So, realizing today that I have a big problem with 'letting go'. Aye - and doesn't that make me feel like an old woman? I've come to this realization after being sad that I finished my sketchbook and have to start on a new one. I feel in love with the old sketchbook after overlooking it a first time, and then coming to appreciate it's difference from any other's that I've had. It's got grainy, brown paper and a tough metal ring, it boasts about being 'green' and made out of the poop of the earth, but I could really care less about that - I pick my sketchbooks for paper quality above all else and this one was different and enticing. I got this book right after school had ended - when I was in a huge rut, a big depression and consumed by an insurmountable overwhelming emotion. I didn't want to have anythingg to do with architecture - I hated it, completely despised it, had no belief whatsoever - as I do at the beginning of every break, especially summers. Also at this time, my brain was completely fried. The Oatman semester left a slight tinge from hell in me. I was so fed up with archies, classes, the school - what a load of bullshit they were to me and sometimes I think, still are. I had my coveted Enclosures sketchbook taken from me and still have no signs of seeing its return from Dmitrios - even though I'm sure that in three years the next Picasso will show up, he'll fall in love and my sketchbook will be used for rolling joints or making a fire in his and Reese's love bungalo in the city.
So the beginnings of this sketchbook were made of mental retardation, boredom, and depression. Whereas my other sketchbooks begin with crazy stories that I needed to get out all semester long, but never had the chance to, this sketchbook started with repetitive drawings of squares and shaded-in circles.... there are aloot of squares. Then I got a stamp from Marissa that she got engraved with my name for me in China, that's where the 10 pages of little red stamps come in, mixed with a few quotes about people who have happy lives and some depressing song lyrics. And - I almost forgot - the beginning also started with a bunch of lengthy comparisions and contrasts between architecture and philosophy, where me - being me - found fatal flaws in both and hence my 'hault' in decision-making came about. I'd spend days shopping around barnes & nobles after that looking for something to inspire my jobless self to fill the pages of this empty leaflet, but nothing came to me, not even right after reading my second Natalie Goldberg. I felt useless and stupid without a job, how is it that if I were a 'normal' college student I would be off in the real world in a year? And this summer, I wasn't able to get a job? .... that's scary. That was until I was hired by the same place that I will be dishing out my life's savings to in another two years... good ol' rpi. I wasn't exactly stoked about this job - I actually didn't reply for a day about it, weighing my options about taking a two-week camp job when I could 'potentially' find something for the entire summer ... ha. But as the story goes I replied, got the job and never heard a word from another place... of course until the dream job came up and fell through within a matter of 48-hours... but anyway my soul started becoming more alive.
I was writing down calendars, lists, dreams, findings from the internet, recordings of my strange dreams, and small life-frustrations. This sketchbook was finally starting to mean something to me! Definitely over the course of the month of july I found my love in filling up those pages. And lo-and-behold, at the end of july an offer for my dream job came about! Let me tell you - in those few hours after the first day on the job, the walkabout I did down in Hudson, I was sketching away, everything I remembered about the space, looking it up on the town's for sale site to see its recorded square footage and little details - the owner said she didn't even know the sq ftg when she bought it! I have about four pages of sketches of this stuff, and was about to start making another masterpiece wall-section sketchup of the barn - easy peasy this one, too, it's wood-frame that's stuff I did way back sophomore year for Construction Systems... then of course the recent news-breaking decline occurred and I was devastated... how could I continue writing in a sketchbook with a dead dream on the last few pages? That was just NOT going to happen so I kindly turned to the next page and wrote a little elegy, beknownst to me I'd be mourning the end of this sketchbook at the moment I started writing in the new one. I mean it feels like I'm cheating - leaving an old friend filled with memories for this new, blank slate... it's just not right.
Okay, well that was quite a bit long of a dissertation about being sad over a sketchbook, but I'm reallllyyy bored now, not really sure how I'm going to make it another month with nothing to do. Especialy now that I'm 21... I just want to go out and do SOMETHING. ugh, well I guess that's it.... until I feel like writing again in another couple hours...
- c
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