Obama’s transition website has a job application section. I really, really hope they’ll need a young inexperienced almost-architect.
Archive for the 'Declaration' Category
I LOVE MY COUNTRY.
For half my life, a Bush has been in the White House. For a third of my life, the second Bush has been driving my country into the ground, and all I did was stand idly and watch.
Now, in one fell swoop, Republican tactics of divide and conquer are obsolete. Confidence in the American process, our unique ability to heal the greatest of tragedies, has been restored. Greatest of all, Obama has made it okay to be optimistic. After a decade of cynical, sardonic, pessimistic American culture, he’s made it okay to hope.
The next four years are going to be a bumpy, harsh time—for our economy, for our society, for everything we are. With Obama at the head, I look forward to it. We’re privileged to be alive here, now, an amazing time half a century in the making.
These days, I seem to spend more time sending out mass emails than writing in this blog. That’s too bad because I like this thing.
I ended up with 2.5 jobs. I’ll be doing 40 hours a week for the Building Project, hopefully relaxing interior cabinetry work and not climbing on our matte black metal roof. When I’m not doing BP, sleeping, eating, or on the pot I’ll be doing freelance work for some professors, namely painting a basement and working on the drawings for a house addition in New Haven. This is sort of crazy but it works out in Google Calendar so blow it, I’m going to have a try. I mourn the bloody death of my summer but this is the way adults roll—this way I won’t have that dirty, guilty feeling that comes from having fun and enjoying myself for extended periods of time.
There’s one thing I’m worried about, which is that I’m digging my New England hole deeper. On the one hand, my establishment architecture school is slowly brainwashing me into thinking that the hottest, most boutique firms are all somewhere between New York and Boston, and that the best thing possible would be to add to my East Coast network and subscribe to The New Yorker and buy a golden retriever named Ollie and get a nice compound in Hyannisport and stay here for the rest of my life. On the other hand, I sort of want to get the holy hell back to California, the part of the country that didn’t originate 200 years ago as a strange growth on Cornelius Vanderbilt’s butt.* Taking jobs here adds to scenario one—I’m getting adverse to starting over again and again—and yet how can I refuse?
*It’s really just the food and the snow.
Today was the my first afternoon on site. My arms and fingers are sore—my biceps feel like they’re made of cabbage. I helped raise a wall, measured, cut posts and headers, moved plywood and beams, ate a muffin and a bagel and two apples. It was fun, though I have no idea what I’m doing and ended up standing around a lot towards the end.
I’ve said it before, there’s nothing more amazing than seeing lines on a paper translated into wood and concrete, floors and walls—it’s like watching a baby being born, except nothing like, a lot more like watching a building get built. The accomplishments of architects are physical, real things, and that’s the one thing architects can hold over investment bankers and corporate lawyers who make seven-digit paychecks but nothing actually tangible. I see windows I drew at 2 AM after four beers actually put together in real life and somehow I feel a little like god.
Also, I’m going to let Susan Surface take all the photos, because she’s amazing and someone who’s not me should pay her money:
Notice, once more, that our house is perfectly square. I really love regular Euclidean geometry.
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