One Hundred Percent Space

 I am the space where I am. Noel Arnaud

In order to dream up a hand, I must first dream up the space to contain it. Graham Nerlich

Looking up, in a world which is increasingly looking down (into their iphones and ipads, into their navels), can be a real revolutionary act. In Glasgow, normally it's the clouds and the skies themselves that draw the eye upwards. But there are other coaxers too: birds, architecture, sculptures, all of which raise the eye (and thus the self) to a fresh and aerated level, above the mundane monotony of congestion and constrained space.

Looking up is thus an opportunity to accommodate space, to widen the self, and to learn...

Learning space, as the 12th century sage Dogen used to say, is learning wisdom. Learning wisdom is learning space. 

Architecture itself is a wonderful lead-in to this learning, if only to see how certain spaces can be bludgeoned to death and destroyed. Buildings are not simply nests to protect and shelter; they are also a mediation between the outside world and our inner state of mind; buildings and the like articulate existential space; they provide us with a marvelous continuity from our very primordial beginnings. The house, after all, as Gaston Bachelard makes out in The Poetics of Space, 'is an instrument with which to confront the cosmos.'

In a city like Glasgow, whose wealth of architecture old and new abounds, there are excellent opportunities for this acquisition of wisdom. After all, we are, fundamentally, and as the French poet Arnaud intimates, space itself.

Our grasp, as humans, of space (and of time) is woeful. Woeful to the point of dementia, to the point of existential collapse. We, after all, have been architectured too, constructed by our parents and teachers, too much media, and our experiences. What kind of building you end up is anybody's guess, but most of us are buildings whose space could do with a little spring-cleaning, a little renovation.

Glasgow, as its very name suggests, is fortunate in having hills, moors, and coast so near to its centre. These keystone spaces are another great way to learn and accommodate space and time. Just walking them with your mind open is a learning experience at its most vital. Normally, these spaces are seen as a means to an end, but when we start to treat them as ends in themselves - as 'creatures', say, with whom we can develop a relationship - well, things begin to change. 

And so, with all these spatial opportunities around us, there really is no excuse for the disappearance of the sage. Just as genius is the ability to access one's own hyper-organic powerhouse (one's own engines), so too is wisdom the ability to access one's fundamental and essential space. This access-ability will be defined by the relationship the human develops over the course of his life with space and, inevitably, with time too.

30 mins. by train from the centre of Glasgow, Irvine Bay: The sea, the sky, a selfie of an altogether more subtle sort...

Sky & Seagull: depth, dimension, distance & duration.

 From atop the holy mountain Dumgoyne, looking north....

 Standing at the Jaw's Edge (Jaw Reservoir in the Kilpatrick Hills).

MAMBA, as one tabloid journalist glibly called it, yet Miles and Miles of Bugger All can do wonders for the body-mind. [Atop Dumbreck in the Campsie Fells].

From atop Neilston Pad looking north-eastish towards Duncarnock Mount in the foreground, the Cathkin Braes just beyond, and the overall midland valley of Glasgow.

 Looking north from Muirshiel Country Park over Queenside Loch.



The braes, the fells,
The coast, the moors:
Keystone spaces
Keystone species,
Stellar soundings in the galaxy of the valley.