Back in 1997 I went through a pretty dramatic depression. It was not only attendant to a miserable divorce but also to the things that experience brought me to look at. I underwent a lot of therapy, took antidepressants and slowly learned that the only way out was through; to learn a different way of living. I found, though, that some of the simplest things were the most powerful things – two in particular. Everyday as I drive to work I recite the things I appreciate, and secondly I try to contemplate one thing of beauty everyday – really contemplate it.
Today I had to narrow it down a bit. I detoured on my way to work through Lake Park, got out walked to the ravine bridge and just took in the view for a while. I saw some silver trees fighting to hold on to their last leaves in the November breeze. I saw a young child bundled against the wind and she looked at me with such curiosity and interest. I thought about the bridge’s design, which I’ve always loved and how the view from there reminds me of a bridge in fox point that I used to go to on my bike as a child.
I got back in the car and headed for work. I was thinking of a song from “back in the day”, found it on the iPod and sung along on the way. The chorus of that song goes something like: “wait a little while to welcome what you’re after, give it the time to find its way to you, as soon as you no longer try, you’ll turn and find it standing by your side…”
On my walk from the car to the building, there it was restating the theme of not looking but finding. On the underside of the wall that borders the river was a dancing pattern being created by the sun’s reflection of the water. I stopped and watched it for what must have been 10 minutes. I thought about how it was at once patternistic and yet random, constantly changing but yet somehow the same. I thought about how this concept might apply to design, how we see things, what’s pleasing to the eye and what’s not; how the introduction of random qualities to a seemingly predictable situation adds so much interest, and lastly about my theories regarding people taking comfort in their particular patternistic grids; and how uncomfortable they make me.
One day’s contemplation.
By Clay Konnor
