Heretic Pride

“It feels freer and baby don’t you know that everything fucking good is wild and free didn’t you know tell me you know.”

via Ethaney

.wow.

with not having people “understand” me, feeling “lost”, stuck at home most days, only wanting to just escape. God, even the words sound like I’m 17 again. Me mentioning being 17 sounds like I’m 17. 

Soon, I am going to implode and it will be the best day of my life. 

YES YES YES IMPLODE!

To all legitimate Boston fans: good game. To all the poser Boston fans who actually kind of live in LA: HAHA, PICKED THE WRONG TEAM. THAT’S WHAT YOU GET FOR BEING A DOUCHE. GO LAKERS!

via: Christine

I would add “FUCK YOU, FUCKERS!” but that might be too lewd. 

losing everything inside. 

My glasses came in today. 

I also went to the dentist. 

I feel like a brand new person, better teeth, better eyesight. By the end of this summer I very well may become some sort of super-human. 

Thank you, modern optometry and dentistry, for filling the gaps in my health. 

Also, my glasses are boss, but I am dangerously close to encroaching on “hipster” territory. Instead, I have chosen to wear them as a man, because everyone knows being a man and being a hipster are impossible to do at the same time, they’re essentially mortal enemies. Men are raised on rock n’ roll. Hipsters are raised on organic bread n’ wealthy parents. 

The thing I remember the most vividly from my past year was every night when I would walk home from the house. I remember it so greatly because it was such an out-of-body experience, it would always make me aware of, well, myself. I never had to walk home from my own home before, who has? Who walks home from home? How the fuck does that even work?

I had come to really hate the fraternity as a living quarters during my second semester, Junior year. It was entirely due to the fact that the house was no longer the house I had joined. There was constant tension, nothing ever got resolved, no one ever gave a shit about the house itself anymore (both its physical structure and its importance as an edifice towards the fraternity itself), and the whole experience was very disenchanting. I stayed in the house for one more summer because I love Berkeley in the summer and because its very, very cheap to live there during those three months. Fortunately (or unfortunately, or both, really), I came to love the house again and when I’d moved to my apartment I really, dearly missed the house. I missed having roughly twenty friends to spend every waking moment with. I missed being able to go into the kitchen at any hour of the night and finding someone there. I missed the flickering, dying lights, and the thin, cracking walls. I missed the ability to stay up forever just because, to watch and waste a night away in a room with five or six other people for no special occasion but because we simply wanted to. 

And so I did like any reasonable person would do—I visited the house almost every single day. During my first semester of my senior year I was honestly there every day. There was not one entire day that I was missing completely, whether it was to simply drop by for lunch or to go to our weekly meeting or to even do laundry. During this past semester I had an awful schedule in which I got out at 9 o clock from Monday-Wednesday and had shitty AIAS meetings every thursday until 8 or so. Going to the house became more difficult, but after a few weeks I just accepted that I would go to the house at roughly 10 pm or later and come back at around 2 or 3 am. 

And that was what I remembered the most. Was always the walk back. In those four blocks I went from one world to another, I had to always leave behind something that I didn’t want to. I don’t know if moving to my apartment was a mistake or not, but when I look back, I typically focus on the negatives. I did, however, get to keep in touch with many of my architecture friends , which is truly for the best because without studio its difficult to keep up the same amount of interaction. And so, I’m glad for that. And I’m also glad that I removed myself so I could know how much I really did enjoy the house. I found out what my priorities were, and I (typically) kept up with them. 

But I’m still very interested in that walk back. It was four blocks, four blocks that took at most ten minutes each night. And I would walk away not only from a house but from a lifestyle. In the purest, most literal sense, I walked away from a street which held several fraternities, sororities, co-ops, and even the football stadium to a part of Berkeley that even named itself differently—Elmwood. Elmwood was for families and well-to-do-just-out-of-graduate-school youngsters. At two in the morning I never saw any lights on in the houses I passed. it got quieter and stiller the further I walked. I wish I’d gotten someone to follow me every night and record it. I think it would’ve been amazing to witness. There would be nights I would come home angry and fuming from drunken arguments, and other nights I’d come home happy, pleased, and filled with thought. Most nights I’d be dressed in the same thing—blue hoodie, jeans, glasses, yellow chucks. I never liked keeping my contacts in that late at night. But imagine how great it would be to see the nights when I’d come home wearing white pants or full formal attire or a bow tie and suspenders or a tail with shitty whiskers drawn on my face or covered in paint or donning my frat rush shirt or just a t-shirt on that one really hot, warm night or carrying an umbrella or those winter months when I always had a scarf or that yellow vest I was so in love with for so long (and still am), or when I walked up right and tall or low down and scuffed, or when I couldn’t see straight or when I didn’t bother to…I always walked in the middle of the street, on the road. I always thought of what the houses around me would say if they saw me What is that boy doing in the middle of the road, Who walks in the middle of the road, Does he knows where he’s going, Yes, of course he does we see him every night doing the same thing, But why? 

Because he’s taking his time. Because the longer he takes the longer he stays. 

and I don’t even watch that much basketball. 

they will be ready in a week. 

They are Ray Ban Wayfarers but with prescription lenses inside.

They will only work because I believe they will. I will be badass. 

The understood code amongst men is that when one of your friends claims that he’s going after a girl, you obviously root for him, help set up situations where the two can spend more time together, and tease him for every night he fails. 

However, there are certain circumstances in which the code is broken. And one of those circumstances is when its been for-fucking-ever and your friend STILL isn’t making any damn progress. And to make matters worse, it is now officially summertime, which means the livin’ is easy, and also that Summer Crush Contest 2010 can be in effect. 

Whatever, I’m not gonna do anything about it, it’s not like I’m actually trying to win the girl, but I am offended at how long this is taking for my friend. Like, seriously? Strike when the iron is hot, man. You can’t keep lingering or else some new, outlier boy is gonna come in and be the breath of fresh air that you can no longer be. Quit this passive flirtation style! It’s absurd.

Get dangerous with her!

is not a phone lounge. 

the machines are not seats for you to text in. 

Peace out and let the rest of us actually use the equipment.

I am not going to apologize for still having dreams. 

I am not going to apologize for moving from one field to the other. 

I do not think that I spent four years at a University to realize I did not want to overtly pursue architecture as my career, as the man behind the desk. I do not think that it took me four years to do this, but rather that it took me four years to understand what parts of architecture I enjoyed and what parts I did not. 

I enjoy architecture itself as a field, I find it fascinating and of immense importance in today’s world. I have no desire to be the one designing buildings, though. This is not because I do not inherently enjoy design itself, in fact I very much so enjoy the field of Design. I simply do not agree with the pedagogies practiced in today’s architectural design. I feel it is fast coming to a detrimental practice, and that the press is only cultivating a culture which allows iconic architecture to not only exist, but also be praised. I feel that Architecture is dying because the celebrities who represent it represent themselves more than the world they build in. I feel that we now hire Brands instead of Architects, we now contract Zaha Hadid® instead of Zaha Hadid. 

If I learned anything in Berkeley its that your work has to DO something, any work, it doesn’t matter what the hell your field is, what you work towards must be a productive goal. 

I am not going to apologize for wanting my words to be the things that do.

I am not going to apologize for changing my fucking mind about something because I fucking shouldn’t have to. 

I am not going to apologize for knowing what the fuck I want to do in life and wanting to actually pursue it. I’m not fucking lost, I know exactly what I want. Why is it that when someone graduates and doesn’t want to directly pursue the career they studied for, they are read as a failure, as though they didn’t think things through. Fuck that. It actually isn’t easy to see everyone you knew do what they were taught to do, while you have to deal with being seen as someone who’s squandered away their education. It isn’t that I’m a fucking slacker, it isn’t that I one day woke up and decided to fuck up my entire life, it’s that one day I woke up and realized I wanted something more than what I was working towards, and that I decided I would let it interrupt my status quo.

Fuck the norm. I was never going to go into architecture for the money, so why does everyone keep talking about how hard it is to find a job in journalism, or in writing in general. Why is it that the first point of debate is “Its so hard to find a job in ________”

NEWSFLASH: everyone who hasn’t/isn’t going to graduate in the past five year radius— jobs are hard to find right now. Jobs are fucking impossible to find and I officially know ONE college graduate who has a full time job. Newflash everyone who grew up in a different fucking environment, the young generation has already come to terms with the fact that our economic stability is going to be a struggle. We aren’t scared of it as much as you are, we simply accept it as truth. So if my job search is going to suck no matter what, then why the fuck would I do something I’m less interested in? Why the fuck would I go through shit to end up in shit? So what if it’s hard, I’m not changing my mind because I’m lazy, I’m not changing it because I think writing is easier as a career, I’m not fucking changing it because I’m a fucking quitter, I’m changing it because I legitimately, thoroughly, completely, 100% of my being enjoy this new path more than my previous.

This is such a fucking nuisance.  

• Home is easy and relaxed, but whoever said that after you graduate from college you need a year or two to just “take off”, to just not concentrate on anything, well, I wouldn’t say they were wrong, because who knows, maybe some people do exist like that. But I haven’t even been home an entire week and I am already dying to do something with my life again. 

• I have substituted my lack of purpose in life with an improved sense of cleanliness and order, as well as having started watching Six Feet Under, a show that has the father from Parenthood, Dexter from Dexter, and other fun actors I didn’t know had a past career. 

• I don’t like when people hear a song and ask “oh, who sings this?” and I answer, and no one believes me. I don’t talk out of my ass about music. Look that shit up. I’m not trying to say “I’m right, you’re wrong”, but I am trying to say “Dude, why are you blatantly doubting my answer? That’s rude”

• I can kind of get the doubt though, because I once answered Aerosmith for the song Dream On, and though its right, I still don’t believe Aerosmith was a good enough band to actually write Dream On. Whatever, everyone has their one super great song that they didn’t even think they were capable of. This is how I think Stairway to Heaven went down. I think Jimmy Page and Robert Plant just blacked out one night and woke up with a score in one hand and a fifth of whiskey in the other. Then they played it and said “aawwwwww SHIT NICE!” 

• This is what happened with the Beatles for the song Yesterday. Paul McCartney did not honestly believe the song was his alone, so him and John went around and played the song to the locals, asking if they’ve ever heard the song before. Paul was certain that it was a song he had simply remembered from childhood, and by playing it for others he might find out who he (assumedly) plagiarized. This was not the case, and instead Paul had indeed written a masterpiece. 

• Home is also a bit boring, but that is only when in comparison to Berkeley. 

• I miss the bay. 

• I had someone read my writing the other day and I was scared because the writing is essentially about her, but through selective choosing, I don’t think she found out. This is also the most I’ve ever let anyone know about me with the appropriate tools to have them know its about me. I’ve had my writing read before, but I don’t think anyone knew what connections to make to what parts of my life. I enjoy this ability to not be revealed. 

• I think everyone likes being able to look back on a decision with new, emerging information and go “nope, still definitely made the right choice”. That happened no more than 5 minutes ago for me, and it was a pretty cool feeling. 

• I know I’ve already said that I want to destroy Post-Modernism and usher in a new era of literature, but I would settle for destroying Science Fiction literature as well. I respect certain authors like Isaac Asimov and Phillip K. Dick because they write science fiction that concerns itself with the nature of humanity, with what makes someone inherently “human”, but I also think it isn’t very hard to raise the question “what does it mean to be human” when your entire novel is a plot device called “omg clonez!?” or “omg robotz that look like humans!?” or, in the very rare case, “omg robot clonez!”

• I think the existence of “deal breakers” for people’s attraction to someone are awesome. It reveals so much about the person and whats important to them. My favorite part is that deal-breakers are usually absurd and trivial to the rest of us, but they’re an example of one certain, very specific attribute which, to many is insignificant, becoming significant. 

• I want to make a laptop that doesn’t give you third degree burns when plugged into the power adapter. Or maybe that’s just Macbooks. I don’t know, really. Either way, I’d like to have it so my macbook doesn’t burn my lap when I have it charging. It’s silly that a machine can get this hot when it’s actually called a “laptop”. 

• That’s about it.