Beauty

Beauty is anything, made or found, which without practical actions, can momentarily alleviate the dead weight of reality from an observer.

Sea Spray

I never managed to be a believer because my rabbi couldn’t answer the simple question why? ‘How’ he could answer: always ‘what’, and ‘how’. Never why. And it’s been exactly the same in architecture, mentors full of certainty, but devoid of explanations. They could say what was good and bad, and how to do things, but ask ‘why?’ more than twice and a great rift would open up in which it was clear they were clinging desperately to a life raft of arbitrary values, terrified of the ocean around them, ignoring it. Some sea-spray would occasionally hit their face and they’d swipe it away in disgust and suppressed fear. 

But its okay, the sea is warm and welcoming and liberating. It knows why, it really does, it tells you a bit each time you dive, a little more with each push of your arms through water. The truth is we really are free, the little prisons our teachers built for us are weak as air, held up only by their terror of reality and disdain for honesty.

So turn around. Look up. Jump.