The Three Lives of Simone de Bรฉbรฉ

My 14-year-old Simone de Bรฉbรฉย wasย in her last stage of life. She hadnโ€™t been eating much at all the past few weeks. I made the first appointment I could with the vet to have her euthanized in a few days, on Monday.ย But in the end, she declined precipitously and I couldn't wait. โ€จOver the recent days when my Simoneย de Bรฉbรฉ was gravely ill, I experienced an ever present underlying nausea, an existential exhaustion. Not so much grief as despair. As though all the terrible deaths occurringย everywhere in the world wereย happening right at my feet.ย 

Despair and Grief – a world at war

The broken heart is a more eager vehicle for empathy where pain is a relay between the individual heart and the world of unknown misery so far away. The local and the global can leak towards each other when grief and sorrow meet an open heart. The proximate and immediate reel in suffering. No longer… Continue reading Despair and Grief – a world at war

Discovering Architect Arthur Ericksonโ€™s 1960 Alberta โ€˜Dyde Houseโ€™

Architecture, as I see it, is the art of composing spaces in response to existing environmental conditions to answer a client's needs ... the building becomes the resolution between its inner being and the outer conditions. Arthur Erickson Arthur Ericksonโ€™s sketch of the Dyde House and landscape, 1960 In mid-October I was fortunate to be… Continue reading Discovering Architect Arthur Ericksonโ€™s 1960 Alberta โ€˜Dyde Houseโ€™