Tuesday early afternoon

Time for thinking about beauty once again.

Michel Gerard

Segovia

San Esteban

Colours and adornments for noticing: the dark grey black blue between the columns [looking like the night sky]; the three slanted stairs leading to the wrought iron gate with its gentle pointedness; another gate or door to its left, forged without points but instead an arch, leading to...who knows where. The swirly and straight lined patterns pressed into the tops of the columns. The rectangles and some more swirls above the columns that form a horizontal design for contrast and possibly a kind of framing of the lower floor of this edifice. And then above this 1st story, a simple windowed second floor with a bit of half circle designs [looking like a child's unfinished crepe paper cut outs: just a few half circles of muted colour before she became too tired to go on]. And what about that tiny windowed structure in between the 1st and 2nd floors with its rust coloured roof? Who lives there I want to know.

Another study of beauty:

Appreciation and Understanding. My new thematic underpinning for my College Writing course: For me, an almost metaphorical protocol--rules of conduct--for teaching my student to take notice of what is before them. To take time to see the details and to consider the possibilities for thinking about it all. And then, to take more time to ponder and reflect and question and, in the end, appraise how it all adds up. Alas, they will have created a bit of new understanding of what is before them. No hurrying up here. No absolutes. No traditional judgments or doubts or reactive criticism. Just quiet appreciation and understanding. To be revisited again and again. Words and tools for thinking about things.

I looked up underpinning. This is what I found:

underpinning: a solid foundation laid below ground level to support or strengthen a building. • a set of ideas, motives, or devices that justify or form the basis for something

Interesting words here: support, strengthen, justify. I like this idea of both buildings and ideas having foundations. I wonder what the foundations for ideas are made of. A kind of light, light grey cement of sorts?