day 1

my dad ended up jumping on for the trip east. and coming from the man who originally told me to stay far north of any of the hurricane damage, i found it surprising that we took a two hour detour south into mississippi. along the way we met a man who swept sand from the driveway of his house that was no longer there. we met fema workers and national guardsmen. we met a woman who'd stayed for 4 days in new orleans to care for her nursing home patients. we met another who'd watched people die in the convention center. most of these photos are from waveland, mississippi where cars were on top of cars and entire houses were missing save for the foundation and front steps.

amidst all of that, it was nice to see the gulfport applebee's back open and serving hot plates of whatever it is they serve at an applebee's.

$2.89

with things how they are, this might be the last great american road trip. in the next few days i'll drive by the astrodome, up to conroe, head out early monday morning along I-10 as far as that will get me into louisiana, through the backroads of mississippi and alabama and everything else katrina, and into tallahassee simply to deliver a model without risk of destruction. after that, it's a whirlwind flight tuesday down to miami and back up to houston/conroe for the night only to make it back here to work around lunchtime wednesday.

i wasn't kidding in my last post about the delta being hit hard. it wasn't until today though that it made the news. click on the video there too, if you feel like you haven't seen enough footage for the past week and a half.

on a lighter note, while sorting to find some donations i discovered a shirt i haven't actually worn since high school. it's somehow been following me around through all my college closets until now. it might have even made it to italy. anyway, i hope there's some new orleanian going through a big fat plaid phase.

worry some

next week i'll be in new orleans. or i was supposed to be. the thing is me and my model still have to make our way to tallahassee before september 15th, but that now requires a detour and a new pitstop city. either way i'm crossing the path of katrina and taking my camera.

as scary as things are in new orleans right now, i know everything i saw along the mississippi delta back at the beginning of summer is destroyed. the town at the end, ironically named venice, was nothing but mobil homes, shanty baptist churches, and oil refineries butting up against levees. seems like none of that is left.

some of our structural consulatants are headed over there before long to...well consult structure and see if they can save any of the surviving buildings. in our office we're raising money for the new orleans AIA. as stupid as that sounds, architecture is a big part of what makes new orleans new orleans and not just a third world war zone.

oh, and the saints will be playing football here in the alamodome this season. bored spurs fan nonchalantly rejoice.

up the river

considering that one year ago today i stepped off a bus in tuscany, i'm just fine with south texas. this weekend at ted's land was good. good in the way you actually watch the sun rise and fall two days in a row. good in hearing roosters crow and rain falling on the metal roof where you sleep. good in really getting to know your coworkers, bosses, and friends.

out in the middle of nowhere it's very quiet and you can get a lot of thinking done. that's both good and bad. ultimately you reach a higher state of being and a good tan, and you can't trade that for the world.

best week ever?

lying in a hospital bed, covered in cardiogram electrodes, and being surrounded by comatose stroke victims wasn't in my plans for today. but beggers can't be choosers and life is just one bitch of a level scale.

for most of this week i was either moving on up to the third floor or schmoozing with the clients from florida. by schoozing i mean i stayed quiet and watched everyone who wasn't paid by the hour talk architecture. yesterday our team got back together to plan out the rest of this project. i now with my new found knowledge of bigwig talk, chimed in a couple times to earn that $9.50. in between there was plenty of company catered food, an hour long presentation on linoleum, and i got to meet the mayor of san antonio at a genuine ribbon cutting.

today i woke up and was immediately on the floor in back pain. i figured i just slept wrong so i stretched it out, headed to work, and chalked it up to being a man of my age. in fact at the office i was called out on walking like an old man a couple times. soon after i was struggling to breath and really hurting. soon after that there i was in the emergency room.

i was diagnosed with severely pulled parasternal intercostals (i slept severely wrong) so now i'm chalk full of high grade narcotics with a carton of epsom salts primed for a morning bath. sadly, a planned trip to austin tomorrow might be in jeopardy with my inability to operate heavy machinery.

my facester

somehow i broke down and signed back on to facebook right as the summer started. half as a way to pass the time on a quiet night and half to stalk people. well that quiet night has lasted all summer and i'm sure i have a few restraining orders by now. as much as i indulge, i'm still 100% against the likes of facebook, friendster, and my space (the only one i've managed to steer clear of) on the sole basis of acquaintanship. that's all we are nowadays it seems, casual friends who you can too easily read blogs and away messages of or see their naked pictures of (i'm not allowed to tell) from across the country without having to actually talk face to face. know the deepest darkest secrets of someone and then merely give a hello nod when passing on the street. though i'd shake zach braff's hand.

in following suit, i looked up everyone with my last name, and now they're my virtual friends. i'd always felt lonely in the world having never met another, but now i "have" and that makes me feel "good." i even furthered the non-necessity of future high school reunion small talk by linking to this blog and giving out my screenname on facebook. read away semistrangers, even you unknown person in san angelo. my favorite though is big "breasted italian women" searcher who found this thing by searching for big breasted italian women. if my knowledge of yahoo search engine code is right and this thing has been hit before, this blog should be the future search engine champion for big breasted italian women.

if any of y'all are ever actually in san antonio, let's grab a margarita on the riverwalk. i'll even shake your hand.

the most worthless blog entry ever

it's funny the things you occupy your time with when living alone. the things you do that for your own pure amusement, that have no effect on anyone else in the world but yourself. no one to impress, to entertain, compromise for. it makes you understand where your actual interests lie.

take for instance my pile of change. i first started using cash at the age of 7 or 8, but you know just a school lunch here or an arcade marathon there. it all added up to a lot in my mind, and in fact i added it all up every few months to determine my wealth. i actually stored five dollar birthday bills in my old half of an encyclopedia set, in the m-volume, under money. i was a veritable bruce wayne. as time went on, i had 3 or 4 jobs then which for the most part went into savings. any one dollar bills or pocket change i did have was funneled into my then 16 year old gasoline fund. remember back in 1998, gas was cheap and driving out to church seemed like a grand adventure.

since then, i've had 5 or 6 more jobs, all non-cash, yet i'm still carrying around that same pile of change in my little red train tin i got from some junior high band candy fundraiser. now the debit card is king and though my famous frank lloyd wright checks i got right before college are almost all gone, i'm sure i'll find something equally as dorky/pretentious to take me into the next 5 years. so i've made it my personal goal here in san antonio to use those nickels whenever possible (i love parking meters) and simplify my life enough to where i can count it all up, organized by demonination on my bedspread. long story short...er, yesterday when making an impromptu bread run at HEB, i grabbed what i'd stashed in the honda coinscoop and discovered a worn souvenir pressed penny that i'd gotten at fisherman's wharf in san francisco, a family trip back from when i was 10 or 11.

i was content to stand in the humbling nostalgia of the moment and just leave it at that, but no it was too precious so i decided to share it with you.

five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundredpieces of basswood

how do you measure, measure a month? in headaches? in bandades? in runs to hobby lobby?

it should have been about a month, but it kept going and now i'm afraid to figure out how long it took. let's just agree that for all of july 2005 my sole purpose was to create this model of a florida beach club. it was my existence.

outside of that, i'd have to say july 2005 was quite a good month in terms of living in san antonio and dealing with those responsibilities and feeling the passing of time a little bit more than i'm used to. august means it gets even hotter and i have to contend with back to school sales/tax free weekends at the mall, like i did yesterday. carry on children as i go tie shopping and get my car inspected.

and make my little doll houses. tomorrow i unveil this thing that i finished on this sunday night and hopefully start anew on a few drawings and definitely wear my new shirt.

you actually measure in 32nds of an inch and eyeball anything smaller. and on a similar note, this month i remembered to pay my RENT.

"have you met my ex-wife?"

that's the line my dad has used countless times in the past to make in-laws laugh and relative strangers feel uncomfortable. that's the line he used today when his nurse came in to check on him. that's the same nurse we would later learn is the mother of a girl i once dated which led to me making akward conversation and feeling relatively uncomfortable.

chalk it up to our famed y-chromosone and our unwillingness to treat serious stuff too seriously. for the first time today i heard the story about how my dad (and his friend john (who was my junior high principal)) arrived back from their long trip to india in the early seventies. keeping in mind that he hadn't seen his wife (my mother (not his nurse) in six weeks, and could have possibly gone through a beattles-esque rebirth during that time, donned the traditional indian robe and head piece he'd bought there, in the airport bathroom. my mom failed to recognize the skinnier, tanner indian man who looked like her husband. But of course her mother (my grandmother (his in-law)) picked him out of the crowd i'm sure with relative bewilderment.

another revelation by dad concerned the previously mentioned post-op yard trenching therapy session. why he didn't dislocate his new shoulder, he did cut up a few sprinkler system pipes which he had to fix and relocate. doing so required hours of crouching which led to his knee surgery a year later and made his legs constantly fall asleep. now he believes that that same poor circulation caused the current clots.

again, he is feeling fine but is still confined to his hospital room. furthermore, today he discovered room service and with it their nice selection of ice cream. i promise i'll tell his donkey delivery story soon.

m.a.t.

my dad went into the hospital late last night because of a blood clot in his leg. a CAT scan revealed that he had further clotting in his lungs. considering all this, he's not in pain and is more annoyed by the fact that he has to sleep on his back until it clears up. hell he can't be anywhere but his back for the next few days. at first i was quick to point out his poor diet of red meat and ice cream, but it's more likely hereditary or caused by cancer. the tests haven't come back yet.

because of this, he's having to back out saturday of his first wedding in thirty whatever years of photographing weddings. possibly the saturday after that too. he had asked me to shoot this weekend's, but he found a replacement. an old coworker of his back from when he first started off.

it's nice to see that he's confident enough in me to take over one wedding. however i definitely don't feel ready to take over the family part time business and hopefully he's not ready to give it up. after all, this is the same man who two days after having replacement shoulder surgery, rented a gasoline powered trencher and tore up the back yard.

turn and face the strain

once again, it all changes. my life got flip turned upsidedown. three times this week i step outside of casa myrtle and actually make friends here and now it's time for them to leave. it's in between sad and annoying. soon enough too, the fall semester starts up and i lose any of the few casual summer visits that i've had anyway. in adulthood there is no summer, just hotter workdays.

even if i don't see any human faces outside of the cast of everybody loves raymond, there's always my love for correspondence. within the last few days i've gotten letters/emails/postcards/phone calls from austin, malibu, boston, vancouver, san fransisco, tehran, london, barcelona, paris, and seabrook, texas of all places. actually i think it's easier to be friends if you never have to meet face to face, which is why the upcoming weeks scare the hell out of me.

christmas in july and the porkchop shaped stocking

a cool front came through and my family was in town bearing random gifts of cranberry juice, tortilla chips, and porkchops. honestly i love porkchops as much as anyone else who eats porkchops, but now i have enough to make anyone who eats porkchops very sick of eating porkchops very soon. and this is right as i'm starting to eat less meat anyway so i'll have to put that on hold for a while.

i introduced them to all things lf including my office and us "accidentally" coming across 5 or 6 buildings across downtown. it's great when we're just walking along and my mom points out jokingly "is that yours too?" and i say yes. oh and my dad elaborated on his donkey at the strip club story for the inlaws. one day i'll tell you.

if you'll excuse me it's a blistery 81 degrees outside and my mittens are primed for sledding and snowball skirmishes. ta ta.

the ice cream man cometh (steve, willy, and kevin too)

i had been hearing his rendition of the entertainer outside for a few weeks now, but it wasn't until i saw his tricked out special school bus painted blue that i understood. furthermore, i drove by what i guess was his house the other night cause i spotted the 300 pound hairy backed (how did i know he was hairy?) mexican man clearing out his ice cream inventory shirtless (that's how i knew) and maybe doing a little dance.

my next favorite character is fifty cent steve. i call him that cause he looks like a steve and keeps asking me in my front yard for change to make a phone call. he's a waifish hippy type, looking a month unwashed so i guess he's calling his stock broker.

i chose willy's barber shop from the yellowpages yet the description didn't tell me that i'd be the only white kid amongst three 60 year old men chatting in spanish over the piped in selena dance numbers. turns out willy himself is is an seventy year old, 8 times married, world war II dischargee, whose youngest son is 17. after showing me miguel's prom picture, willy proceeded to give advice to my generation including what to do with those wild girls who wear the short skirts and the thongs.

maybe not my favorite but definitely the most talkative is kiosk kevin. he called out to me from his european frangrance booth at the mall only to ask what i was shopping for. that led to discussing my office's dress code, to discussing architecture in general, to comparing the interior of nearby abercrombie and fitch to that of historic russian cathedrals. no kidding. in the end, i think i convinced him to be an architect. i like san antonio.

"you picked the wrong city"

the more i think about it the more i loved london. at any given second there's a million things going on and you can't possibly perceive everything all at once. in effect you find your little nitch somewhere in there and go about life knowing that nitch passionately well. it's hard to stop something so big and diverse and that quick on its feet.

i'm glad all my friends there are safe and well.

as for san antonio, it's been very hot. my attempt at eating lunch at alamo plaza was shortened by 102 degrees of pure fahrenheit. and it's been staying in the hundreds up until 8pm sometimes. i did spot a few strikes of lightning last night yet found even fewer drops of rain on my car this morning, so i think i'll basically be staying high and dry here until one of my neighbors leaves a sprinkler on and unattended.

le tour de tejas

i'll call it the great extended indepence weekend of reccuring themes 2005.

canada day friday started with me going to cycle world again to buy bike tubes and soon after figuring out that new tubes also refuse to fill up. after drowning my flat tire sorrows in a two-for-one pizza deal from pizza classics, i find myself with nick and others on our way to hang out with the real world austin cast at some san antonio bar that i forget the name of. for legal reasons, plans changed at the last second which was fine since i hadn't seen the show and could generally care less for the show. the plan change involved us and dissolved real world groupies hanging out in line for popular downtown gay dance club. me not being gay and nick not being gay and neither of us having homosexual worthy dance moves, back out at the last second and called it a canada day night soon after.

saturday morning i downed a few more pieces of my wonderful discount pizza, which was cold seeing as i still didn't have a microwave, and threw my discount bike tubes in my trunk. third trip in a week to cycle world discovered that my pump bought in trip one and not the tubes bought in trip two was the problem. also being in a bike shop that often makes you catch lance fever and almost makes you almost want to buy a yellow wrist band. from there i was out of town. i stopped in austin to pick up jennifer, picked up a bit more of the lance vibe with banners draped everywhere, and picked up some austin nostalgia seeing as i hadn't been back since i moved out. our ride to conroe involved jen warning me not to see war of the worlds, agreeing that the real world was the stupiest thing ever, and her repeatedly ejecting my ben folds cd i had just bought at cheapos. at home i soon discovered that my nephew's 6th birthday involved not surprisingly a pizza party. four more pieces of pizza accomplished my mom and i decided to check out the new conroe theater and see the only late showing which of course was war of the worlds. in an even later showing back at the house i was about asleep when an hour and a half showing of real world austin came on. i mean, come on, i was feeling all nostalgic for atx so how could i resist?

the late owlness and all day pizza diet apparently put me out until 12:30pm on sunday which may be the latest i've ever slept. a chat with dad over mom's pork roast lunch attempted to teach me that i should never go near another gay dance club. soon after my mom and i were off to watch fireworks at my aunt's lake house and my dad was off to photograph a wedding that i would later find out was done by a gay preacher who proceeded to take advantage of the first slow dance of the recpetion with his partner. my dad didn't tell me if he took a picture. oh, and at my aunt had luckliy just cooked a nice big pork roast for dinner.

america day monday was pretty unique seeing as it involved cliff diving with david and tacos and gretchen all back in austin - though jennifer is still a music nazi on the way back. oh yeah, i jammed my knee into some rock climbing out of the water and gretchen jammed her knee through a glass pane in her door and so we were both sitting there pretty gimp with various amounts of blood coming out of both of us. the late drive last night involved the windows rolled down, fireworks going off all the way down I-35, ben folds playing loudly on the speakers, and my parent's 30 year old wedding present microwave nesteled in the back seat alongside a new bike pump and a pair of inflated schwinn tires.

today i overslept and ate warm leftover pizza.

summer reading list

where the sidewalk ends is quite possibly the greatest combination of paper and ink ever created. that's why i'm giving it to nephew alex for his sixth birthday this weekend and that's why i'm reading his copy now. i'm reading these poems and looking at the illustrations and each one is taking me back fifteen years and conjuring up vivid memories of sitting in the b.b. rice elementary school library being read these poems and shown those illustrations in the typical 180-degree-make-sure-all-the-children-see-it fashion. good god it's like yesterday. damnit "iclke me, pickle me, tickle me too" is beautiful.

so you can see why i'm turning off the endless everybody loves raymond and friends blocks to actually read a bit more this summer. i've already run though the da vinci code (very interesting topic, very horrible writing) like the rest of america and spent a good couple hours at the laundromat last sunday starting a "brave new world." i raided my closet in conroe for all the old classics my dad had stolen from libraries of all the schools he's worked at since the late sixties and with that i rediscovered my love for that old book smell. after those i end my harry potter protest, and after those i should begin my correspondence course on creative writing which takes care of my elusive humanities credit, and after all that i write my own great american (or in most cases, britsh) novel and hopefully, just hopefully learn to communicate a complex thought without resorting to overly-hyphenated and drawn out run-on sentences.

i think i will name my son shel.

hallelujah

you could say i'm now situated and full on into the routine of work, eat, sleep like all the other little adults. granted i do love my job so the hours kinda fly by and friday afternoon i stayed there a bit longer before heading back into my one room isolation chamber.

small things work well to break up the normalcy like winning nba championships. immediately after the game thursday i witnessed what seemed to be a southern texas apocolypse complete with car horns, car crashes, fireworks shooting at me on the freeway, and a giant neon star of david which i think means the second coming of jesus christ.

this evening was the parade and enough player introductions to get me caught up with the san antonians. tomorrow i try again with the bike pump and see if i can explore beyond my front porch.

stir crazy in spanish america

i made a trip to HEB for the second night in a row to pick up a new box of floss and to simply see other living beings after the sun went down. box of floss? or is it floss container? am i having conversations with myself?

the nights only get longer from here...literally!

go spurs go?

i can't really hear the game from the computer too well cause the window unit is on full throttle and they're losing quite badly anyway. it was neat to see from the time i first interviewed in april to now that the ubiquitous "go spurs go" signs have become more ubiquitous and the entire city seems to be naming their children manu.

i gave the riverwalk a few attempts today in search of the perfect father's day gift but unless dad want's a don't mess with texas tshirt or a cd of peruvian flute music, i got nothin.

also today i finished the 3 day training of the CAD program that lf bought back in the reagan administration and i swear bears a striking resemblance to LOGO. if you don't know what i'm talking about then maybe you didn't take keyboarding with ms. parsley back in fifth grade and you don't know to not "copy that floppy." seriously i think that film introduced the idea that we were even capable of copying that floppy.

saint anthony and me

hola. i'm quickly learning what's it's like to live alone, work a full time job, and be a san antonian. basically it's really quiet and you get lost a lot.

but hell i like it here. i live in the historic tobin hill neighborhood just north of downtown. i say it has a lot of character, yet my parents say don't go outside at night. i've filled the hardwood floors to the brim with empty seats and now the fridge is full of HEB produce. THIS is the HEB mecca.

work is good even though i failed to learn many of the 50 new names. i can't even remember the company dog's name. i think when i get my own desk and do more than play with scotch tape all day, i might meet people. i foresee great things.

and then while walking through downtown a family asked me how to get to the alamo. tourists! but i guess that means that i'm a local now even though i'm pretty sure i pointed in a completely wrong direction. i want to keep on exploring and eat in every restaurant i come across but the first round of bills has left me bankrupt so i think i'll just stay in and keep eating soup left over from austin.

both the irish and the scots had magical powers. the irish made pots of gold and the scots made tape.

here i go

conroe. austin. castiglion fiorentino...san antonio.

985 miles from nowhere

cabin fervor

my dad and I are out to find the end of the mississippi. not the minnesota end of course but the vast delta, marshy, louisiana end. conquistador style. it's good cause i need an escape from all things cable tv and central air conditioning. i came down with some nauseous headache the other night i think cause i had been inside all day.

just for a dramaic touch, imagine this as huckleberry finn's escape from the tedium of st. petersburg only my dad isn't a large black man named jim and the river raft role will be played by a 1999 honda accord.

check the papers and the tv

the oasis is gone. that definitely is a sign it was time to leave austin, with all it's beauiful sunsets and huge burning decks and all. i know they'll rebuild it eventually but it's just sad to see. watch the video.

at the same time i saw that in my inbox, the AIM ad reminded me of a little show premiering tonight on WB called Beauty and the Geek. Read more here. Fans of this blog will remember Lauren B. and her rise to fame in the Lingerie Bowl 2005 but this one is big and she'll be mostly clothed this time. oh wait i was wrong, watch the video.

making conroe even prouder and again proving that CHS cheerleaders turned homecoming queen candidates turned underwear models can make a difference, '00 graduate Blair T. is apparently gracing the pages of playboy, earning co-ed of the week honors. i guess that means she actually followed through with college. i'd link to a picture but i try to keep this blog parental advisory free.

other than petty gossip and yellow journalism, i do use my time in conroe to catch up on the world. deep throat has revealed himself and my dad's long standing belief that it was Bush (41) is wrong. my parents we're in DC when it happened and remember reading the washington post in the morning and wondering why someone would want to steal campaign buttons. i don't know but apparently it changed america.

the hot hot humidity

i guess it's mother nature's not so gentle way of saying summer is here and it's time to move out. this house at the end of whitis avenue is nearly empty and though i'll be the last to close the door this weekend i take my first small load to san antonio tomorrow. between then and then i'll try to pack in plenty more hill country springs/west campus pool swimming. good lord it is hot.

dear grace,

there's not much to say other than life is fine here in conroe. i went to alex's last t-ball game ever as he matures into the world of coach's pitch. garrison proved he is very unlike alex in that he's not afraid of dogs, even flea covered cow dogs. and i went water skiing and realized i didn't want to answer another water-sports question again. that's not true. take care, marc.

revelations

i think i planned to write something that would tie together this past semester and would make sense of it all. about how i had learned a little more about the brutally banal real world of architecture in practice but had still managed to be that much more optimistic about what architecture could do. how my focus had switched from this little thing called college to thinking about my future outside of school. how i felt fundamentally different about the whole thing.

well apparently somethings never change. my grades are all back and i am an average student. i tried holding a job like thousands of other students and i get fired from that. girls come and go and really were never there in the first place. i sit on my little stool thinking somehow i'm slightly different and can see things slightly clearer but in reality i've got nothing to show. it's amazing how much someone can work the system by being in the top 10% of their high school to automatically get into a good university, be in a good university and automatically get into a good firm, and god knows what else one can work oneself into. simon told me repeatedly i'm a good talker but i figure talk IS cheap and ultimately gets you nowhere. and here's the point where i digress and note that it's not that bad and i tend to exaggerate.

so in this pitstop along the great roadtrip i will find myself now not going to new orleans in order to sit here in conroe and watch tball games and hear about how my dad and his friend sold a donkey to a strip club. it really is a funny story though the summary of "my dad and his friend sold a donkey to a strip club" pretty much says it all.

exodus

well that's it kids. finals all complete and the grades are rolling in. i've come to accept the fact that i'm a borderline student and all the great ideas are built on the borderlines. anyway, i've gotten so much more out of this semester that couldn't be transcribed into alpha-numeric-check-plus-minus code. it took reading back on a few of these past entries to realize that.

now as the air starts to smell like summer, i hit the road. austin. conroe. new orleans. austin. san antonio. austin. san antonio. conroe. galveston. conroe. and the back to san antonio to live the rest of my 7 month days. that's a lot of central southern soul searching and gas stops across this great land of america. i'll see you along the way.

pizza flavored friday

seeing as i've been going in and out of consciousness for the past 12 hours i'll write my little summary and call it a day. review happened this morning so i'm in that period where all your cares in the world seem gone and the future shines bright. on the other side of a review you see how much you can really accomplish when you dedicate yourself to something, espcially when it's something you care about. this thing coupled with the theory papers have really kept me going over the past month of unemployment. it's a natural high we're talking about kids. of course that's all grand and well until you realize you've fallen back into three months of horrible summer laziness.

hell, i've earned lazy for a few days before i take on any more worldly issues. my wittle brain is worn and my xacto induced wounds need a vacation.

p.s. i'm listening to the dj abortion and pretty show on wtul. it's been great listening to these girls late fridays over the past four years but sadly this is the last show. thanks nicole and kristen for the memories...of me sitting alone at my computer on a friday night.

tussin flavored monday

one week from now it really won't matter. with finals over, this project completed, and this hacking sickness but a memory, i'll be made in the metaphorical shade. until then, let's dock the sleeping hours and become that robotic marc we all know and love.

i'm tired.

GREAT MOMENTS IN ARCHITECTURE (a manifesto)

We’ve found ourselves now at a point of apathy. This is not to say the average person doesn’t tie themself into some sort of passion – be it religion, political cause, or pop star – but these are just manifestations of large scale ideas. They give significance to people by the millions. I mean to say we’ve lost care for the smaller, everyday events that truly dominate our lives without our much knowing it. What happened to the individual? I’ll stop myself before I get too general because the subject at hand is just architecture and I don’t believe it alone can amend the world. If you want to start a revolution you should try being a minister, politician, or pop star, but if you want to make the way a person goes about their everyday a bit more enjoyable then architecture is the appropriate scale. We’re constantly surrounded by the built world so why not allow an evocative emotion or two to be evoked by it.

The question now is if one can actively create the small scale moments that incrementally add to our experience and burn in our minds. Can you match that sensation of a lightening bug at dusk, unable to fly yet still pulsing a second at a time from the ground until it stops and the remaining blue sky fades to obscure the insect against the adjacent twig or leaf? If architecture can even touch on that sensation then something is right. What about the similar flashing of red lighted radio towers far in the distance that you catch at surprising moments from surprising angles and always seems to remind you of that time in your childhood riding across a freeway overpass that gave you the same such glimpse. Good architecture should read as a run on sentence.

Though architects around the world have successfully crafted the great pieces of architecture that catch our attention and cover our magazine pages, what happens when you turn the corner and run into the local office park? We have fallen too far into the “weekend mentality” of biting the bullet Monday through Friday only to enjoy Saturday and Sunday and in turn again dread the following Monday. The side streets, shopping centers, and storage sheds of the world have just as much to offer as our symphony halls. Good architecture has no beginning or end.

This is not to say that a master architect is needed to design the world. In fact it is when we try to see the world as a large canvas to be painted upon that we lose its multifaceted character. This was the failing of the International style and the shortcoming of most city planning endeavors. We are not all the same, as political correctness might imply. The world is full of inconsistencies and variables amongst its people and landscapes so let them exist and thrive in that character. Good architecture is erratic.

We must avoid, however, the manufactured character of Disney World sets that our neighborhoods and cities have become. It’s not simply architecture at issue here because most of the man made world has been filtered and focus group tested to death so that we arrive at highly polished and processed environments. Furthermore, though a building’s primary purpose is to protect us from the elements, we’ve now shielded ourselves to the point of no surprises. Hot and cold mean nothing other than that they frame 72˚ on each side of the dial. When problems do arise, we are left astonished and ill prepared. Good architecture is full of chance.

Interestingly enough though, these individual persons, buildings, and moments do not exist completely independent of each other. Everything is infinitely intertwined and the beauty is that we’re constantly ebbing and flowing alongside each other. This adds to the overall complexity. The key is to not get lost in the tide and to allow that one evocative flash of emotion to stick out in the blinking crowd every so often. With that, you revolutionize that one space on earth at that one place in time, and in that moment nothing else matters.

architecture or revolution?

maybe the reservations we have about manifesting our thoughts on architecture, life, and everything in between into a two page essay stems from our reluctance to take a stance on what we're not sure of. i came into college almost four years ago anxious to tackle intellectual subjects and wax philosophical in coffee shops (with me of course drinking hot chocolate) so as to come up with the grand answer to it all. needless to say, both me and the world have changed greatly in the past four years and the tiny little issue of all-the-world's-problems seems a bit more complex than it did to my eighteen year old eyes.

so i played devil's advocate and then played no one's advocate. this semester has finally forced me to advocate my own thoughts for a change. really you have to draw a line somewhere between the Sun-Ridge-Grove Mansions and the Bricklane slums. where do you stand? what is your manifesto destiny?

for now i'm still unsure but i'm definitely tackling the subjects with some sort of passion.

gregarious new york

i need to get to new york city. they're calling me. the people, the buildings, the idea. they're all calling.

thirty days has april

i got a step closer to a manifesto on architecture this evening as i watched a lightening bug unable to fly yet still pulsing a second at at time in the grass until it stopped and eventually became too dark to discern from the adjacent twig or leaf. good architecture can only be described as a run-on sentence.

adventures in america online instant messenger

as i close in on this scarpa paper, let's not forget the simple pleasures in life like screwing around on aim. i'll be playing the part of mr. diesel.

Nutball123: I need girl advice MR Diesel
VinDiesel is xXx: yo, just make hit movies like chronicles of riddick
Nutball123: thanks vin
Nutball123: errr
Nutball123: I mean, Mr Diesel
VinDiesel is xXx: yo, that's right. keep it respectable.
Nutball123: thanks again your advice is book worthy
VinDiesel is xXx: yo, you're right. i should write the chronicles of riddick:the book.
VinDiesel is xXx: get some intellectual ass
Nutball123: i meant about your life
Nutball123: but i bet that would work
VinDiesel is xXx: yo, the chronicles of riddick is a true story
VinDiesel is xXx: VinDiesel is Riddick
Nutball123: i guess your right mr monkey head

the following presentation has been edited for time and content...

Nutball123: ice cube i have a question about the ladies
Ice Cube is xXx: sup sup sup?
Nutball123: when you were in jail for being a mass murderer did you fantasize about ladies, or did you just screw men
Ice Cube is xXx: i don't know what you talkin bout fool. have you seen my new family friendly movie, are we there yet?
Nutball123: why do you keep mentioning that one?
Nutball123: what about XXX?
Nutball123: i thought that was your new one, i hate your old ones
Nutball123: all but saving private ryan when you dressed up as a little girl and got rescued by Vin Diesel
Ice Cube is xXx: yo, just showin the ladies how i can blow up stuff, make them laugh, AND take care of the kids
Ice Cube is xXx: yo, that matt damon is pimp
Ice Cube is xXx: i'd take him in jail or not
Ice Cube is xXx: err, i mean
Ice Cube is xXx: i'd bust that monkey faced diesel up in a second
Nutball123: i think your gay
Nutball123: except when you play straight like in Three Kings
Ice Cube is xXx: yo, let's just say that it was all real in boogie nights
Nutball123: you weren't in boogie nights
Nutball123: thats marky mark
Ice Cube is xXx: yeah, but i saw his little king
Nutball123: so you are gay
Ice Cube is xXx: yo, have you seen my new family friendly movie, are we there yet?
Nutball123: way to change the subject you master of distraction you

57˚

once again, we caught the rat. and by "we" and "caught" i mean joanna and hale repeatedly smashed and bludgeoned the thing to death with the big street trash can until it screamed its last little rat scream and lay still as a ball of hair and rat fluid, packed in the brown paper bag from whence it came. sadly i wasn't here at the time or else i would have chipped in while vomiting at the horror of it all.

meanwhile, the cool front from this past weekend has continued on and i wake up every morning with a good chill and the sound of birds chirping "my ass is freezing." maybe i should close the window.

a man named carlo and the london overground

it's a good old fashioned custody dispute as simon and speck fight for visitation rights. this is my life now, and will be for the next two weeks. it's actually nice to know that as soon as i leave the goodsyard i've got lots of books with pretty pictures waiting for me at home, yet a diversion or four is in order for this weekend before i smell grindstone.

i'm not sure why i have issues with design. architecture right now is one of the few pleasures in my world that gets me excited and doesn't have a guilty aftertaste. just pick up the pencil and draw to force the world to make a bit more sense.

maybe the new sauna feature in our house will encourage me to go get more work done. or maybe the fact that we have a new rat who is smarter, braver, smaller, and thus more maneuverable .

meet the parents

if you're just joining us it's 4:19 in the a.m. and i'm wide awake. chalk this one up to tomorrow being the least busy tuesday on record, consisting of my new found unemployment and only one hour long class. luckily i'll get my schooling through chinese history lessons seeing as mom and dad are in town.

in just their few hours in austin so far, i've further realized i am my father's son. which other gene pool of xy chromosones would find out their aunt/great aunt had died of alzheimer's that day and make forgetful memory jokes that night to play it off? i didn't actually know the woman well but i imagine how marshall/marc should be feeling.

now on the brink of 4:30 and the subsequent morning i think i'll try some reading which will hopefully turn into "reading" which for those of you outside of the whitis house means sleeping. today i'll tell mom and dad something new.

god doesn't open a window without closing a door

i lost my job. for those of you out in tv land who can't keep up, i got this job back in january with james larue and i got a new job on tuesday with lf that starts in june. i wasn't necessarily expecting this gap of unemployment but i can't say i'm surprised.

in between missing redlines and repeatedly messing up copying documents, i sucked. yes, i was wanting to leave the job since day one, and maybe that reflected in my work, but that doesn't keep me from feeling like a guy who just got fired. am i automatically going to stop sucking in san antonio?

good news is jim said i always showed up on time, dressed well, and had a nice haircut. maybe my good interview skills and friendly good mornings got me this far, but this far gets you fired. my supposed charm is mere eye candy where i need to be serving up the eye meat.

today ended up being the new beginning i needed after all.

double twosy

typing that title, in all its infinite wit, made me realize that tomorrow i will be old. halfway between teeball practice and social security checks. maybe not that old but enough to feel i belong to a new demographic group. goodbye mtv, hello biography channel.

furthermore tomorrow i get to play grown up and have a job interview in san antonio. it's not that i'm not capable of having a full time job and living alone (though i return to normalcy in january) but i just don't think i'm fully equipped enough to be a full time adult. i'm a few edge pieces short of puzzle. and they're all sky pieces which quite frankly are the hardest to figure out.

so in conclusion i'd be content with coke floats at the rainbow roller rink. come to my party or i'll cry.

i see london...

i'm currently pouring over the bus maps of london, trying to make sense of this city that i spent last week in. if ever there was a city to be deemed organic, this winding maze of tubes and double deckers seems to get it right. now begins the five week process of being the little architect in the big city, simultaneously detailing glass facades and fixing socioeconomic injustice. i hope i get a good grade!

it took a trip to midnight rodeo and a good dose of sleep last night to reamericanize and get my schedule back on. after the dead week before spring break, spring break, and globetrotting week, getting back on to just a normal school/work schedule seems hard enough. back to reading, cleaning, CADing, no napping, and emailing london and paris.

an american boy in london

it's been about a week though it's blended all together. hard to summarize it all so far but i wanted to make a short appearance before the last couple days.

i'm quite a fan of the undergound despite jessica's protests...i've spent a bit of money and will thus have to survive on pb&j for the rest of the semester...i've spent way too much time watching tv yet it's nice to just hang out in a flat...a girl named kate came from paris and i think i have a good new friend.

i'll see you in america.

sprung

spring break 2005 will go down as a mixed success. lists were checked off, video games vegging out happened, home towns were visited, and multiple lakes were ridden upon with various kinds of boats. now i'm getting ready for this thing called london.

i leave for london on tuesday so i'm getting a much underserved 2 and a half week break. maybe i should have gotten a head a bit more for my classes i'm missing but hey, i'm going to london.

hey, i'm going to london!

site plans, marathons, and that portico alongside the communications building

another weekend, another blur of cold morning rain and LIFE CHANGING decisions. despite my last second optimism and can do attitude I am not going to have the dream job in seattle this summerfall. anyway, who said it was a dream job and working in san fransisco would be a bad thing?

i went into yesterday knowing i had to just make it thorugh the next 24 hours and dj abortion and dj pretty's 24 hour marathon helped me along the way to the point where review went quite well and the weather became beautiful. spring is on the verge. yes i see the buds on trees right now and a blue bonnet was spotted the other day so let's enjoy this season and screw the next. afterall i get london and everything that goes with that in just sixteen days.

my phone beeps.

can i hear you say wayo?

i fell off my bike again. we have fifth room mate named benito IV. he is a rat. i've chosen seattle.

the day it rained all day

unknown phone numbers are great.

this is me at my most masochistic

the midlife crisis continues as i have taken in the idea that i might spend next june through december working in a firm far, far from austin. the application, portfolio, and possible firm/city decision are due monday so here goes, as we enter the weekend.

hey marc, what are you gonna do with your life?
whatever i feel like, gosh!

apparently others are going through the same such decisions.

she came from oklahoma

i'm at another one of those crossroads where the future of my life and possibly the world is at stake.

how very dramatic, eh? see the problem is, i went to a lecture today by local architect chris krager and seeing his work made me realize how much more i want from architecture than the traditional life story that could very easily become my life story. (that being design tuscan villas...graduate from college so i can design tuscan villas with a degree...become principle architect in america's leading tuscan villa firm). and not only is this guy chris progressing architecture in terms of materials and thought but he seems to be doing pretty well for himself. what seems to have set him apart and actually led to his success is that he takes chances.

i realize that i'm not doing residency and that doing so would have been a great experience and catalyst for everything but now i have to make the most of it. here's the plan. (design tuscan villas through the end of may...at that point i will have acquired a job in austin for the summer that actually excites me...graduate and will be that point have a acquired an even more exciting job in portland, oregon which requires weekly trips to vancouver...go to grad school in the most exciting city ever (wherever that might be) only to later get a job in a city that makes any thoughts of the previously stated exciting cities seem silly and mundane...become principle architect of the most exciting firm ever...in a city of my own creation.)

i think for most people at this point, they've come across a certain someone or something that will guide such decisions but i'm going on this one free of restrictions and am thus suffocated by the range of options.

who ever said i didn't have a life plan?

ev'ryone gather round

now three weeks into my job i can say i'm happy to have finally joined the ranks of the educated/employed. James La Rue and his architects are a strange group of people that create neighborhoodfuls of big houses, many of the big houses that i could care less for and on another level want to see an end to.

so why, marc, are you helping such creations come about through the art of detailing broom closets? well there's money. i'm tired of living off my parents and their endowing of a little trip to Italy was very generous so this is a way to say thanks. secondly, i'm actually getting experience that could help me get cooler jobs along the way that i feel passionate about.

then there are times when i wonder if maybe Jim and his houses aren't the end of our architectural world as we know it. i appreciate his layed back attitude, his care for details, and that he is obviously passionate about his work. so maybe i've got something to learn from him and all his arcaded porches, and maybe i'm just holding my breath until i get a raise.

did i ever mention i might want to move to oregon?

conroe, texas

seeing everyone from high school is quite surreal. makes you realize that you spent more years of your life with them than anyone from college and the fact that those years ranged from childhood to age 18 means a lot. the slide show before the wedding made me miss those days and wish i could go back and do it again. not so much to change my adolescence but to just experience it again and appreciate it that much more.

then again, maybe we have all gone on our seperate paths now and have little in common. do we just all say goodbye once and for all. personally i look forward to more of these weddings a another year down the road where we can retell the same stories just the like the day after the stories originally happened. are you following me?

it's late saturday night in the world of conroe so i think i'll head to my familiar old room and familiar old bed. goodnight.

why did robert stack wear a trench coat? (update)

so apparently people read this. i started this thing to keep track of italy but it seems austin, texas is just as exciting.

i've always been a pretty organized person but keeping a calendar never seemed that important. looking back that was because i didn't have that much to schedule. sure, studio has always kept me busy but a constant white bar of studio 1-6 MWF would look pretty lame in microsoft outlook. let's take a look at his week: dinner with katie, chinese new year night one, meet design group, SOM lecturer in town, chinese new year ngiht two, marketing research study, mr. belding in town, design review, faculty-student mixer, and christina murdock's wedding back in conroe. is it lame to brag about all the stuff you do? well half of the stuff may be lame but at least i'm not bored.

speaking of lame and boring, this entry is lame and boring. sending/receiving emails from paris and london on a daily basis is fun enough.

vrooom!

Feast your eyes on my shiny new blue schwinn. It's wicked awesome. After me and the guys go bike riding, we're gonna go play stick ball then head down to the shake n' fries.

girls

the shear volume of pretty girls here at the univerity of texas at austin is amazing. i kid you not. i've traveled the world and have seen exotic beauties but maybe just a good ol' texas girl is all you need. if that's the case, then why are they so elusive. there's always the chance that i've been too picky all my life.

let's run with this cause i do in fact have high standards for what i expect of people. is it too much to ask that people not base their life around alcohol or getting laid? to a certain extent i grew up with old fashioned idea that girls (i expect the same values for guys) weren't sluts. it's easy for me to judge from the outside looking in, but i personally know it makes more sense when you step away. so come on everyone, let's hold out for someone a little bit better than joe and suzy beerbong and until then keep it in your pants?

you'll respect yourself in the morning.

go bayside! beat valley!

so this should be arriving in the mail soon.
thank you baysideclothing.com.

settle down (part 2)

jessica frick has gone and left on her big half year trip to london. it sucks to say bye once again but email does wonders and did i mention i might be going to london for a week this semester anyway for studio. back to europe.

everybody knows it sucks to grow up.

settle down

i guess i have this thing about comfortableness. no not hugli, but just being well adjusted to my surroundings. like when you get your cat, put it in a box, and take it to your third grade show and tell. that happened to my cat and i kinda feel that way anytime i move somewhere new, undertake the unundertaken.

school has started and a job interview has taken place and the new house is becoming a home, but I guess I'm on the path to adulthood where home home is no longer my house and it's gonna be a grand few years before I find some semi-perminance. compound that with the comparison to everyone from conroe graduating and getting married and you've got marc- wa/ondering college kid.

so wa/onderwith me. we'll see what this sping 2005 semester gives me and more importantly what i take.

here and there

as soon as i've gotten home, it's time to head to a new home in austin. and of course, i've overwhelmed myself with stuff to do before i leave so the last days here will be a bit stressed and without parental contact. to sum it up, i kinda built this computer thing that's been giving me troubles, i'm organizing this gallery thing, i applied for this job thing which requires a new resume and portfolio thing and as lou kahn would say, thinging the thing thing.

until then, i should pack my life up and move up to school and learn some things. then again who needs higher eduacation when i can fall back on athletics.

1 am, six days after christmas

so basically you can't say much about anything in life sucking when over 80,000 people from your own country and 117,000 total people have been killed all in one day. whoever actually reads this and would like to help out, donate something to red cross/red crescent.

as for my own year of end news...i'm working. yeah, if you have a hot new years date AND want to take her out to eat speckled trout and hush puppies, stop by hydens conroe to see me. i'm sure while working i'll be reflecting on this whole 2004 thing. it has been quite a year, despite my anti-climactic plans. wow, what a year. wow.

well goodnight.

thank you baby jesus

so my apartment might work out after all. i got to go to zoe's birthday at the last second AND watch napoleon dynamite. i got a $60 tip yesterday and even though i have to work tonight, on christmas eve, i'm sure i'll get plenty more nice tips.

christmas miracles DO happen. i should go wrap gifts.

(clears throat)

did i ever tell you i wanted to move the world? i think you saw that before i even knew it, but i want to remind you i've still got traces of that passion and seeing you reminds me to be that passionate. i think i'll move the world.

care to join me?

there's no place like home for the holidays

by now the words ciao and si have completely left my vocabulary and i found myself yesterday dropping a mornin' to an old guy walking down the steet. i'm sure if i replaced it with buon giorno, i'd get a perplexed smile back and he'd walk a little faster.

driving back into austin made me realize how much i do enjoy being from texas, with the fields and cows and other classic symbols of americana. seeing friends though, made me realize that whole thing about home = friends and family to be quite true. but now i'm at my conroe family home and i have to say it's nice to come back during christmas. even returning to hyden's isn't so bad seeing as they're piping in sleigh ride over the speakers 24/7. actually i am tired of that already, but at least the food is even better than i remember.

ps. i had no hand in the christmas lights this year so please forgive the animatronic flying reindeer.

eternal sunset and marc the american

and here i am in conroe, texas. home of kuntry katfish, the fighting conroe tigers, and me marc.

in a way, it seems like i never left. yes the nephews are definitely bigger and a few more forests are cleared, but it still seems as if this grand european trip was all an illusion and that for the past three and a half months i've still been living at home watching bad vh1 programming. i'm sure once i see all the santa chiara kids back in austin it'll all make sense to me but for now i'm running errands at kroger and eating leftovers from last night. though every once in a while i'm caught off guard and a flashback rushes in and leaves me in a dead stare. did i pass time in rome by sitting in front of the pantheon? did i swim naked in the mediterranean? did i ride bikes across austria, hike up the swiss alps, AND go ice skating in denmark? was i not just living in a medieval tuscan town?

so hear's the deal. i'm sure all of this changed me in some way but i'm not sure how yet. it's good to be home, for christmas time is upon us and i aim to have the best dang christmas lights in town. buongiorno america.

letter from europe

well this is it. i won't be back at 10 baron's place until late tomorrow night central standard time but a few hours from now i'll have started that long trek back home.

it's really hard to sum up everything i should say so i'll just say very little. um, thank you england, italy, austria, switzerland, and denmark (and a little bit of sweden this evening) for keeping me. cheers. gratzie. danke. tak. thanks, it's been great.

bye.

hugli

i think it's spelled wrong and that's actually the adjective form of the word but in general hugli is danish for a sense of comfortableness. according to nicole, there's really no exact translation into english but i think i get that sense.

it's been wonderful. less than 24 hours after lounging outside the coloseum on Saturday night, i was riding rollercoasters and hans-christian-anderson-meets-it's-a small-world through a 19th century amusement park decked out for christmas. since then, we've toured the canals, visited hippy villages, had our fair share of varme cocoa, introduced me to ice skating, and dined on tuscan wine and danish goat cheese while watching eternal sunshine. i could talk in depth forever about all that but that'd take forever.

more than anything, it's just nice to hang out with a friend from a back home and meet new ones from around the world all at the same time. this was the perfect way to wrap up my european vacation. i love københavn.

ciao also means goodbye.

i'm not sure when's the last time i've cried but i don't think it's every been from happiness.

today was so beautiful seeing how the fog has finally lifted from castiglion fiorentino and all the trees along the hills had turned orange and yellow and all colors autumn. glad to see we got to see that right before leaving. as usual these days though, i spent the entire day indoors running between art history papers and room check outs.

after dinner though it hit me that i'm not gonna see these people in Italy again. sure, we'll all be back in austin but it'll be different. we can hang out and see each other but it could never be the same. our last hours hanging out in the hallway were the perfect way to go out. seeing the group board the bus, i actually cried and damnit that feels good.

a few of us are left here now but we'll slowly be parting ways tomorrow and i'll be in rome by myself 24 hours from now. i guess i figured my last writing from Italy would involve more talking about the italian food and beautiful landscape and the unique experience but that all would have been nothing without those kids from santa chiara.

portrait of an architect as a young man

this has been quite a week. honestly, i don't think i've ever been this productive back in the states. i guess it's sad that we've had too spend the majority of our last days in Italy writing papers and doing drawings late into the night, but tomorrow is basically free.

summarizing, the review went well. maybe the reveiws weren't as helpful as they could have but we ended up having some good ol fashioned architecture discussions as a class. looking back on this studio, i think i've learned a lot so hopefully that transfers over. even greater, out exhibit was a success. architecture and photography and wine and cheese!

okay, why am i writing this? i'll go spend our last real night here with a bunch of people whom i've grown to love.

The Great Italian Adventure

Wow, how can i describe today.

I was awakened by the Tuscan sun coming in across the valley. I ran down to the train station for my day trip to Florence, but on the way I stopped at a bar for cappuccino and met Olivia, a beautiful Italian girl working there who happened to be studying english at the time. Needless to say we tried as we could, me in broken Italian and her in better English, to exchange stories of our families, and school, and traveling and ended up talking for about three hours. Realizing that I hadn't yet been to a vineyard, she actually asked me to visit her aunt and uncle outside of town for lunch and grape picking.

So we hopped on her Vespa and drove down the hill and through the valley past little farms, her hair and light blue scarf blowing in the wind across my face. Her uncle Giotto questioned me at first but eventually we talked politics over a glass of wine and her aunt Mariana served up a pesto pasta and thick garlic bread. By the end of the meal, Olivia and I slightly tipsy on the Chianti picked grapes, tossing more at each other than actually putting in the baskets.

After falling asleep underneath the vines, we awoke to a slight chill and a dimming sky. She tried to explain that she had to get back to work but i convinced her to take the last train to Florence with me. Again on the train, we talked about music and art and life and love and before we knew it we were in Florence amidst the city lights and roving street musicians. Strolling across town, we came across the Ponteveccio just as all the gold shops were closing down. She told how her her uncle had proposed to her aunt on the bridge almost 50 years ago and that she'd always made a wish when visiting it, hoping to be so fortunate. Right then, I left her there, found a simple gold ring for all the euro I had in my pocket and returned to her on my knee asking for marriage before she could say anything. She said si and so here I am, in love and making plans to spend the rest of my life here in Tuscany picking grapes and selling artwork out of Olivia's bar.

And actually, none of this happened seeing as I don't even drink coffee and my Italian is molto piccolo. I did however spend most of the day at studio working inside, while the fog outside never actually lifted from this morning. This is my last Sunday in Italy. Alora.

raise your hand if you're gonna sleep in the london airport!

after chatting with smilja milovanovic-bertram, i've come to the conclusion that my project sucks. not completely but enough to make me a frustrated little architecture student, especially with only a few days left to work. i just wish there was more time.

on a lighter note, i'm going to copenhagen for a week of fun in the sun. well it will be cold, but nicole and i can hang out and do weird danish stuff. like eat danishes? after that, it's gonna be a mad rush back to london so i can get out of this crazy continent.

i'm thoroughly entertained in the meanwhile.

(insert thought here)

all my energy is pretty much devoted to studio now and making a huge housing complex work with the above market. seeing as our final review is just a week and a half away, i'm gonna be turning out models and drawings like a mad man. no time for traveling. no time for partying. no time for wondering.

man, i love water colors. who would have known that my fourth grade landscape painting entitled "Indian Village" was just the beginning?

maybe there is time.

and one more thing

"if you're ever in paris give me a call." what the hell is that supposed to mean?

have you got nothing to say?

how wonderful is it when certain people come along and remind you of how stupid you have been?

maybe if i was a different person things would happen slightly differently and i'd be writing something completely different but things are what they are and i'll take all i can from that. and of course, maybe this just goes to show again how stupid i can be. but in this case being stupid doesn't seem so bad.

so here we are. sunday morning in a small tuscan town, full of saltless bread, working on studio projects. i should write my project proposal for art history. maybe get some laundry done. i'll see you around.

well fine

we made a little day trip to rome yesterday that really isn't that blog worthy. saw old stuff, got lost on the outer edges of the city, hung out at the train station. no i haven't become jaded with seeing all of this. i can just honestly say it isn't blog worthy.

oh and we went up to volterra wednesday which as far as i remember had fog and rain and a museum. i really believe that the rain was coming straight out of the fog at some points and 10 feet above me and there were beautiful blue skies.

we went out to regiro's, the local pub, again last night. have you ever noticed that whenever i do go out people try and get me to do things and then other people get disappointed in me for even thinking of doing such things. i didn't realize i had such rag doll qualities.

and by the way, i ran in right at the last second for christine's birthday, served the cake, which ended up containing alcohol, which is great to serve to a mormon. we managed to get her to eat some anyway and in the end i think it made everybody sick.

well damn

well damn, you show up one minute late for dinner and somehow every seat is taken. especially the one right next to your friend who's birthday you're celebrating and who you got a cake for which you plan on surprising her with at the end of dinner. so here i am, back down in the basement as i hear everyone having dinner fun. i think there was some seat open in the back but i'm not up for forcing conversation with people from calpoly that i don't know. it's like the peet junior high lunch tables all over again.

so here i am back down in the basement where i spend a lot of my time lately. i don't actually get that much work done and when i do spend 3 days writing a renaissance art paper i get a C on it. on the other hand, i feel i'm doing great in studio and photography. i may need to pick up the pace this week so as to not get swamped later on, but still i'm doing fine.

the so many little things i want to do hear before i leave and regret not doing them. go to a soccer game, make an italian friend, buy something that'll always remind me of italy, find love, blah, blah.

i hear more noise coming out of the dining hall so maybe food's over and i can run in for dessert.

Southern Italy

well it rained. especially on our day off which could have included hiking, sailing, swimming, and other sun related sicilian activities. but who can complain when that same storm brings on the most beautiful thunder clouds ever to cross the mediterranean and the resulting crashing waves against the coast that spray salt water at you up at street level? in the end the tip of the italian boot showed through the clouds and i found myself in a tropical paradise.

between the sun and rain there were plenty of greek temples, amphitheatres, various relics, and of course tense politcal debate. hell i didn't vote for either one so i see what everybody is feeling from both sides. a lot of america is quite upset but that's democracy folks. there was no scandal and everybody was represented so america chose who america wanted. democrats should just try finding a better candidate and quit contradicting themselves and republicans should keep in mind that even though they control pretty much the entire federal government, nearly half of the people didn't vote for them. and for one more revelation, we all have lives outside of our politics so put on your poncho and go play in the rain.

by the way, watching the election unfurl on italian television complete with 20 commentators and bush and kerry punching bags all on one stage beats dan rather any day.

we's a cookin up a party fa you

i'm busy with work that i care little about. manifestos and midterms. i'm ready for this final project but i'm worried we won't have enough time to create the next great building in our lives as architecture students. imagine the next great housing complex/market place for castiglion fiorentino, toscana and send your entries to me at room 33. many will play, one will win.

so tomorrow is halloween and i'm dressing as my photography professor but i lack glasses, white hair, a black vest, and a brightly colored ralph lauren tshirt. but good lord i have the beard. this thing is creepy long and coffee house approved.

and monday morning we leave for sicilia on the last great italian vacation. has anybody heard of this election coming up? tensions have been relatively tame here at campus but i imagine the results will show everybody's true colors. what's my true colors you ask? did you even ask? i feel pretty passionately about stuff but i try not make a big deal about it around others for some reason. let's just settle on the fact that i probably disagree with you either way.

that's all you get.

Deep into Fall

Today felt like autumn. More importantly it felt like autumn in the states and everybody seemed a little homesick because of it. It was cool though how the field trips kinda sucked (considering that we just went to see more churches and museums) but we spent most of the time just chatting and taking pictures of each other in the leaves.

On a related note, they all seem to long for someone back at home. That or they've all had someone visit them recently here or will have someone visit. I'm feeling kinda solo on this whole life thing right now and I'm strangely ok with it. Being content with yourself could be the greatest thing in the world. Be content along with someone else might be nice too. How melancholy.

Oh boy, I registered and got all the classes I needed plus I added tennis right at the last second. The past few days have included a bit of long term school planning which I've never been a fan of cause it makes me have to think of the future.Throw in the fact that many friends are already graduating/getting married/doing grad school and here I am content with whatever it is I'm doing right now. How pensive.

Gretchen is a smart girl.

swiss yearbook

What more can I say about the frustrations and resulting fun of traveling? Basically it gives you headaches and takes all your money, but when else do you get to bike across Salzburg at night to buy train tickets? When else does going to the grocery store involve trekking through tiny Swiss farming villages? You can only plan so much until the unplanned events become more memorable.

I want to tell the whole story but instead I’ll just give words and phrases that make sense to only Gretchen and me. It’s like when groups of friends buy ads in the back of the yearbook for all their inside jokes!

leaving on a jet plane…gimmewald or grindelwald?…ugly swiss money…smoking baby trains…friendly swiss transportation workers…the bus to stechelberg that we never took…japanese luggage…“10” minutes through murren….gimmewald or grindelwald part 2…waking up in the mountains…goats, chickens, cows, and tiny horses…bunless burgers…SCHILTHORN…gretchen’s fist snowball fight being at 3000 meters…mountain beard...let’s stop for pictures…fondue and lager bier hell…watching the cheaper, earlier train leave from your later, more expensive train window…running through the Milan train station…running through the Florence train station…creepy eurostar man!

Stay sweet. Never change. Have a great summer!
Marc
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Gutenblog

Well I´ve made it through Venice with som sort of (deadly) headcold. Being well would have helped the experience but I got enough architectural inspiration to make me want to get back to work soon.

No time for that though seeing as I´m in Austria. Yeah, after hoppinng a overnight train wth Gretchen and a few drunk kids from St. Louis, we´re now surrounded by Germans. Or at least they all speak German. It´s fun to slip into Italian though and get strange stares.

We watched the sound of music last night with everybody at the hostel. They´re watching pimp my ride now. Today we rode bikes to the outskirts of the Salzburg, then rode bikes through the old inner city, and basically spent the whole day on bikes. How very grand.

Tomorrow we leave for Switzerland to go find some snow. Why am I headed to the Alps with a deadly cough? Ricola.

It's waterweek on the Discovery Channel.

Quiet days have come again to Santa Chiara. Or at least quiet day of no a&m or cal poly folk to cover up the sound of a beautiful rainstorm and an even more beautiful rainbow. Rainbows don't actually make sounds but good riddance anyway.

By the way, I leave for Venice tomorrow morning until Saturday. Then miss Gretchen and I head off to Austria and Switzerland for a couple days each of eating chocolates, and cheeses, and clocks. And this girl hasn't seen snow so this should be good. I guess I won't say too much about this grand trip now cause I'll have plenty to say l when I get back.

Bring on the precipitation!

life is life

I had to go to Florence this morning to pick up my camera. It's good to remember what you're actually doing everytime you get to run down that hill to that train station, but it's hard to forget that trek back up the hill at the end of the day. Plus it makes you realize why Italians think it's silly to go jogging.

So the camera repair was 120 euro. Damn. I don't want to ask for help on this one from dad cause for some reason mom just deposited a few hundred onto my account last week for no apparent reason. You can talk big of financial independence for only so long.

By the way, running through Florence back to the train station brought a fresh face to the city.







Oh and I finally got everything up on my photopage. Check out the link here. I think you just have to sign up with an email address, which is no problem. Come on. Or just look at the picture above if you have ADD and more than one picture is just too much.

entry 1

there was a full moon last night. not literally, but you could sense it, in the way you can sense it's a rainy day before you see a cloud in the sky. what does that mean?

i guess i should have expected santa chiara to be much like the school of architecture back at ut. a limited amount of people spending way too much time together, eventually giving rise to love, hate, and late night trouble making. but i'm enjoying the hell out of it. you have no other choice but to become good friends, fall in love, and then hate each other only to start the cycle again next week.

it's a cycle that's been going on for more than a month now and sadly won't go on for many more months. our little oasis of time will reach the half way point soon and then we're back to our normal lives. but who says you have to count the days and furthermore, why go back? again, i'm not talking literally. life is a metaphor for life.

Northern Italy

After hiking up every Tuscan hillside ever to star in a film, it was nice to see Italy has a 21st century prescence. On a related note, I see how money effects people's moral compass when faced between bangladese child labor and fun pin striped pants! It'd be easier to say Ihad no problem with it but I did, and that's the problem.

I guess people (and by people I mean me) can really repress how they feel when it just makes things easier. Apparently long downhill climbs* and sitting on the edge of hillside lakes help you express those feelings though, so spend a hundred euro then run to the mountain air and your karma is set. All observations aside, I love Milan and Lake Como.

*Is going downhill really climbing? And wasn't I just complaining about going up and down hills?

alcohol

i guess i understand the appeal of it now. drink the equivalent of a bucket of beer and magically all your spanish language skills come to the surface, which is surprisingly useful in pirate themed italian pubs. hey, want to hear my romantic history? buy me a shot before i can say no. want to see me repeatedly ask someone to marry me? keep filling my tumbler with wine.

despite all this, somehow the beer goggles make you see things more clearly. move on. let go. jump in. everyone discovers a little bit about themselves and each other at the bottom of a bottle. so maybe it's not all bad. cheers to good fortune, good friends, and all things bueno.

tuscan rain storm

Enter Arezzo, where I'm just one step closer to where I've been before and thousands of miles from where I usually am. Each train trip is alike save for the change in seasons, which always change back. Enter fall and homecoming games and everything you're used as they come storming back. Wait, you're in Italy. Enjoy the rain.

shiny side up

I'd like to begin by say my head is stuck at a 75 degree rightward angle right now. That's what Tuscan bus trips and sleeping on tiny Iranain girl's shoulder's will do to you.

Handwashing my clothes makes me realize that my underwear is the most colorful part of my wardrobe.

I've learned more about the female anatomy than necessary in Italy.

I still don't know what "getting ponied" entails but sign me up.

The end.

Tuesday.

It's pajama day. So do I play the game or hold out? For 21 years more years. I guess Italy just brings out the best in you, as if olive oil makes you confident and social. Maybe that's the wine. So here's to drinking more and to playing games and avoiding drinking games, for tomorrow is Wednesday.

all roads lead from rome.

Roma is quite a town. I could have just stood in the middle of that huge intersection and watched cars flying past me all day. Especially when you look all around and close to a thousand people you don´t know on their way to somewhere.

I didn´t know where i was going half the time and that´s when I understood this whole italy excursion. You can go on the planned field trips and listen to your art history professor talk forever but there´s no point to it all if you don´t run off on your own (or a least with leyla and andrew.) on that note, late night jazz music in front of the pantheon is a great new memory. dinner with smilja and her son milos right up there too.

pompeii was great. pompeii brothels are great. the other dead volcano place was even greater. rinsing oneself of basalt sand in a cutain less shower is difficult. and will hale ever figure out how to use a bidet?

We covered much ground on the way home. And despite what my Dave Mathews impression might say, I´m burned out on pizza.

lost in traduzione

what do you do when you're alone in the one of the biggest, most ancient cities on earth?

where were we?

as classes have now come into full swing you'd think all the crazy travel stories would be ending, but no. let's just summarize by saying the beach was beautiful, camping with russians is fun, and slightly tipsy mass skinning dipping in the mediterranian is unforgettable.

that's all you get there. the real story is getting home. formt he beach a few of us leave later to catch a bus into town to get in the main bus by 530. if someone reads the bus schedule wrong, you have to call a taxi. if a taxi doesn't get there til 515 and the trip from town before had taken 30 minutes, the taxi should drive fast. so there we are-sandy, sunburned and weaving between fiats through the countryside all the while trying to caluculate kilometers per hour to miles per hour to estimate it around 90 mph.

we pull up just in time to see the rest of our gang jumping on the bus. ticketless and tired we take an hour and a half ride through beautiful valleys with a bunch of people from massachussets.

enter sienna. we came in to sienna by bus so you'd think it´d work the other way too. we were wrong again. ticketless again we jump on the train station bus only to find none of the trains we need (imagine italian train station guy basically yelling "impossible" when we suggest how to get back home.) so begins the grand detour.

one tasty can of orange fanta and an hour long train to chiuze later, we are on a deserted platform waiting for the munich overnight train which happens to be on the way to arezzo which just happens to be somewhat close to home. did i mention the train was full of sleeping germans? so the 8 of us quietly sit in the hallway so as not to disturb the sleeping germans while trying not to fall asleep ourselves and wake up north of the alps.

ah arezzo. our provincial mother that sits only 16 kilometers from castiglion fiorentino. but no bus. no train. so as they search for taxis i calculate the walk home to 10 miles (i'm getting good at this). our only sign of hope was a sign that simply said taxi. standing nde it seemed our best chance until sirens started flashing, busses of screaming people zoomed by, and cops with walky talkies and riot gear surround us. "are you americans?" an offical man asked. "then i suggest you not stand here." this was our first encounter with italain soccer hooligans. long, long story made shorter, we walked up & down arezzo a few times, the hooligans disappeared, and we eventually found a taxi around 1 am that took us all the way to castiglion fiorentino, right up to the door.

i find it necessary to mention that i was the one guy amongst 7 girls. birth control, penis size, shaving, waxing, and the ever popular classic "circumsized or not" were all up for grabs along our trip. lucky me.

we all leave for rome for a week tomorrow. yeah, shouldn't run into any problems there, eh? just beware of fiats, hooligans, and foreskin.

cultural overload

no emails? i actually do get bored here after seeing medieval parades and beautiful italian women all day so drop me a line and let me know what happens is america nowadays. how's clinton's ticker?

honestly there's so much going on here that it's hard to remember it all. saw where they filmed "under the tuscan sun" thursday, measured ancient ruins near rome friday, saw a cello/piano concerto in a quaint old church here in town friday night, hiked up to an old castle saturday morning only to lounge out by local the pool that afternoon before it closes for the summer, and then saw medieval parades and beautiful italian women all today. there, i can sumarize. did i mention the italian women?

so about the italian women...no, but really everything seems to be generally beautiful here. all the people are dressed so well and every building actually has character. maybe it's just that i'm seeing what i'm not used to and that an italian going to america would be overloaded just as much. that's what i ould like to think that even my little home of conroe, texas is full of splendor and wonder and stuff...to the untrained eye. and seeing as i'm pulling from garden state themes and christine said i had a blog just so i could be like zach braff i will now digress.

i hope i'm not missing anything.

ciao!

It really is quite beautiful here. I could even say I prefer the day to day life in town more than escursions to Florence, which we did yesterday.

So how do you take classes, read books for those classes, take trips, take pictures with two cameras, paint, draw, write emails, journals, blogs, and postcards al at the same time? You don't so be patient as to when you get your postcards. I've got a lot of time left here and plenty of other places to get cards from.

And now our little campus is full of people surely don't know. I think for now I'll stick with all the new UT people cause they all seem "with it. " That's all I'll say about that.