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Turn, Turn, Turn

8/31/2013

To every thing there is a season, a time to every purpose under heaven. A time to be born, a time to die; a time to plant, a time to reap that which is planted. A time to kill, a time to heal; a time to break down, a time to build up. A time to weep, a time to laugh; a time to mourn, a time to dance. A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together. A time to embrace, a time to refrain from embracing. A time to get, a time to lose; a time to keep, a time to cast away. A time to rend, a time to sow. A time to keep silence, a time to speak. A time to love, a time to hate. A time of war, a time of peace. (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

A time to focus purposefully on the road to Arcosanti. The real road, I mean: not the spiritual or intellectual path that one has taken, which provokes curiosity about Arcosanti, but rather the physical road that's been traversed by virtually everyone who, over the course of 40-plus years, has meant to get there from somewhere.

From wherever. From anywhere, by way of Cordes Junction.

That road is not an Edgar Mueller trompe l'oeil shockeroo (see link below) but no-one in a car (heaven forbid low slung and sporty, or with lousy shocks), on a bicycle, in an emergency vehicle (even more heaven forbid), or never-you-mind roller or in-line skates (fuhgeddaboudit!) loves that road.

For good reason: it's a mean road. An undercarriage-destroying, shock-absorber-hating, tire-loathing, habitation and development-inhibiting, pedestrian-unfriendly, wheel-stealing, cycle-unlikeable, transit-lover-defying misery of a road.

You don't have to be perverse to detest it or even merely to dislike it intensely. And no-one will castigate you if you do.

If you are, like me, a transit-appreciative person, here's a YouTube gem about transit. It doesn't mention "arcology" but it does connect the deadly dots between historical erosion of mass transit and the violent burgeoning of suburban sprawl.

Reinforces the case for arcological development. Does it explain the road to Arcosanti? You tell me...please?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/6636141/Edgar-Mueller-creates-record-breaking-pavement-art.html

In a world begging for more "walkable urban spaces," an eco-friendly roadway leading to our remarkable urban laboratory would be just lovely, wouldn't it? Don't we want to accept the challenge, figure out how to make that happen? How about maybe could we please have a new CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) come help create one?

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One Foot in Front of Another

8/1/2013

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Photo by Jeff Stein

Keep it simple
Easy does it
Listen and learn
One day at a time
Perseverance furthers
"Bless them, change me"

There are many good things about 12-Step programs like AA, NA, OA, GA, et al. One of them is: they don't discriminate.

No matter who you are, where you come from, no matter what crazy things you've gotten into, or why or how you did, you soon find out in any group you

happen upon that you are not alone. Ever so much really and truly not alone.
Even if Arcosanti doesn't claim to be a 12-Step 'place,' it seems obvious that time spent learning to examine one's own baggage is time well-spent - hardly a waste of time, right? And if some arconauts have gone on, after leaving Arcosanti, to "work the steps," and if some had started to before they arrived, surely some would benefit if they took it upon themselves to begin right now.
(Ironically, 'bottoming out' can be A Good Thing even if it feels awkward if/as/when it happens.)
That said, getting an addict to acknowledge the need for change is another matter altogether. It's pretty much axiomatic that a chemically dependent person can rarely be forced, coerced, or even readily coaxed into giving up his/her albatross. But if he or she does, s/he soon discovers life feels different when it's not spent staggering under the weight of chemical dependency.
And *that* said, who knows what freedom from petro-chemical dependency feels like, right? Such a colossal addiction!   It is such an enormous project, to challenge that addiction, that I think the Serenity prayer, the keynote of every 12-Step program meeting ("G-d grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the Courage to change the things I can, the Wisdom to know the difference") needs to have another virtue "the Patience to endure my own mistakes" added on to it.

Paolo, patient though he could be if/when he put his mind to it, was not a student of comparative religion. Nor is it likely he would have concluded (had anyone ever suggested it to him) that the 12-Step philosophy might be of use to him personally. In fact, he wasn't big on "touchy-feely" talk, not to put too fine a point on it. Many people - me included - tried to get him involved in community development, the city planning side of urban architecture; but despite his having likened cities to organisms and his having envisioned 'arcology' as promoting a more humane urban environment, the fact was that the niceties of coaxing strategic, substantive participation in that specific sort of planning and/or development at Arcosanti simply wasn't his thing.
Which was an omission that was, IMO, detrimental since the earliest designs for Arcosanti show its original intention was to serve as habitat for 5000. To compare: Colleges like Hobart, Colgate, Grinnell, and Reed have a student population of less than 5000. Yale, Brown, Howard, Duke, U. of Arkansas (Fayetteville), U. of Montana (Missoula), and Binghamton (SUNY) have between 5000-15000.
Which is why I now say: Let's get on with it. Full steam ahead. Let's keep building that urban laboratory in central Arizona.
Caveat: I report my opinion as a point of information. No slings, no arrows, no barbs attached.
What wasn't done, hasn't been done yet. Whatever wasn't done (whenever it wasn't done) doesn't mean it can't be done.
What can be done, still can be done. Should be done. What's stopping us?
Our collective cultural habit of automobile-dependence, our war-fueled, drug-compromised economy, with all its attendant addictions to fossile fuels, can be held responsible for many social problems but surely not this one. Hold a mirror up to that material culture we all pretty much occupy, you see reflected the habit-behaviors of addicts. Self-defeating denial-perpetuating addictions just keep on going.
Sometimes, somehow even expanding...
Thus, our addictive society is enabled to avoid change.
But that's not the whole picture and it needn't impede Arcosanti's continuing construction.
You put one foot in front of another, my mother said. To get anywhere, no matter how difficult or complicated the terrain. That's the strategy. Just that. So this bears repeating, even if you've heard it before:
No matter how many steps a journey may take, they all start with just one. Let's take that first step, however we can.

For my part, some eight years ago, on a sojourn away from Arcosanti while I was working with him on his writing, I wrote to Paolo to ask about this, as follows:

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Turn, Turn, Turn

One Foot in Front of Another

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