City of Discovery

By Dennis Kilper

A story about life, Art, Philosophy, and a little of Architecture, set upon the structure of a young boys adventures as he explored his city, St. Louis, in the mid-1950s, mostly on bike; and, the dreams they affected in him, in his later life, revealing of alternative, structured ways of seeing, interpreting, and working with the world. In it, the city--its streets, people and places--provides the setting for learning. It is all true, true of memory.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514458686

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by Dennis Kilper.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is not a work of fiction. It is a true account of a series of the authors useful adventures exploring his city on bike. There are however several stories of fiction he conjured to present and explore philosophical lessons. They are presented as life effecting greens.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 03/02/2016

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Contents

Overture

Preface

* The Setting *

1.1: THE GLADE

1.2: DREAMTIME

** Moving On **

2.1: THE MACHINE

2.2: TIME PASSING

*** Around Town ***

3.1: THE CAVE

3.2: DEEP TIME

** Heading West **

4.1: THE BOOK

4.2: TIME THE NARRATIVE

* The Cemetery *

Epilogue

References

A story about life, Art, Philosophy, and a little of Architecture, set upon the structure of a young boy’s adventures as he explored his city, St. Louis, in the mid-1950’s, mostly on bike; and, the dreams they affected in him, in his later life, revealing of alternative, structured ways of seeing, interpreting, and working with the world. In it, the city—its streets, people and places—provides the setting for learning. It is all true, true of memory.

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The Gallery, acrylic on canvas, 44x 44        Dennis J. Kilper

This is The Gallery. It is the abode of the past, the good from the past as we remember, and that part to remembrance we cherish. The past is for us greater than we remember, or even wish to remember. That is why the reflection never conforms to what was, then, there. What follows are stories of a young boy’s adventures exploring his city, and four his dreams of memory, with lessons he learned in and of them.

OVERTURE

L ong before man came to indulge in Romanticism, Classicism, or revivalism in any kind, there was human dreamtime. First, it was the beginning, which was lived in the glade—the clearing at the edge of the forest—the Eden where man claimed his identity in relation to other living things. Then, it was the time of his retreat into the cave where he sought warmth and kinship, and where he survived the long cold world. He carried with him, through the millennia, the memory of these times and places. He did so, that he might return, unafraid and refreshed, again to the beginning.

Today, he lives in a world largely of his own making, filled with his machines of production, transport and destruction, and with his temples and cities amidst the rotting residue accumulated of his existence. Motoring away from his past and uncertain of his present, his time is now time-passing. So, he made for himself a clock, an exquisite mechanism, to meter the flow of his new time passing, and he lives by the rhythm of the clock’s mechanical timpani. He imagines that his clock regulates time’s passage, that through it he might save and savor a longer moment. But, the clock only reminds him of what he has lost.

Anxious to cling to what he holds in the present, and to regain something of what he lost, he writes the text of his story. He returns to his text again and again, in the hope to remember what he lost, his time past—that he might return again, refreshed and unafraid, from the beginning.

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PREFACE

T en days after he was born, his parents took him back to the Doctor had delivered him, to ask why their baby’s hands shook so much when he reached for things. But the doctor had no explanation. He suggested that the child’s evident tremors might abate as he would grow up. It didn’t. But, the kid overcompensated by teaching himself to draw, when he was only four. You know, there was a war going on, and he only heard about it from the radio. There was no TV, then, so his first drawings were of airplanes in dogfights over France—as he imagined them. Then, in 6 th grade at St. Boniface School, the nun teaching his class, one day, asked him to take the day off, just to sit and make drawings of her, and of the class, at work, which I/no—the boy, did. At some point, one his classmates came to look over my—no, the boy’s—shoulder. He exclaimed: How can you draw like that when your hand shakes so much?!!!

I… . . I’m sorry,—he, the boy, thought for a moment, and replied: "It’s already moving. All I have to do is guide it."

Well, of course, it’s not that simple, or easy, but my—I mean… oh, never mind, for that boy is me—my reply resounded in a way that it soon became my philosophy of life, even before I could spell the word. That affliction possibly messed me up a little more than the doctor may have imagined—at least, just enough for me to write this book. I tell you this because each rare time I happen to meet someone else with the essential tremor (I have no idea why they called it essential, for I could sure do without it.) it provides me a warm feeling of belonging—belonging to, and with, all humanity. I am neither different, nor alone, and the more I understand others, the more I know myself.

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So, here it is, a set of stories from the life of one boy, one human being—mostly discoveries he made on his bike, wandering the city in which he was born. They are his memories, and dreams, by which he discovered some the ways of thought, and meaningful mysteries of humanness, engendered by the Modern era, in a man-made world. Even this World needs magic, myths, mysteries and expectation of discovery. Architecture and Art—mostly painting—eventually became his way of life, learning, adapting, and his way of seeing and teaching—for the past to speak to the present. Cities, like great buildings, are eventually lost, but they don’t go lightly. They have a toughness that comes from human transcendence—the mystery of a man making things of wonder, sometimes even he never dreamed the power to do it.

It is written as the story of this lad’s wanderings, and focuses on four key findings. Ancient architects like the Roman, Vitruvius, the Florentine Alberti, and Serlio, Palladio, and others, wrote their findings as books—ten books, four books…. I first wrote of these findings as parts to a book, my book, Four Books on Modern Architecture. Then I discovered the reality that a life of an architect gives lessons even to all people, shareable findings. So I decided to write just these stories for that all the people—you—not just architects, might find in them, themselves.

The thread of the story is formed on a succession of recollections from this boy’s wanderings about the city of St. Louis, over the few summers between his 6th grade and high-school—adventures of which provoke lessons seemingly pertinent to many, if not to all people. Though couched, somewhat, in the language of my emerging awareness of Architecture, these lessons apply also, I think, to Science, Literature, Philosophy, Art, Economics, and Government; indeed, to all areas of human endeavor, maybe even Religion. Architecture merely provides the setting—which is its due service in the World. It is true, however, that architects often think of what they do as an act of worship, but not all they do constitutes worthy offering. Yet, one strives always that his/her next work should be a fit gift to his/her client, or friend, to mankind, and yes, to God.

Although the City is the story, there are four key stories that evoked for him lifelong affects. They are: The Glade, The Machine, The Cave, and The Book. The Cemetery just gives the narrative a place to end (‘figures, huh?) Each these adventures opened chains of recollection through which critical findings in the boy’s later life might not have been possible without these early experiences.

These four stories come, chronologically, in the course of the bicycle narrative. They are each punctuated with a kind of summary reflection—a fantasy revealing philosophical lessons of the boy’s experience, as interpreted later in his life—for, as you know, he is no longer a boy. Hold in mind, too, as you read it, this tale and its descriptions of places, people and events, is accounted here only through memory. It is intended as if a painting of a distant place and people rendered merely from the artist’s memory. I did not go back to revisit the places and events of boyhood memory seeking to correct or update my recollections. (You might note some pictures, likely more recently shot. They are provided by my little brother, David Kilper—well, he’s not so little any more—long the staff photographer with Washington University, St. Louis.)

Rather, I hope by this story to present some how memories—sometimes unwittingly—become edited through subsequent, changing experience, in what I call the esthetic of memory. So, kindly forgive me, as you may find some my descriptions to be sometimes, perhaps, slightly mistaken. It’s just, those time-rendered mistakes matter in the making, and meaning, of a life. Non-fiction, even truthfully given, is not always the truth—nor should it be.

I had first titled this text Village of Discovery, for I realized the City is most often a place of alienation—where people retreat into houses, apartments, cells and neighborhoods, for both shelter and camaraderie. The village, though, is the historic place of meeting, where the people find and greet one another on the street, their true home. But, good cities have villages within them—villages called neighborhoods—where residents share common features and take a sense of belonging with one another.

It’s true, St. Louis, back then, had clearly distinct neighborhoods. And, sure, the Greek neighborhood felt and looked different from this boy’s Carondelet, or the Patch, and the Irish or Italian neighborhoods. But, for me… I mean, for this boy, he found himself at home in all the neighborhoods. His Broadway became like a North African succah—a busy street as if under a roof of clay, that covers a whole village, full with people enjoying the fruits and frustrations of a shared life,

Yes, his city was for him, a cluster of villages—true villages—hence it was/is the City of Discovery—a city of connected villages.

Bear in mind, this kid could have been injured, lost, even died, or been victimized in other ways, in some these adventures. I’d hate to think my grandkids were doing some the things this kid did. But, maybe we all have some story of unnecessary risks, childishly taken, but which we prize the rest of our lives and only disclose at the most rare of embarrassing times. Reading about them in a book is a lot safer, and no less informative, I think.

Yet, as we mature as a people, and begin to remake our cities in response to the Global challenges that face us, we will certainly seek to make them safer for our children to move about in their pursuits of all sorts of precious encounters. My hope is that we will not over-sanitize the city, destroying it’s potential to challenge young minds and enrich the sense of both wonder and belonging with it, in it.

So, let me begin, right here, right now.

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Let us hop on our bikes and I’ll take you to see the Glade.

Oh, wait! First, I need to show you where I lived—else, how would you find me?

* THE SETTING *

W e lived on South Broadway, across the street from a firehouse. Almost every night we were awakened at the sirens, and rumble of diesel engines, as another false alarm had to be pursued. But, my sleep was always temporal, shrill racket or quiet. Awake so often in the dark hours, I came to enjoy the solitude of the deep early morning. I would listen for the calls of the nighthawks, what some folks called ( I think ) whippoorwills, chasing highflying four-winged prey—well, you know, bugs. Their call gave comfort that the sun would soon rise and that life had not yet ended. To this day, for