Fragments from a Sketchbook

A couple of things I quite like that I found on skipping through an old sketchbook:

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We don’t shatter, we foam our edges away
and retreat inwards to our pencils,
pens, keyboards and brushes.

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When paragons proliferate, paradigms federate,
and something distinctly human begins to emerge.

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In certain places, objects made by man over the centuries have the quality of geography. In these places architectural-tectonics acquire the nature of the residue of plate-tectonics: namely they achieve that state where in total stillness, inanimate material embodies the exertion of force on colliding matters. In the public steps by San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome (which make their way under a large group of buildings), there is such an instance, one felicitously reached through a process of aggregation and demolition: a process which usually ends in collage-like spaces but there, in the distorted, broken, replaced and remade strata of its ceiling and walls, something entirely more massive is at work.

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[about the Campidoglio]
Sometimes things are crushed too close together, others merge, still others are simply too big or too small. Boundaries are used as expressive foils against which elements can react to create impressions of solidity, hyperactive syncopation, compression etc etc