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.