A love poem to the wisdom of Autumn
To celebrate the Fall Season and the wisdom that it has to offer, I’m sharing this poem I wrote for Earl Bales Park, a large park in the north end of Toronto.
Our inner landscapes mirror our outer world: open your heart’s secret garden to create more beauty in the world
Life is a continuation of changing perspectives in our inner landscapes. Looking out into the horizon is simultaneously being aware of where we are standing.
Nature and nurture: an ethic of flourishing
Every living being has different needs. An ethic of flourishing provides a non-judgmental framework for autonomous choice-making within constrained systems.
Finding home through poignant landscapes
Humans constantly yearn for home. If being at home means to belong, then poignant landscapes are the experiences that remind us that we always belong to life.
The reluctance of spirituality in professional settings, healing humanity, and an all-pervasive spirit
Healing humanity is a spiritual endeavour. Yet to look closer at our social traumas, we must get over our reluctance of spirituality in professional settings.
The nature of culture: moving beyond binaries
Within the nature of culture is a choice to self-judge or self-love. To move beyond the destructiveness of human society, we must heal our shame of being human.
Landscape architecture as profession; landscape architect as archetype
Consider the landscape architect as a modern archetype for a person who navigates the social and ecological world through a relationship with landscapes.
Language, landscapes, and being in the world
Language mediates our inner and outer landscapes. Emotions exist without language, and yet language opens the door to an intuitive way of being in the world.
Finding place, shifting perception: From landscape as image to landscape as cosmology
We cannot physically transform the world through landscape design in ten days, but we can change the way we see the world and make place by shifting perception.
Finding truth in the “Void” through Chinese landscape painting
The Void can be found in the archetypal landscape between heaven and earth, humanity and divinity. It is a clearing for truth in Heidegger’s phenomenology.