Initiating a Sabbatical

Last week I wrote on first part of “what is a Sabbatical?”--- and I wrote about the separation, the home-leaving, as the step to start a sabbatical-adventure.

Today I want to pre-view the next step—Initiation—secret place of rites and beginnings. It is also the start of chaos, of disordering, and loosening ties and concepts. Here is where things get weird—weeeeeeeeird weiiiiiiird—if you let them. Some signs of initiation are danger, anxiety, uncertainty. Joseph Campbell writes of the underworld and the demons therein—from a mythic lens. These are no less than the creatures of our own unconscious—metaphorical and very, deadly real.

In my experience in scientific research, the initial excitement of the new project idea is confronted with my empty lab bench, my empty lab notebook, my empty paper outline. This emptiness—the emptying that the separation afforded—is not comfortable.

(human) Nature abhors a vacuum.

I feel this truth as an almost painful automatic habit to feel my empty place—that is, I strive to fill it with feeling—to fill it with idle chitchat or frustration at emails unanswered or, and this is the most devious attention demon because of its appeal to productivity, the work I know I know how to do already.

Today I am working on a membrane tensegrity tent model—the specific object and task are not important except that they are important to me. I want to learn how to make this structure for many reasons, but most importantly because it is beautiful and because it is mine. I am not the first to think of it nor am I  the first to make it. Its strange to even say this idea is mine—the inspiration came from dozens of conversations I was a participant in. With my wife, who makes art from trash. With my former student who makes a living selling art from trash. With a colleague who taught me the importance of the fluid environment for the movement of cells (the thicker the medium, the faster the cell crawls). From these and many more—a friend sharing the value of reading still analog physical archives of research in the library for new-old research visions—all these sources and countless others have slowly in the dark come together and found a home in me, in my mind, in my schedule, in my house. These ideas of membrane tensegrity is less mine than I am its.

Strange thought, that.

And today I am in the strange work place of listening waiting for what the work is; what my work is. I am writing now because it is far more familiar work than the hard to imagine moment awaiting me in my basement.

Today I want to attach small sticks—dowels of wood cut to a length of 10 cm—to a table-sized swatch of bidirectionally stretchy fabric. The fabric is stretched taut (a field of tension) and the little sticks are held…by what? And the stretching distorts the whole pattern of the field…where do the stick ends go? So, I plan to mark a grid (quite Cartesian and linear) and I plan to glue, staple, nail, clamp, screw—and I don’t know what else.

I plan to allow a deliberate and intentional desperation drive me. There is no way out for me now. I must get through and I have no idea how to. I know I want to hand my work over to my class (24-673 Soft Robotics offered in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University) just as I have asked them to bring their replication prototypes to class. I know I desperately want help; tomorrow my student assistant can take over. But today I am damned—I am going to do my damnedest. No where to go. Nothing to do. Except take one step after the next. No other thoughts—hands moving—stick slipping—fabric stretching—pin it—mark it—like carving a turkey—knife goes in—hold the slippery tendon—tear with nails—slice-cut-pin-grab-rip-pin-glue-shred-stick-and on—and on—and on—just work now—the steady drum beat of the galley—oars up—across—down—resistance felt in shoulders and back—now pull—up—slowing—dragging—across—down-pull-on-and on-again-again-again-gain-gain-gain.

There is no substitute for experience, blared across an Appalachian highway on a billboard, now emblazoned across my mind. And there is no better experience than failure. Not failure artificially wrought with an expectant “this will never work,” but failure of the true effort: “I really thought this would work” and “it was all going so well,” and “…but I know this is possible! How’d they do it??” The refrains of the beginning student. And all good signs of a proper initiation..

In the land of demons the world is topsy-turvy—updownleftright are twisted inverted inconsistent. Rushing towards any clear direction may be a trap—yet a momentary opportune opening amidst the sifting sliding nebulae must be taken—not seized nearly as much as stepped into.

In my case, I have idealized (IDOLized) the specific way one membrane tensegrity was demonstrated by a Japanese architecture school in 2011. Called MOOM, the tent is light, airy, spacious, and patterned in a way that recalls pupae, alligator backs, origami, and it is a sanctuary. I want to make that. The fact that no one else seems to make this specific object—its size, shape, and style—makes me want to make it more. That the designer and vision holder (Professor Kazuhiro Kojima) died young a decade ago makes me want it even more. Right now all I know is how the final version is made; 30 meters long with 70 volunteers holding the membrane in tension as a few walk under and fit the aluminum pipes into pre-made pockets. In the one minute of footage available online I see how these pockets are sewn into the membrane itself. Scaling this whole contraption down so I can make a table-top version completely changes the design-for-manufacture and process of assembly—and now I have no precise example to follow. I wish I had a step-by-step instruction of how to make small-scale model of the MOOM example—and I am simultaneously glad no one had made one because it means I have found another reason to keep exploring. E.O. Wilson, the biologist and lover of ants, explained his philosophy of finding scientific directions thus: in the army you are taught to run towards the loudest noise; in science you run in the opposite direction.  That is precisely the philosophy of the adventure sabbatical: when you get lost—no one left around you—then you are beginning your initiation.

That is where I find myself today and all this writing as throat clearing gets me to see… there is really nothing left to do. But my god is it hard to tear myself out the comfortable, familiar, annoyance of busy work.