Feeling The Ruins: My Personal Anti-Venom for the AI

The absolute urgency of real life experiences as the window closes

Dear Reader,

You may have noticed. The subject of AI keeps worming its way into my essays. I feel an urgency to share my thoughts as the giant window of human authenticity closes. We are watching and living through the last months and years of certainty…is this story written by a real live person? Or the AI? Is this movie made by human imagination? Or the AI?

This tweet? This news? This job? This school? This idea? Is it real? Does it matter if it isn’t?

As the window closes, many people seem to be sleepwalking through the precious crack in time. You can still feel the breeze through it. The crack in the window is precious. I am leaning my head against the sill, breathing deep and making, watching, listening, and writing as much realness as is possible while the surety of humanness is still clear.

*A reminder that every word written here is 100% by me, a real person.

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An update on The Moss Project.

There is no update. The rains have kept me from the final installations and the busy season has kept me from planning the next Substack LIVE event. My apologies and assurances that a true update is forthcoming.

The Moss Project has been a ringing success! The rains have been disruptive for installations but they have been great for the new native planting. Willows, dogwoods, redbuds, columbine, spicebush, maidenhair…all are happy!

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Feeling The Ruins

I keep returning to the shovel.

The act of physical digging is never wasted energy. It always gets me somewhere. Even if just physical exhaustion. In the world of AI and screens, being tired from digging a hole feels real. True. One true thing that reminds me that I am a human and I am alive.

Yesterday, I filled wheelbarrows of wet leaves, dirt, and rotted wood and moved them to do their composting work somewhere appropriate. In the space cleared, I see a new project.

The dead tree finally gave up. The one that planted its seed, grew to its full height and died inside The Map Room, all before I even arrived. It was one of the first, awkward moves I made at The Ruins, painting Polonius’ advice on its fading trunk.

Now what? Our Shakespeare tree is finally gone. I kind of love that we let it fall on its own, instead of taking it out with the chainsaw. A space has been opened. A new decade has started. The Ruins can now be described as a maturing mosaic museum.

I see the symbol for alchemy, written in red dog and coal and gold that first year. Now being slowly blanketed in moss. The moss feels like a test, passed. A proving ground for time. Our mortar is holding but the passage of time makes its mark.

We don’t scrub it off. We watch it. We tell visitors, the moss is its own character in The Ruins play.

Nine years for the moss to make its signature

The room where the tree finally fell, is such an important space. It’s the line of sight that the visitor sees in her first step into the front door. As I think about what comes next, I am on the search for balance. Compositional balance but also internal balance. How can I make the next right decision for beauty but also for truth?

The circle and the square, repeating. The square and the circle, echoing. Ricocheting against the walls. Archetypal symbols that never fade in importance.

The Square

Tesserae, the building blocks of andamento. A chunk of coal. The concrete wall. A substrate. A frame. Four walls creating a room.

The Circle

The sun. The moon. The earth. The venn. The rings. The clock. The compass rose. The open wheels of The Wandering Wall. The thousands of rounds of filati and malmischiato.

And now, the birth of a new project. The Portal.

Square and circle together, framing a vision yet to be designed.

The word portal is coal-centric. It is the official term for the opening of a mine. But, like our beloved threshold, it is also a word that goes deep. It can lead us through the interdimensional. Through time. It has an otherworldly quality that invites and pulls. Be careful walking by one. It may take you through!