Friday, March 31, 2006

everybody loves architecture

or at least i hope they do. and i hope they love me. twenty interviews down and i did my best to woo them all, but there comes a point where you try to be everything to everybody and you barely get anywhere in the first place. i was compromising before i even got a second interview.

sitting there learning about the wonders of health care design and trying to remember what a 401k actually is gave me a good bit of time to think. i was in a different world where i'm jet setting around, meeting interesting people, unveiling sky scraper renderings, wearing expensive blazers, and reordering business cards. then i was a master welder, sweating away in some rural enclave working to finish up enough before night fall and hoping my fellow craftsmen had caught enough salmon for the night's supper. in yet another world, i'm entrenched in the lamp lit hollows of a late night studio, mulling away at the world's greatest detail. i'd be at the forefront of architecture, i'd be changing the world. designer. builder. doer. jack.

what does it take to do in that which you're not sure in what you want. huh.

Sunday, March 26, 2006

the intersection of everything

it all comes together in a far reaching, deep, cavernous hell of a fortnight where we now find ourselves in the midst of. school. work. life. it's all happening kids, and it's now too late to jump off the bike. the pedals are spinning and all you've got are a pair of squeaky brakes and some sense of wits.

somehow i've managed to arrange upwards of twenty job interviews this week without any passionate interest in any. sure i'll fetch the suit out the closet and bring some semblance of shininess to my shoes, but i won't like it. it's not that i want to stay in school forever and have some detached logic that i'm too good for work, i just fear compromise. and i know lots of these people are selling compromise at an amazing low discount.

brace yourself or brace yourself against someone because adulthood is coming whether you're ready or not.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Big Bend

I think I can recount this past week seeing as I'm now well cleaned, well rested, and well adjusted. Life in the desert...is a good thing. Not that we can say much as a pack full of gringos decked out in our Whole Earth gear and a sack full of tuna, but we were rougher than most city girls and boys are during spring break. Unless you call passing out on the beach in South Padre roughing it.

Am I a city boy though? No, though the low clearance Japanese sports car may prove otherwise. My dad has done his best to instill small town/country upbringing into me and I have to say it’s a part of me. I can ride a horse and shoot a gun. I feel just as much at home in a dirty meat market as a glitzy restaurant. Growing up in the suburbs though tends to cancel out both sides. That’s the point, it’s a comfort from the extremes.



My point is that comfort is misleading. Get your diploma, find your job, and voila: the Friday special at Applebee’s. Just follow the pattern and everything will be ok. As much as my family has blessed me with traveling and higher education, they ultimately want me to move back home and share childcare responsibilities. Be careful, they say. And then there’s Terlingua.



Terlingua, TX is a little smudge of a town right outside of Big Bend that’s managed to stay a few light years behind. And probably on purpose too, seeing as the majority of its inhabitants and wait staff look worldly. They’ve just decided to take there knowledge and possessions to a smudge town and pass the time on a big porch, playing Freebird of course.

Maybe that’s all crap and the hunter gatherer wanderer movement died out for a reason. I got tired of eating tuna and I don’t think I’d like to eat tuna again for a while. But I would like to keep stepping back from it all.

The best thing about the trip was the silence and the complete unnecessity to fill it up with noise. Let the mind do the wandering and there’s no need to even leave the front door. Share the silence with someone and talking seems like busy work. Forget the past and worry about the future when it comes, because the present can be a gift. What a smart girl.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

it's friggin' spring

i will stop short of photographing the first buds, for it has been done. instead i shall write a haiku with the help of my magnetic poetry calendar i got for february christmas.

hot the blooming sky
season flower spring winter while
shiver beach always

but really, i think these new leaves are literally, literally pushing out the old ones so that we're getting this fallback/springforward brown/green pollack of a week that smells a little like compost. before we know it beaches will be made of snow and hats will wear people! or college students will get jobs. yes, the recruiters have come a courtin and i am constantly forced to question what i'm doing in the next year. and then i force the question on others and we then all grow another gray hair. not that i have a gray hair, but i might. i have a lot of hair and that's gonna go. can't have a proper spring break send off without cutting it all off. can't have a proper spring break if you don't actually do anything. so quit talking about it and just shove off into the grand sea of west texas. it'll be grand, she said, and i tend to like what she says.

the seven syllable second line has always been restructive.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

ash wednesday night

the mercat palace is as empty as it gets on a weekday night. my team mates are out on midweek dates, some normal, some with old french sugar mommas. usually by now we're cooking something with some kind of root based vegetable and dicussing dinner parties past and future. not that there's not a huge one coming up friday, but let's say it's the calm before. i am somewhat tired of running around, but that seems to be a condition of keeping busy. don't let yourself breath too much or else that resume will never finish. this is the difference between work and school, yet i know i'll miss it as soon as it's gone. so we should appreciate it now and not get caught up in the details. come on lent, let's rumble.