online: 24 april 2006
modified: 24 april 2006

19 april 2006 a hand-sized brick


15:17 Sitting on a broken wall before four tall beeches in a small but quite wild and ungardened city park with the noise of continuous traffic from the surrounding streets only 100 metres away, or less...

This wall, what is it? The foundation of a dismantled building i suppose... It's made of small traditional bricks that fit the hand of anyone, male or female. Modern bricks, from the industrial era, intended for fast bricklaying by men only, are too big for a woman's hand. These smaller bricks are a pleasure to hold and to handle - as i grasp one i am reminded of ergonomics... and the vision (kinaesthetic as well as visual) of an artificial world in which everything is sized and fitted to the bodymind, the dimensions and limits of ourselves as thinking animals - in place of the subhuman habitat we make and inhabit, always with the time, the cost, the bottom line of profit and money value, precluding many joys and satisfactions of life as it can be.

That old-fashioned brick is to me a reminder that to build, to manufacture, and to enjoy a far more human life is not utopian wish but physical possibility and rightness... as is this thoughtful wilderness that exists to compensate for the stressful city we inherit... but the ergonomic vision is of a life more subtle, more integrated and attuned to us, and we to it... to the point where stress is not destructive and such dichotomies as natural/artificial lose their meaning!





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