Weekends are for eating

This weekend was another weekend of laziness. I felt pretty unmotivated to leave my apartment. My new roommates and I watched a movie or two on the projector, had a couple of beers, and cooked some food. And by cook, I mean I ordered a sandwich from a deli down the street.

On Friday I went out with some friends to Roberta's in Brooklyn, at the Morgan Ave stop off the L train. The food was excellent, and they had one of my favorite beers, Lagunitas IPA, on tap! I was very pleased. We ordered several things to share between us, a scallop dish with black onion and watermelon, a pasta dish with mussels and oysters, and a couple of great thin-crust pizzas, one margherita and one something delicious with sausage. Everything was excellent and fresh and tasty. Apparently the restaurant grows a lot of their own ingredients in their own garden, which is pretty cool. Definitely worth a return trip.

I am really looking forward to being back in Texas during winter break, although I'm not sure how long my break will be. Yannik and I have been talking about another freezing cold camping trip, and I'm very excited! Nothing sounds better than a few cold days in the mountains right now. Except for walking over the Brooklyn Bridge with Lydia. That is going to be the highlight of the fall! (Not trying to build it up too much, but it will be very cool.)

new place

I found a place to live starting Friday, a converted loft space in Williamsburg, on Kent Ave, right by the water. Its definitely got an industrial vibe, also an "assembled from pieces and scraps" vibe, which is cool. It actually reminds me of my place in Austin in a way.

I drew another bag today, number 2. Picture below. This one is for you Steph. I think I'm going to order some more and keep the series going. Its slowly evolving. I think I need to more strictly follow a set of rules. Now the patterns are really only driven by aesthetics. If I think it looks good, I draw it. Although to be fair, I did start with distinctive wrinkles in each bag. This second one had some excellent wrinkles to trace.

I did something really, really stupid. I rode over to Brooklyn to see the new place, and was in a hurry and rode right past the bike lane over the bridge. I rode across the bridge in the auto lanes and got yelled at several times. I was really nervous about getting clipped, but to be honest, it was not as nerve-wracking as 360 in Austin can be. Oh, and my butt was sore today. Too long off the bike obviously. My burning legs say the same thing.

Oh, saw this excellent guy as I was walking to grab a sandwich today, just across 6th Ave. Really made my day. (He's wearing a kilt!)

Two in a row!

I am starting this post on Tuesday, so if it gets posted today as I intend, that will be two days in a row for the first time in weeks!

I rode my bike to work today! It was the most wonderful thing. It feels excellent to be riding again. My legs are weak (no surprise there) but the mile and a half cross town was a breeze. I'm hoping I can get off about 6:30 tonight so that I can go cruise around. Oh, and for all those who are worried about my safety, there are oodles of bike lanes around.

After the ride to and from work today, I've realized that riding here is not ALL that different from riding in Austin. I'm not going to get rundown because that means the cabbie who hits me is going to get points off their license. And the percentage of bike lanes to road is way higher.

So no worries. Also, if anyone has a room they want to sublet in Manhattan/Brooklyn, let me know!

Two WEEKS! Bah.

What a slacker I've been with this writing business.

Since last post: made friends, drank great beer, ate excellent tacos, dined on a roof with a skyline view, seen the Bambu' installation at the Met, visited the disappointing AMNH, got my bike, saw my family!

Yannik and I are also planning to collaborate on a contest over the next few weeks, although it is proving difficult to manage this over a 5-hour time difference. The project is the Fallen Heroes Memorial, south of Fort Worth, TX. I'm going to copy my thoughts from our first short conversation below.

"i think its an opportunity to play sculptor, architect, and landscape designer al at once. Briony cemetery + Holocaust memorial + something tall

its strange that each fallen warrior gets a photo. thats obviously a chance for a repeating element. maybe the photos are each hidden inside boxes or visible only from one very specific angle. Or you've got to walk through a landscape where each is revealed individually, so that you don't see the memoril as series of images, like a cemetery, but instead its more like a never-ending procession of images."

On an unrelated note, I have received several bizarre packages at work over the past couple of weeks. I can only imagine what my deskmate thinks when he sees me opening all these small, ticking packages. A couple of them are now perched above my desk, watching over me smugly. I get the feeling that they are quietly watching me, waiting for me to screw up and miss a deadline. On long days, they haunt my periphery, mocking me every time I glance up.

You blank-faced, pestilential chronographs, your days are numbered.

CAREER is almost CAREEN

I bought a book this evening, Gray's Anatomy. I do not intend to read it. I bought it specifically for the anatomical engravings by H.V. Carver. It is fascinating to me that the subjects of the drawings, though they have many layers of skin and muscle peeled away, are all quite calm and peaceful. It is fantastic to see the body neatly drawn into pieces, carefully dissected in black and white.

I have a deep nostalgia for things like this, drawn and engraved with a care and precision that has been erased by computers. It is the same sense of awe and loss I felt when I saw the drawings for the UT clock tower in the Architecture archive at school. The archivist was describing the way that the architects worked, the materials they used for these detailed, precise drawings. I can remember her telling us that the paper they used is no longer produced, and the pens can only be bought from one company.

It is incredible that such a deep and ancient skill is now almost completely lost. The architects I admire from the last century all possessed skill with a radiograph I will never have, nor will any of my peers. Now that computers can replicate the work of a draftsman in a fraction of the time, hand drafting is dead. My heart hurts thinking about it. It tears me up to think that the beauty of architectural drawings is now so dependent on a computer. Plotters cannot create beauty. They can only replicate unconvincingly what a hand does so naturally.

To my eyes, a huge part of the natural beauty of hand drawings is the mistakes. Errors, imperfections, tiny jumps in a line, smudges, little wrinkles, the way vellum stretches a little when you press too hard. The hand wants to do something perfectly, but there are always traces.

I was chatting with a fellow employee over dinner at work a few weeks ago, and we were talking about working as architects, and she said that had she known she would never get to draw, she wouldn't have entered the field. I actually agree with her very much. There is nothing that I enjoy about sitting in front of a computer all day, except for the satisfaction that I derive from doing something well and occasionally cleverly. I think it is only my obstinate optimism that keeps me convinced that I will not always have to work this way. Sure, I'll put in my years as an CAD-monkey, but that is not the end-game. I will get to design how I want to design. I will work in pencil and ink and charcoal and watercolor and trace paper and vellum! I will draw on yellow trace paper, and on vellum, and on heavy Stonehenge, and I will wad it up or tear it in half when I completely botch it up! I will spend all night drafting with a parallel bar, 'til my eyes burn and my hand shakes! And I will be happy!

Thinking about a career

I accomplished very little on Saturday. It was essentially an empty day. Sunday was much better. I met Aunt Lynn's friend Mary at her East Village apartment to talk about the possibility of house/tortoise sitting. Her apartment was excellent, big and spacious, great location, and filled with so much personality. It was exactly what the apartment of an artist should be: a plethora of collected objects and created things, layered throughout the apartment such that nothing seems to ever be in the exact same place. You might have a general idea where one thing is, but since you last saw it, it has traded spots with some of its friends. Everything invites closer inspection and wants to tell you a story, and it doesn't matter if it is a true story or not.

I think this is an excellent way for a career to be shaped. Projects like layers of ideas, telling many stories. And objects (both made and unmade), waiting for discovery. A career doesn't need to appear as a cohesive volume of work, like an encyclopedia of a life. I think it is better to be an apartment full of stories, with something new to find each time you look. I suppose this means that an architect whose career is presented in volumes of work is really being misrepresented. Or under-represented. Not sure if there is an answer here.