Jack London Love Letter
(or What Happens When I Read News from Helen)

"Oakland, April 3, 1901

Dear Anna:

Did I say that the human might be filed in categories? Well, and if I did, let me qualify -- not all humans. You elude me. I cannot place you, cannot grasp you. I may boast that of nine out of ten, under given circumstances, I can forecast their action; that of nine out of ten, by their word or action, I may feel the pulse of their hearts. But of the tenth I despair. It is beyond me. You are that tenth.

Were ever two souls, with dumb lips, more incongruously matched! We may feel in common -- surely, we oftimes do -- and when we do not feel in common, yet do we understand; and yet we have no common tongue. Spoken words do not come to us. We are unintelligible. God must laugh at the mummery.

The one gleam of sanity through it all is that we are both large temperamentally, large enough to often understand. True, we often understand but in vague glimmering ways, by dim perceptions, like ghosts, which, while we doubt, haunt us with their truth. And still, I, for one, dare not believe; for you are that tenth which I may not forecast.

Am I unintelligible now? I do not know. I imagine so. I cannot find the common tongue.

Large temperamentally -- that is it. It is the one thing that brings us at all in touch. We have, flashed through us, you and I, each a bit of universal, and so we draw together. And yet we are so different.

I smile at you when you grow enthusiastic? It is a forgivable smile -- nay, almost an envious smile. I have lived twenty-five years of repression. I learned not to be enthusiastic. It is a hard lesson to forget. I begin to forget, but it is so little. At the best, before I die, I cannot hope to forget all or most. I can exult, now that I am learning, in little things, in other things; but of my things, and secret things doubly mine, I cannot, I cannot. Do I make myself intelligible? Do you hear my voice? I fear not. There are poseurs. I am the most successful of them all.

Jack"

via
USPS
but mainly the wonderful Anna Pickard

"Hope I die before I get old" - not me

"Samuel Mockbee died at the Uniersity of Mississippi Medical Center on December 30, 2001, at 2:48pm. He was 57, and by his own admission just hitting his stride as an architect. He believed - as earlier generations used to - that architects need the weight of life and experience before they can design with empathy, technical understanding, and political savy." Metropolis Magazine March 2002.

Counting [lucky] stars

Ok, so normally you count lucky stars when you are feeling blue, low, down or any other American-based term for generally crap. But tonight, after a couple of drinks and a very relaxed evening with flatmate and boyfriend I am in a particularly expansive mood.
1. I have a very intelligent, good-looking and cute Canadian girlfriend. Please note this is the first time I have called her my girlfriend, just for the record.
2. I have a great job for possibly the best firm in my field in the US.
3. I get paid (relative to the UK) well.
4. Next week I am going to Arizona for 6 days. Whilst there I will take part in a design competition with one of the partners and an associate. This means 6 days walking in the desert landscape looking at the rocks and the plants. I can't wait.
5. I am not even 25.

Ok, expansive mode over. I feel good and that's all I wanted to record.

The Lobster & the Off-Licence

No. 1 in an intermittent series on dreams.

Now that I have made the desicion to stay in the states, my mind seems to be playing around with the idea that I am to be best man for my best friend in a little over a months time. This resulted in a very strange dream this morning which goes something like this:

Jonny, Leigh, an unidentified random and myself are travelling by camper-van up to the wedding when we stop off at an off-licence to buy some beer and champagne for the party. We find a place (vaugely cave-like with understated medieaval opulence underneath the surface and the layout of a castle) and Jonny and myself hop out. We search for the beers first (Grolsch (?!) and Kronenburg) and then I get the champagne; a big green dusty bottle with all kinds of metals and stones inlaid around the label in in the base. So far so good. At this point I decide that I need to get Jonny a little whisky bottle for his hip flask so having paid for the champagne (57 USD - in Britain?!) I send him back to the van and say I'll just be a second. At this point things get strange. The back of the off-licence (which is now looking more like a hippy crystal shop) has all kinds of trinkets and those awful little ornaments that people think are tasteful. The only whisky minature I can find looks like a lump of quartzite and is $200. I then realise that its more important to get something for Leigh as a pre-wedding gift. I turn to the assistant (who has always been around, but we haven't paid much attention to her until then) and ask her for help. She is some kind of witch person, but only in a mystical and new-age kind of way, rather than a Dorothoy and the wicked withch type way. She leds me out the back door which conveniently leads on the beach. I forget some details here but the next thing I know she has produced a dog that she leads to a rockpool. The dog stares intently into it and then puts its face in and pulls out a very annoyed looking lobster that is a bit manky and crushed around the tail. I have a couple of attempts to hold it but then decide that its no good for Leigh and put it down. I try to get back to the off-licence, but it scuttles after me. I run up the stairs and it eventually falls back. Once in the store I give up on the whisky minature option and decide that at least I can get something for Leigh. I find a little fired whistle-object vaguely in the shape of the Easter island sculptures and go to pay. At this point the woman assistant adn the lobster appear. She says a price which I think is very high (there is a simialr shaped piece twice the size nearby with a label that reads 250 but it could be 2.50) as I was expecting to pay a dollar. I pay the 3 dollars (with a 2 dollar note and a 1 dollar note) she asks for when I point out the other sculpture and she procedes to give the lobster the 2 dollar note. I am shocked by leave the shop as I realise I am very late. In the camper van everyone (including the random) is very glum. While we have been gone, the dinner that we cooked and put in the oven has gone bad (although it looks ok to me). I say I'm sorry I'm late, Jonny gives me a 'I shouldn't have expected better from a womanising son-of-a-bitch who lives in the States' (that's an explicit reading from a glance, but thats what it said) and I woke up

Scotland will have to wait...

Today I made one of the hardest decisions of my life; where to go when my J1 visa runs out on May 13th.
I have decided to stay in the US for another year...
This was precipitated by a conversation this afternoon with one someone who holds a tight grip on my emotions. H has been in my life, or rather, around my life, since October 1996. She was uncharacteristically sensible, decisive and mature today and I love her for that. She also is 5000 miles away. She wants me in a box marked 'friend' and that is fine because I just can't continue with the gut-wrenching contemplation of whether we will ever be in a box marked 'together'. Today she made me laugh, and made me feel sick and is still the most intelligent and charming person I know. And I chose not to go to London and be with her.
So here, for the record were my options:
Plan A: Glasgow - head back to my home country and study at the Glasgow School of Art for a MArch. Plus points: Glasgow is great, I could work as I study, make great contacts. Minus points: I'm not ready to head back to Scotland quite yet, GSA is a great school but not quite exotic enough if I'm going to teach in Britain.
Plan B: London - start my professional qualifications in London. Plus points: H is there. Minus points: H is there. My crystal ball predicted emotional wreckage down that route
Plan C: Philadelphia - stay here for another couple of years. Plus points: the weather, the pay, I get to work out if I am serious about S. Minus points: my uncle arrived in this country with the intention like myself of staying for 18 months then returning to Britain. He is still here 25 years later, has American kids and is losing his accent.
Plan D: Ottawa - the rogue plan that would have had my parents panicing - moving to Canada to be with S, the only woman since H who has come even close. Plus points: Canada - what more can you say? (And they just beat the US in the men's hockey final...) Minus points: What are you crazy? Move to a different country to be with some who over the space of 5 years, you have spent a total of perhaps 14 days?
Having made my decision, I have started a record of the next year (this) and we'll see where I end up February 25th 2003. Welcome.