Summer

A month has passed since my last post, and a lot has happened, to be sure.  The most notable of which must be the fact that I am gainfully employed, full time, as a designer at an architecture firm in Eugene!!!

Yes, that gets three exclamation points.  It’s been keeping me busy, which has resulted in the radio silence on this blog, and complete lack of effort on the portfolio website, but I can’t say that I’m too sorry about that.  As you may know, finding another job in Eugene wasn’t my intention, but all of the pieces kind of fell into place.  The women’s utimate team that seemed just out of reach for the past four years is finally coalecsing, and I felt very sad at the prospect of leaving town without having a season with them.  We came in second at Solstice, the tournament here in town, and we absolutely had a blast.  I also got a great new housemate, and hey, well, I got this job, and I really like it.

I’m working at Nir Pearlson Architect, and in the short time I’ve been there, we’ve submitted two projects for permitting.  Next week I’ll turn in the third, and I’ll do it by myself because Nir, my boss, is in Israel for the next two and a half weeks.  I’ll be manning the office alone, working on a few other projects and trying to keep everything going while Nir’s gone.  I think I’ll take the opportunity of the slight lull to make sure that my IDP hours for this job get counted, and to actually work on that online portfolio.

Summer in Eugene is pretty nice – I’m eating cherries as I type, and heading to a barbeque in an hour.  I’m enjoying working with Nir, and I know he’d like me to stick around a while longer and work on a few more jobs.  But although this job, this frisbee team, this housemate, and these cherries are fortuitous and fantastic, I still wonder how long it can last.

Up at Potlatch last week, I was reminded again of life in the city, and the different opportunities to take advantage of there.  Yesterday I spent the afternoon and evening with friends and we talked about San Francisco and Portland, and about living in the city.  I’m trying my best to be here, but, if you’ve been reading this blog, you know I’ve been having a tough time with that for some time.  I just want to peek ahead, find out where the plot’s going, but unfortunately that’s not an option.  So, I guess I just keep doing what I’m doing until it stops working.  And, I guess that after a few more weeks of just enjoying employed life,  I’ll start thinking again about the long-term plan again.

In the mean time, Potlatch was tons of fun, seeing all the little babies together a few weeks ago was fantastic,  I’m looking forward to Seaside and some sore beach legs, I can’t believe I get to play in Labor Day with my ladies, and I’m still hoping to head to Colorado to visit the brother.  I’m also hoping to get a few more hours of sewing in in the next few weeks because I keep buying patterns and fabric, so I keep needing to make beautiful things.  I’m catching up on Mad Men and thoroughly enjoying Friday Night Lights, and I’m trying to catch up with people I haven’t seen in a while, too, whether it be through email, phone calls, or unexpected visits.  So, in sum, life is full, and I’m going to do my best to get the most out of it.  I hope you’re doing the same – summer is so short, so love every minute of it!

Who are these buildings, anyway?

I’ve been reading Sweet Juniper like it’s my job, and I just had a realization while looking at this, and also thinking about what my mom said the other day.  I’ve long thought about writing about buildings, and I know that I’ll do “real” writing about buildings like I did in my Architectural History classes.  I’ll write about the way that light enters a room, I’ll write about the juxtaposition of materials, I’ll write about the spaces they enclose and the spaces they occupy.  But I also want to write building fiction, and I think I know a little more about that now.

These days, we talk in our profession about how buildings should be built to last.  How they are investments, or ways of sharing our values across time.  We say, or the Europeans say to us, that in Europe, you don’t build with the idea something will come down, you build so that it can stay up, even if it needs patching and fixing.  Buildings are bigger than us, and I think that it makes sense that they would have a longer life span than us, the same way very large trees and whales and elephants do.  And, they’re even less able to care for themselves than plants, which are immobile but have some pretty kick-ass ways of feeding and repairing themselves.  So, as long as we’re in a symbiotic relationship with buildings, we keep them warm and weed-free, and they keep us safe and dry.  But, they also observe us in a way we sometimes notice, and they watch each other and the part of the world that they can perceive (I don’t really believe that real buildings do any of this, these are now my fictional buildings, and maybe, a little bit, what I’d like real buildings to do, too).  They are our memory keepers.  But, I think they’re memory keepers that keep the full experience within them.  A photo album is full of snapshots, a treasure box full of the little objects, but a house, it’s inhabited by ghosts, and those ghosts are both what is good in life and what we would normally like to forget about in life.

So, I think that’s what these buildings in my stories, whenever I may eventually write them, will be – the keepers of the ghosts, the large and sort of helpless, but intensely wise by the time that they’re abandoned, beings that see everything that we do, all the objects we cherish and the arguments that we have and the plants and animals that we don’t really understand, and the way that we’re mostly confused, and keep most of their opinions to themselves.  Maybe that’s a little why we get sad when we knock them down, even when we know they have to go – we know they’ve seen a lot and have stoically endured it.

What my mom said – “It seems as if for most people, like myself, buildings once created become things, possibly very lovely and appreciated things, but still things, whereas for you, buildings once created become creatures, beings, alive and organic and able to act upon other creatures, interact with them being to being.”  What do these ones think about us?  Do they miss their neighbors?

Mail Room

There’s a rumor going around that Eugene is going to lose a post office.  Not just any post office, but the one I go to, University Station.

No big deal, right?  There are other POs in town, even quite nearby.  In fact, I now live closer to the main station than to University Station.  No one is going to be prevented from sending and receiving their mail, in no small part because, as Obama recently reminded us, there are many private companies now willing to take part in that transaction who are “doing just fine.”  Yep, “it’s the post office that’s always having problems.”

Be that as it may, I would be greatly saddened if University Station is closed.  Fundamentally, I think that every university should have a mail room.  In fact, it surprised me to find that the University of Oregon had a post office, not a mail room, when I arrived, but I guess there’s a matter of scale that makes the mail room at Oberlin viable, and that at Oregon a post office (Though perhaps the problem lies somewhere in that inequality).

The mail room of a university or college serves its students tirelessly, providing a stable address for those orbiting campus.  It is a place for paying first bills.  It’s where really good things happen when you’ve been away from home for a while – a care package arrives, or just a postcard, when you thought you had been forgotten.  It’s a portal to a place far away.

Amongst the little cubbies or up at the window, you have the sense of really being in a physical place.  You see the postman heft a box of letters dropped into the slot for the 1:45 pick up.  You’ve written on paper with pen, folded that paper, tucked it into an envelope, and licked the envelope closed.  Now you lean against the counter with the envelope in hand and ask for stamps.  You look in the folder proffered – you select from the objects at hand.  You’ll drop your letter in the empty box, they’ll wheel it out with the 5:30 mail.

Perhaps it’s a relic of things past, but I think that’s why it’s so valuable.  There’s no scrolling through options, imagining the shapes and sizes and weights of things.  Here, things are measured, they’re displayed in their corporeality.  Keys are turned and doors are opened, objects are filed and sorted.  That’s not to deny the electronic scale or scanner, but it is to say thanks for the man behind the counter, wearing his blue ringer polo shirt, affixing that label to that package.

I think students need to have a place so connected to objects, since many times they’re living a life so overstuffed with ideas.  They need a place that is neutral in the way that government places are; where freedom of speech is practiced in a dramatically different way than in their classrooms.  They are lucky to have a place devoted to their physical connection with those far away, and a place that so effortlessly combines responsibility and spontaneity.  When all of that is at the heart of campus, it becomes an important place for chance meetings or reality checks amongst the craze of finals; when it’s that convenient it doesn’t take away time from studying or socializing.

Against the realities of the federal budget, my fondness for and belief in the importance of University Station will probably weigh naught.  Yet, for that foreign student, or for the man in the blue polo, I’m hoping that my thoughts are worth more than their weight.

Breaking News

Monday September 1

 

News today has come of a massacre in the apartment of Rachel Auerbach, a woman friends describe as “nice – you wouldn’t expect this of her.”  Worms in her “beloved” worm bin fled its environs last night in search of a better life, only to dry to their deaths on her kitchen floor.  As she knelt to tend the bin this morning, she wondered at their shapes on the linoleum, only to realize that she knelt in a field of death.

“I had no clue they were so unhappy” stated Rachel in a press conference this afternoon.  “Those worms meant the world to me – literally, I thought that with them, I could do my part to help the planet regain some of its fertility and fecundity.  They worked tirelessly towards their goal, sacrificing every day.  But I guess I just didn’t see the signs.  Fewer mature worms, slower composting…I should have known.”

The remaining worms, of which there were few, had difficulty speaking about the horrendous events of the past week.  “The bin has been drying out for a while now, and frankly, Rachel’s been pretty bad about giving us new bedding.  She’s violated our rights on multiple occasions, and if it were up to us, we would have gotten someone else to tend house a long time ago.  We can’t afford any more time with her in charge.”

The worms have steadily graded down Rachel’s performance on vermissues since arriving under her care in mid-April.  To begin with, they rated her highly, just shy of 100%, saying that “she still has some things to learn, but we trust that she’ll get better with some tough on the job training.”  Last month, they began to seriously organize for change, but they said that despite giving her a low approval rating of 54%, she didn’t listen to their pleas.

Rachel admits to turning away from the worms in their time of need.  “It’s been busy around here.  My plants aren’t doing so well either, and I’ve had a lot of other things to take care of.  But, if only I had heard them, I would have done anything for those worms.  I just did’t really know what they needed.”

A service will be held this evening in honor of the worms.  Steps are being taken to amend for the mistreatment so that any remaining worms will not meet the same fate.

Back in the Saddle Again

Off to a great start.

I can still run a mile in under seven minutes, and without too much difficulty, in fact. I’ve worked out 2 days in a row.

I’ve flossed my teeth 5 nights in a row.

I am warm underneath my soft new comforter.

The perfume that I ordered from the internet without having ever smelled it smells wonderful all day. The haircut that I got right before school started looks good up or down, styled or unstyled.

I led the undergraduate studio in rearranging their desks and they did a fantastic job. They all, or almost all, contribute something, even in the large (16 person) discussions.

The teaching in my studio is much more to my liking so far this semester. The project is an urban building, in Portland; it’s home to an imaginary nonprofit that coordinates other nonprofits such as Doctors Without Borders and Architects Without Borders.

I had another chat with Tad and Stefan.

I got my first Netflick, the Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and will watch it soon…

I rearranged my studio so that I have fewer peripheral distractions and more pinup space.

I have Human Context of Design and Environmental Control Systems, two classes that cover the exact topics that I find most interesting in architecture: the social/behavioral/relational aspects of architectural space and the sustainable/regenerative possibilities of architectural systems.

Oh, and – it’s on Dan.