", "E", and now "X".  It's not difficult to see why.  The letters of the alphabet are easily identifiable shapes, and buildings, when seen from above, like those on Google Earth, tend to resemble blocks of various alphabets.  There is a certain pitfall, though, in naming your designs by some abstract shape--the shape itself can be a guiding concept for the design but it can also become a limiting or skewing factor, to the extent that one loses sight of the fact that one is designing a building for human dwelling, and not just to fit some preconceived abstract fancy or principle.

My X house is inspired by a house featured on the ArchDaily website which I saw in the spring.  I was intrigued by its shape, the way spaces flow from one to another, and the incorporation of an isolated tower rising out of the sprawling ranch style building.  It also recalls to me several of my favorite design principles from Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language, too many to list here but especially in regards to the various forms of family dwellings, No. 75 to 79. 

I started the design in April and worked on it from time to time at a snail's pace, putting in details, fixing design issues, and trying to overcome the challenges thrown at me by the Revit software.  As is usually the case with me, my designs tend to run on the big side for simple dwellings.  This is something I hope to pare down in my future designs.

There are certain advantages in siting a house at an angle to the street, i.e., not strictly following the Cartesian coordinate system of the predominant street grid, if the width of the lot permits it.  For one thing, you can orient the entry and garage at an oblique angle to the street and thus gain more privacy.  Secondly it can open up rooms with more light and views.  

My design is composed of two bars which form an approximate "X" shape, anchored with a vertical volume at where they cross each other.  The X-shape is reflected inside through the unobstructed circulation routes, both ambulatorily and visually, at one side of each bar.  The effect is achieved by the use of (frosted) glazed pocket doors which separate the more private spaces--the guest bedroom and the office/music room in the E-W block, and the master bedroom in the N-S one--at the farther end of the bars from the more public areas.  The vertical volume contains the circulation hub and another office, an "Ivory Tower" for the most discriminating intellectual pursuits.

In addition, there are a couple of features which I'd like to point out - 

1. The generous use of wall-height sliding glass doors.  I use them on the south facing walls of the kitchen-dining area, the office, the guest room, and the master bedroom, which all open out to terraces, on the ground floor.  I also use them between the living room and kitchen/dining area to screen off the after-dinner mess, and in the office upstairs on two sides, which give access to the entire roof deck.

2. An exterior circular stair gives separate access to the roof deck, which provides ample space for an array of solar panels and for various entertaining options.

What follows are the plans, elevations, sections, and some renderings of the interior spaces, which are meant to give you some idea of what the design looks like.  Enjoy!

Ground Floor Plan

Second Floor Plan

Basement Floor Plan

NW Elevation

NE Elevation

SE Elevation

SW Elevation

NS Section facing East

NS Section facing West

Section through stairs

EW Section facing North

EW Section facing South

Entry Drive

Entry

West Perspective

South Perspective

NE Perspective

Vestibule

Living Room.1

Living Room.2

Kitchen-Dining

Her Office

Guest Bedroom

Master Bedroom

Master Bath

2nd Floor Landing

2nd Floor Kitchenette

His Office

Roof Deck

Laundry Room

Garage

Alltag

der Alltag eben
teenager edition

It seems to me that my life, since I stopped getting a regular paycheck (which coincided with the start of the recent recession and our moving to Bloomington), has been a series of experiments--a continual attempt at refining the art of Everyday Life, of finding the most productive ways to spend the time of my life.  Of course, you're probably saying to yourself, only a "lucky" few, with time on their hands, have the luxury to ponder questions like this.  The majority of people, instead, are so caught up in their daily grind that it may appear to them that even to raise this as a central question is an expression of unconscious arrogance. Well, maybe.  Or maybe it is just that it would be better if more people were in a position to raise it.  In any case, I will attempt to describe what everyday life means to me.

To begin with, the concept of life is bound up with the passage of time.  To help better visualize it, we humans conveniently carve it up into units of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, and so on.  Our life is made up of repetitive daily routines, which we go through mostly on autopilot.  We spend a large chunk (about a third) of the 24-hour daily cycle in sleep, during which time we are mainly unconscious.  Another third we devote to making money in order to sustain our lifestyle in the society we live in.  The time we spend in this pursuit is usually not at our own command.  The last third we devote to various of life's maintenance tasks, such as shopping, cooking, eating, bathing, maintaining relationships, leisure activities, and so on.  Our daily routines are so well structured and deeply ingrained in us through habit that we can easily lose sight of the fact that it is our life that we are "spending", those hours and days, which never return.

The expression of "spending" time is curious, though I think rather apt.  (German, with its tendency for precision, has a different word for spending money, ausgeben, than for spending time, verbringen.)  We all have, as it were, a limited amount of the "stuff" deposited into our own metaphysical checking account on the day of our birth.  The amount in the bank has, alas, only one direction to go, down--and it is drawn down with each day's passing.  When the account is depleted, one ceases to be alive.  There is a website, called the Death Clock, which will project the date of your death given information you input, with a countdown clock displaying the number of seconds remaining--a friendly reminder, as the website says, that life is slipping away, second by second.  There is no more graphic a reminder of our impending death as being confronted by The Ticktock of the Death Clock. (The prediction provided is based on a very simple calculation and is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, so take it with a big pinch of salt.  All the same, we each have an accurate death clock, even if we don't know the date.)

As I am unemployed, my concern is with how to conduct myself during the approximate 8 hours of "work" time each day.  Again, German makes a distinction between "to work" (arbeiten) as at a job and "to occupy oneself with or to be engaged in something" (sich mit etwas beschäftigen).  What one occupies oneself with varies at different stages of one's life--prior to the first 2-3 decades, in acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary to navigate the life ahead, while in midlife, in establishing oneself in the societal structures one finds oneself in, or in bringing up the next generation as the case may be.  Then there comes a time when one begins to wonder whether there is anything else that one would like to do, apart from what one has been doing for the past 20-40 years, while there is still time.  For me, it is not about seeking novel experiences, which frequently populate people's so-called Bucket Lists, but about learning something new and acquiring new skills, not necessarily with the aim of returning to the work force, but instead expanding one's mind.  My choice about how to spend my time is to spend it in study.  There are always certain interests, which I'm pursuing, which engage my time and intellect and mildly challenge my dispositions and physical ability.  Thanks to Kirk, I've been able to pursue a studious life, relatively worry-free, these past four years.  This is not to say that things won't change in the future.  But until then I'll try to make the best of the time I have, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.

„Arbeiten, um zu leben, und lebe nicht für die Arbeit.”

Searle at IU

John Searle gave two terrific public lectures at IU; they can be viewed at the links below:

The Logical Structure of Human Civilization, 09.11.2014

Consciousness as a Problem in Philosophy and Neurobiology, 09.09.2014 

Enjoy!

Best running season

Bryan Park 09.27.14

For recreational runners, now is the best time of the year to get outside to run.  The crunchy sound of the dry, freshly fallen leaves beneath your shoes and the slight nip in the air seem to lend you impetus to pick up the pace a little.

A Life's Morning

This is to let you all know that I've plowed through, not single-handedly, another Audiobook recording; it's titled "A Life's Morning" by George Gissing, published in 1888.  It can be downloaded here for free from Librivox.  I joined in the group recording effort in May 2013 and recorded 18 of its 33 sections.  It was hard-going at times, but boy I'm glad it's finally done.

I did not know of this late 19th century British author before I started recording for this project.  Though priding myself on having read a lot of the English literary classics from 18th century to early modern era, I've been finding out, to my amazement, the names of so many writers whom I've never heard of, simply by randomly browsing the free (no longer copyrighted) titles available on Project Gutenberg.  Like so many men and women of letters in various time and various quarters of the globe who have been overshadowed by their greater contemporaries, Gissing in his brief existence left a considerable literary production.  Whether his novels have any significant worth in the opinion of literary critics, they provide a window onto the life and preoccupations of the people of his time, which though very unlike our own, we can still thoroughly enter into on the basis of our shared human experience.   

die Fußballweltmeisterschaft

Like a Dream

Like millions of people worldwide, I've caught the soccer fever, which has gripped me for the past four weeks or so and has just ended in Germany's being crowned the Weltmeister!  Wow! Such a run -- from the unbelievable header by John Brooks (that's him on the image here) of the USA team, to intricate footwork, dives, injuries intended or unintended, bizarre refereeing, near misses, jubilation, and heartbreaks on a colossal collective scale.  I so wanted Argentina and Messi to win (the Pope should have intervened), though I believed the Germany team well earned the title by patiently grinding the game out without ever losing their concentration.  

After this world cup, I hope the sport soccer or "football" in every other country in the world will gain more of a following in American society, alongside the NBA, NFL, MLB, and other team sports and eventually produce some world-class athletes. 

Phares Whitted Quartet

Otherwise, it has been a laid back summer, an extended stay-cation, you might say. Though a lot of students have left town, the university has kept up with non-stop summer arts, film, and music programs, workshops, and recitals, most of them with free admission.  We've gone to the Jazz in July outdoor concerts a couple of times at the IU Art Museum, which is something new for us this year, and despite the heat and occasional searing loud trumpet, we've enjoyed the performances. Who would have known that Indiana has been the hot bed of Jazz since its early days, with the likes of Cole Porter and Hoagy Carmichael, a Bloomington native, both hailing from Hoosier country, and that many other renowned Jazz musicians have graduated from the IU Jazz Studies program since the 60s?