Catch the last train home - Got to get on it

This describes what I am feeling this morning as I come to the office on a Friday.  We're out of work, or nearly so.  The train has left the station.  Whatever it was that I had planned to do has passed on.  I've been a traveler on this life's journey as an architect, running to catch the next train - sometimes not the train I wanted, but a train that took me to the next town, the next pay station and the map that shows "you are here" on a map in the lobby.  

The lobby is empty.  Everyone made the train but me this time.  There is a cold damp wind out here on the platform as I peer down the track and study it as it disappears into a point.  This is one-point perspective you see, and I understand that and know how to draw it and even teach it. It's what I've done for 30 years.  But this morning it only reveals a distance into which I won't go today.  I've missed the train.

I sit inside the station where it's warm.  Even the ticket windows are closed.  I look at the light reflected in the windows.  It's dark outside and the play of light inside and out, the distorted and reflected colors and shapes are intriguing.  The floor is at least 100 years old and has a marvelous patina to it.  The shadows play in and out on the stacked equipment in the corner.  I think about my work, all the buildings completed - some not so great, some quite satisfying.  I take out my sketch pad and pencil and start drawing, thinking about a composition of shapes I see in charcoal or maybe oil.  Maybe both.  

I look down the track again but this time it's not with a lament of things missed.  It's looking for a train to come my way, one on which I will ride to a new destination of adventure, art and expression of who I really am.

   

A weekend in Westport, Wa

I first saw Westport when I was about 5.  It was all black and white back then.  I don't remember much about it but it was really strange and quite frightening riding there in the back seat with my mom and grandparents and seeing the world change to black and white as we went through Aberdeen. My grandpa scared me a little when he got out a bottle of whiskey as we drove into town, took a big swig and chortled in a pirate's voice "...arrgh, we're in Westport, matey...".  This had set the tone for that day back then.

My friends and I visited Westport last weekend.  Coming back after 50 some-odd years we found that it not only flickered into black and white now and then, drinking seemed to be still quite the pastime.  We were pretty hammered that first afternoon when we went out to see the sights.  Nothing was in focus, no matter how I tried to take photographs.  This....THIS, by the way, is THE TALLEST light house in the State of Washington just so you know.  We went up to it and by God, it is.

We found our way back to the car and went over to Ted's IGA to get some supper fixin's.  The parking lot was pretty vacant, however, there was a plethora of various dilapidated bicycles parked all around.  Walt explained that most everyone in Westport has lost their driver's license due to a DUI so they ride bicycles.  I didn't get a good photo of one (mainly because these scruffy folk seemed to take their rides seriously and being new in town I didn't want to wear out my welcome.)  I managed to come up with a facsimile here in what may just be a Westporter's dream ride. 

Riding a bicycle isn't without risk, however.  This me-lee occurred last summer on the main drag when a newcomer to the town who had not yet had a DUI plowed into a group headed down to Ted's to take advantage of a two-for-the-price-of-one sale on Mike's hard lemonade, as long as supplies lasted.

"Geezus H. Christ,"  One witness said, "It was something like I've never seed.  They was bodies lyin' all over."    Miraculously no one was hurt.  Doc Adams said later he thought that the .34 alcohol levels of most of the riders contributed to this.

Every weekend during most summers a tour boat heads out to spot the drunk floaters that wash up on Saturday and Sunday mornings on the jetty just out from the tide flats.  They get their photos and then fish them out, back slapping high five-ing.  Then its a memorable boat ride back in as the tourists get treated to the tallest tales ever imagined (or hallucinated).  Progressive town that it is, Westport has a "hike 'n bike" program where folks like the floaters and others can borrow a bike and return it to another station around town.  Eventually they come across where they left their own bikes.

I'm looking to another trip to Westport next year for sure.

Fine Print digressions

I don't have a tevo and don't have time to plan out what i want to watch on cable on the remote thing, which means I usually end up watching TV in real time.  I don't like most programming on TV.  I do watch 'Modern Family', as described earlier in this inane blog.  Watch the news.  Watch some PBS.  This 'n that.  C'mon, we ALL watch goddamn TV, even the channel 9 snobs.  Admit it, you righteous gluten-free, wheat grass-eating sons a bitches....you like Judge Judy.  And you eat cheetos when you watch it.
However, I cannot tell you how much I loathe commercials.  Honest-to-God, given the choice of PAYING for watching TV without commercials I would do so.  Yeah, I contribute to PBS.  PBS doesn't have the really shitty stuff I like to waste my time on though.  You know, those times when you just want to sit down and watch some worthless shit on the networks.
The price you pay to watch this worthless network shit is having to watch commercials.  20 minutes of this flotsam for every 40 minutes of programming.  AND, I don't know how they do it, but the networks have gotten together and TIMED this barrage of flotsam so that you can't switch from one shitty program to another shitty program without watching a commercial.  So you are completely immersed in shit.
Now that they have you where they want you, these hawking bozos insult you further by telling you one thing and completely denying every word they have promised by putting it in the SMALL PRINT.  I recorded some of these and went back to read this.  It takes quite an effort to see it, even on pause.  NONE of what is said in the ad is actually true.  It's like watching political ads all year long.  (don't get me started).
I went on Google to research some of this and it IS true.  fine print disclaims most of what is said.  And nothing can be done about it.  It's all legal.
Politicians, advertisers, they ALL take us for idiots with I.Q.'s of under 40.  Every one of us Amerikens.  Damn, maybe it's true.....

Sacrifice for a cause

The windows are almost all in and the siding is going on, starting in the back.  I chose to do mitered siding for the corners of the house.  It will cost extra.  That being so, it is nonetheless priceless.  It requires cedar planks without big knots.  It's the way houses used to be built.  It was the way the original house was built.  I am staying true to that spirit.  Yep, I probably caused the death of at least one big cedar tree somewhere.
Wait 'till you see the corners.

'Kitch' wins out in Salina, Kansas

I'm back from the Midwest.  And I think it's only fair that I share some of the awesome feats of design that I found returning to my home town of Salina, Kansas.  Take this house for instance.  I drove around the block, parked, dodged the traffic on Crawford Street to take this photo.  I've tried to analyze and understand this and it is still baffling to me.
This...this is something that perhaps would win an AIA award in a town like, say Seattle, where avant-garde stuff done by 'playful' and 'kitchy' architecture firms get the nod of approval from their narcissistic friends in high places.
So - Miller Hull...Mithun...you oh so very cool designers, eat your hearts out.  And start copying your next design award material.