Well I have had an on again/off again productive week। I really think that I have gotten some creativity back lost through my long exposure to that big painting. I have completed some small things, mostly traditional Chinese painting stuff, crabs, and flowers and what not and it has been a good experience for me. I remember some techniques, and while calligraphy is still absolute shit I am getting better. I have picked up where I left off which I find somewhat off course because usually my skills deteriorate without practice and I have have not practiced in easily a year. I completed a traditional/modern piece where what I did was take an illustration of a very famous Japanese painting and recreated it on a small scale. The painting is of a section of a pine tree and the negative space is covered in gold leaf. I had complete forgotten about this style in Japanese work and had taken my gold section from some Ai Weiwei paintings I saw a few years ago. In hindsight I am remembering my trips to Japan and how the gold leaf behind the paintings and also reflect on my recent preoccupation with gold tempra paint. Perhaps it is a sign, a direction calling out to me, I think that creativity calls one in different directions and I am beginning to interpret those directions better than before. I could not say that I have my finger on it just yet, rather I cannot put into words what it is saying to me but I am beginning to understand the signs better.

That brings me to something else interesting। I was studying up on architecture last night, better to say that I was reading that huge book I brought home from school and taking notes. At first I was most interested in noting things I thought relevant or important to the field but as time progressed my reasoning went from things I found interesting and then to ways I found myself interpreting it, things that were akin my my method of thinking. This is where I realized I needed to interpret my thinking/personality style and work with my strong points. The NPR Remembrance on Andrew Wythe described him as someone who liked tough people. They then defined tough people as those who lived by their strengths and in in understanding of their weaknesses and limitations. I was taking a short, non-sleeping nap brought on by smoking a cigarette too early in the day at the time, as the words drifted through my mind and my mind wandered about I thought about that personality test I took while I was laid up. It described my personality as a scientist; a person who studies and understands situations impartially. That is really what lead to my venture into Chinese painting last week and also dropped that enormous architecture book on my lap.

Back to that; I question myself “What kind of architecture do I want to create?” I have not formed the concise answer to this yet but my general leanings are: Green - architecture that is made of local materials, allows to the occupant to adjust climate control (in northern China we do not have control), is insulated for better retention of energy, maybe some device that recycles washing machine water into the toilet - I am already doing this with shaving and washing my face। I use water in a tub and then pour it into the toilet. Also I want the architecture to reflect design styles of old and new. I am in love with the Chinese Si He Yuan a courtyard/garden house, for lack of a better description. Its main idea is that a house is not one building with rooms, it is several small buildings maybe with only one or two rooms each. How can this idea be included into new buildings? I made a poor drawing of a skyscraper enclosing a Si He Yuan last night. but that will not really work, well I guess it could but enclosing large parts of a city under other large parts of the city is kind of a novelty. It cold be done like R. Buckminster Fuller’s idea of a bubble over Manhattan. What would work is designing apartments to work in this way. Apartments that have a courtyard so to speak. An atrium where the living space, a kitchen, living room, receiving room are on the first floor an are opened to a small clutch of bedrooms. The windows could face the north and south so that adequate but not excessive light gets in. Of course one last thought is sprawl. Separated homes that accentuate the natural surroundings (which there is precious little of in Beijing but lots outside Beijing and allow for gardens and natural space. Despite the ample space outside the city the homes there are very much like the ones inside the city, all crammed together with very little personal space inside the home. But then that takes away from the green idea because there is completely insufficient infrastructure to move large amounts of people in and out of the city which would result in everyone getting cars which then would detract from the whole green aspect.

Well I suppose I have gone one long enough for today. This has been one of my better writings because instead of just telling myself what to do I have actually sharpened ideas and thought up new ones while writing. Let us hope it carries on through the rest of the day.