December at Yase by Gary Snyder

May 24, 2007

I MUST fall.
There would be a moment of
Bewilderment, and then,
A lifeless rumble down the cliff
To the glacier below.
My mind seemed to fill with a
Stifling smoke. This terrible eclipse
Lasted only a moment, when life blazed
Forth again with preternatural clearness.
I seemed suddenly to become possessed
Of a new sense. My trembling muscles
Became firm again, every rift and flaw in
The rock was seen as through a microscope…

Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.

From by Gary Snyder

The project I’m working on in my architecture studio is a music lab.
My concept for the project is a “penetration”. I strived to show broadening and shocking sense caused by one matter penetrating into the other matter, the sense of things becoming so much clearer, like crystallization. When I red the above passage, it really suited what I meant to do in my project. My penetration moment can be equal to the “terrible eclipse”. And things around you suddenly gain more presence, power and detail after the shocking event, like the rock appeared with such clearness to the person in the poem.

In the book , Abram talks about how we consider “magic” or “supernatural forces” isn’t something completely out of earth at all. Rather, its roots sprung from very depth of the earth, the land. So isn’t that moment of surprising clearness – seeing the details of the rock with such clearness – the moment of magic?
I thought about how other things in nature can be magical. For instance, how the hawk views the world and finds the direction will be very different from our methods. Its perception of size and color of things around it will be very different from ours, so if it is transcribed into the form that we can see, we will see something very surprising.