Okay, I'm telling you this because I went into B & N today. Yes, I was weak. I went in telling myself to just 'browse' over the magazines. I wanted to find a literary mag because despite the ten library books I have out right now - from two different libraries - andd also despite the new book that just came in the mail, the one I online-ordered about two weeks ago, I still had this fear that I would be book-less in the coming weeks, completely word-less unless I went and bought myself a literary magazine - right away! Unfortunately for that crazy mind's search, B & N had a really sucky selection of literary journals I was looking for something like the Princeton or Harvard Review, but instead they showed up with Iowa, Ohio, and some crazy Mystical Creatures for All Reviews - kind of not the stories I'm looking to unfold. So being my 'good' old out-for-eating-trees-with-my-brain self, I wandered over to the 'writing reference' section and pulled about ten different books from the shelf within... I'd say about 30 seconds - I think I scared a little kid with his Starbucks, because he ran off to his dad. Soo from here you can probably guess how the story goes, I wandered from magazine shelves to writing section and back again, I wandered off to sections I had never even heard of before in search of some excuse to do the inexcusable, I contemplated buying useless Parisian papers just to snake my way out of this situation, but all the while I kept the little book tucked up under my arms like a little pocket-pup.
In defeat I bought, but maybe I should be proud of myself. The book cost less than any of the literary magazines I had looked at and [hopefully] it's a book I can learn from and be inspired by - I tend to find alot of similarities in feelings and processes between what the 'writing help' books say and my life as an architecture student.
- ah - Which brings me to another thing I was considering on my car ride. No one can really label an architect anymore. We used to have definitive 'styles' and label-able tendencies, but nowdays most architects strive for the undefinable image. This doesn't stop me from being able to define the whole profession though, which somehow came to me after I left Brueggers and was driving away from having to admit to an old high school collegue that I am in ... architectureee. Basically I thought that architecture would'nt have been this much of a 'joke' of a profession, but architects are a mashing together of a graphic designer and a lawyer. Work is recognized by first and foremost it's 'prettiness' the colorful or skillful beauty of the documents, versus their practicality or usefulness [aka FLWright], and of course the smashed-in lawyer side. Even if your work isn't the most catching, you can draw people in with your big Ego and strong words - basically a bunch of fluff. What is a half lawyer anyway? Probably a load of bullshit. Which is exactly what the lawyer-side of an architect is. So whether an architect is bullshitting through pretty colors and lines, or if they are bullshitting by telling you their ugly colors and lines are really genius, all-in-all you're being served a big fat plate of lies and slime by someone in clothes that cost more than what you're commissioning them to design. [sorry real-life architects, but this student is quite disillusioned, and definitely not impressed or convinced by what you do]
- c
p.s. Here's the super 'mom' book I got today, but I really do think alot of writer's struggle through the same emotions and feelings as architecture students sooo if you're interested in reading a bunch of stories from really emotionally-charged places then I suggest you go out and get this book, too!
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