Tiny Windows

Earlier this summer when the days were long, I had a couple of brief and unusual encounters with light – intervals of feeling close to something luminous but ephemeral.  One of these involved exposure to images of a church in France designed by Le Corbusier.  Its site was chosen partly due to a long history of hosting sacred buildings – the horizon is visible from all sides of the hill, inviting sun worshippers and providing maximum visibility for potential danger.  These two qualities happen to be some of my own real estate criteria and are quite near and dear to my heart.

The building itself hosts dozens of irregularly sized and spaced square portals, which expand as they travel the thick walls from the exterior to the interior.  Something about the idea that the windows acted like projection lenses from the outside to the inside stayed with me.  Our bodies – physical, mental, emotional and spiritual – also seem to be constructed with these ‘windows’ and portals that invite and channel elements from the outside to our hallowed interiors.  Our lives are composed of tiny windows – of time, of experience, of opportunity.  Taking this idea further, each of us is, in fact, a window into a unique world of subjectivity.  This is part of the joy in knowing someone – the opportunity and sometimes the challenge of seeing the world through his particular aperture.  This is also the succor provided by songs, films, stories, images, structures – all which offer an opening to a vision of another place, or sometimes to a place we know very well.

some US American architecture in Berlin known as 'the pregnant oyster'

rotating radio tower from socialist days, which now houses a restaurant where we ate lunch

I had the pleasure of reading a novel and a short story written by two different writer friends in London last week while bonding with my family there.  I communicate regularly with the novelist, and we visited while she packed her English life into boxes and set off for Dhaka -- a new chapter in the land that bore her and also the main setting of her brilliant novel.  The other is a kindred spirit, putting his particular genius to work in the world of publicity hustling when he’s not writing semi-autobiographical noir fiction.  I hadn’t seen him since he left New York five or six years ago – not even a Facebook status update, – but we connected easily and I enjoyed his company for an evening in the pubs of Clerkenwell, getting a snapshot of the map of decisions that have led to the life he has today. 

requisite graffiti wall portrait

Michael and Sib

Unlike most other European cities, Berlin – long regarded as a Mecca for the artists and musicians of the world – remains quite young in its development, still forming, dynamic.  This is of course due to its location right at the seam where Germany was unified in 1989.  I was accompanied and received there by some extra special German friends with creative leanings, and got perspective on a place that embodies a complicated past, a fascinating present and a promising future.  We also stayed out late, dined in a rotating radio tower above the city, wandered through a hipster neighborhood which has the highest density of children in all of Germany, and ate some politically incorrect Sunday schnitzel.

kids in flight

Sebastien and Sibylle, siblings

Michael and his hausmates in Berlin

Sibylle and Michael conceiving my personal brand strategy

Fall is upon us here in Oslo, where summer days can last as long as 20 hours.  The chill has set in.  I’m hoping there might be a few days of summer left in Sardinia, where I’m heading later this week.  I’m staying in Oslo with friends whose lives have changed tremendously since we last met a couple of years ago.  Through them, I see a view of parenthood and partnership that is, at once, quite universal and totally unique – adding another dimension to my own perception of these life experiences. 

Ronchamp, exterior

the light inside

Back in Ronchamp where Le Corbusier built his chapel – which I have yet to visit in person -- you can’t see the building until you reach the crest of the hill.  From there, they say, gorgeous vistas expand in all directions.