Time to Move On

After having cleaned my room, I feel like I've come back to a state of simplicity and well-being. There's a zen saying: you can tell the mind of the person by the state of their bedroom.

Lately, mine has been a complete disaster—on both fronts.

The past few weeks I've experienced a sort of falling out with Arcosanti—you could say. You could probably put it as the "honeymoon being over"—though I'm not sure what that says about marriage. But suffice to say, I cannot put my finger on the feeling entirely. It may be burnout—or multiple burnouts, one after the other. Disillusionment with the practicality (or in some cases impracticality) of the place. There are so many dualities of this place. In one breath it is beautiful and ugly, in another it is both ungainly and elegant. It is at once utopian, but hampered by beauraucracy; it attracts incredible, skilled and talented people from across the world, yet is consistently emaciated due to a lack of human power and resources.

It is so many things rolled into one. From day to day I may shift from being extremely pleased with my decision to come here (I don't regret it) to feeling like I would crawl out of my own skin to simply leave. But the later feeling has been the more consistent one, with varying degrees of urgency from day to day.

Consistency of a feeling is usually the sign that it is set on a solid foundation. Consistent signs are the ones that need to be listened to.

Thus I have pushed up my deadline for leaving Arcosanti from the mid-winter to no less than October 14. Quite a big shift. It was partially because family will be in town and flying back East—so I'm simply catching a plane for convenience. Yet even so… if it was not for Earthdance Arcosanti, I would have left a week ago.

Perhaps it was the fact that I was taken with Proteus Creative and the initiative to start my own business—re-tool my skillset, polish my portfolio, get an apartment—start a career and the next phase of my life, essentially. It was like a switch had been flipped, but there was nothing I could do about it. I've not been able to consistently apply myself to freelancing. A fulltime job is just that—fulltime.

So the last few weeks have been more about survival, mentally and emotionally, rather than anything else. I'm considering buying more canvas to keep painting, since that was my outlet for sanity after the 90th (some days I wondered if that had permanently cut my time here much shorter than I had ever anticipated from the beginning). The logistics of shipping paintings, or finding a local buyer, or whatever, are not that romantic, or even practical. But when the Muse calls, it is important to obey. At least for me, it's like neglecting an organ.

So if you asked me the question "what do you think of Arcosanti?" I could give the PR answer (the one I give as a tour guide), the personal answer, the professional answer, and the touristic answer. All would be made of the same material, but have very different shades—as if they were all blue, but they actually ranged from cyan, to turquoise, to midnight black, to cobalt.

In a way it pains me that a project so ambitious could have so many troubled details. Maybe I am a perfectionist. But some days, I wonder if the architecture—or, rather, the construction of it—is that radical or unique. In terms of the thermal mass and using concrete for both heating and cooling, Arcosanti is not that great of an example—most of it is not insulated nor bridged properly, and in some case the practicality of things is eschewed for the sake of aesthetics. And even in aesthetics, certain parts of it feel like it was… well, done by volunteers. One of my pet peeves lately has been the fact that 75% of the concrete here, including interior walls and ceilings, was poured with plywood. Concrete picks up whatever imprint it's poured onto, so the concrete actually looks like gray plywood. I look up on my ceiling in the East Crescent, and there's a gorgeous silt-cast painting there, hand-done by Paolo Soleri. And then it's surrounded by plywood grain patterns, complete with visible seems and punched-out knotholes. I keep on thinking—if only they had covered that surface in plastic—a big plastic sheet, then that rough, grainy concrete would have come out looking like marble. And how long would that have taken?

I understand there is an urgency to build about things… but I just find it sad that so much here has to be sub-standard due to a lack of resources, knowledge, materials, or whatever. At the end of the day it just becomes depressing. The concrete thing was only really brought to my attention by an architect here when she pointed out the concrete surfaces here. She expressed the same frustration that's now overtaken me. She'll be leaving in a week.

I think everyone goes through this sort of disillusionment phase if they stay here long enough. If they stay past it, it's because there is a core function of the community and place that jives with the direction of their life. They don't mind working for minimum wage, regardless their qualifications—they don't mind the politics, they don't mind that not everything works the way it's supposed to. By any measure it is much better than a life they could have in Phoenix, or in suburbia, or in "normal" civilization. And that's why some people stay here for years and years. For some, Arcosanti has become their life, and they simply can't imagine living anywhere else.

Regardless though, I've come to a state personally where I know that I need to leave. The core functions of my life don't jive with the core functions of the community. I have thought about setting up my graphic design business here—it would certainly be walking the talk in terms of stimulating the economy here. And it's not impossible to do—the red tape is not so thick that a truly good idea with a well-thought out plan will be stopped in the tracks. In fact, it can be quite the opposite. But as a business owner I have to think if I actually want to set up shop here, as opposed to somewhere else, even though I may be able to work remotely the whole time.

It may happen some day. But for now, at least, I'd much rather be forming client relationships in Baltimore and DC. I'd much rather be a working painter in a place where there's a huge amount of artistic ferment already in place. I'd much rather feel like I have more material to draw on as a writer, and be able to travel across town to visit people (by public transit, mind you). I want to take a roadtrip through the west coast—a wanderlust that is rare for me. I need a place that I can consistently improve my self, and a place that does not haphazardly inspire me on some days and depress me on others.

It's not so much that I wish to be critical of Arcosanti—everyone is critical of it, even the residents of a decade or more. Even Paolo Soleri—he knows better than anyone else its modest, almost anemic state. It's simply that it's become obvious to me that the next phase of my life, which I'd just love to dive into head-on, cannot work within the context of the place and culture that makes Arcosanti. Maybe someday that would work. But that's a big if, and I don't know when that someday will be.