Christopher Alexander on The Void

This is out of reading sequence. In thinking about Annelieke in the very present moment, the Void came back to me from Book One:

“In the most profound centers which have perfect wholeness, there is at the heart a void which is like water, infinite in depth, surrounded by and contrasted with the clutter of the stuff and fabric all around it …

This emptiness is needed, in some form, by every center, large or small. It is the quiet that draws the center’s energy to itself, gives it the basis of its strength. The fact that the void does not exist so often now … is the result of a general disturbance in our capacity to make wholeness …

The need for the void arises in all centers. A cup or a bowl rests, as living structure, on the quiet of the space in the bowl itself, its stillness …

The void corresponds to the fact that differentiation of minor systems almost always occurs in relation to the “quiet” of some larger and more stable system.”

Christopher Alexander – The Nature of Order – Book 1: The Phenomenon of Life

“Part of the process of structure preserving requires cleaning out from time to time … When a situation appears where there are too many centers, too crowded together, in a confusion of structure, a structure preserving process must be applied … the process must act to discern the deep structure, the most important structure beneath the confusion …

… a crowded complex structure often ends up living at the edge of a much larger homogenous void, and that the contrast between the intricate structure and the vast emptiness is needed to maintain the structure of the intricacy.”

Christopher Alexander – The Nature of Order – Book 2: The Process of Creating Life