Thinking about Writing

We watched "Julie and Julia" tonight. It was a great movie. Nothing groundbreaking - but that's just the point.
I've had the worst weekend - doing taxes, a horrible cold, working all day today (Sunday)...and so we decided to have a quiet family evening with an easy movie and some down time. The movie was fantastic, with beautiful scenes of Paris, cooking, and some great background music. What hit me personally, though, were the bits about the main character blogging. Obviously, I blog as well, and as a couple of you may know, I've tried writing fiction. I have a couple stories working in my head(and just a bit on paper), but like, I assume, thousands of people every day, I get stalled along the way. I have ideas which sputter and then die out, like a worn out riding lawn mower. This movie was a real inspiration to me, to go with an idea, hit it hard, and continue - with heart - and make...something.
Even as I'm writing this I'm thinking of the scenes where the main character types and narrates what she's typing as she's typing, and it makes me want to do the same.
Another thing, though, that this movie made me realize is that I worry far too much about writing about what other people don't know. For some reason, I have this phobia of writing things that other people already know. I don't always write about new, wonderfully exciting topics, but I think that I'm at my best when I do. But I started thinking - why? When I go to a blog, I go because I know the subject matter. This movie's premise - that the main character would cook her way through the 500+ recipes in Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in exactly 1 year - is an excercise in the expected. Everyone knows this book. If you have the book, you know what comes next. She simply takes a book, cooks the meals within this incredibly well-known book, and writes about her exploits. It's devilishly simple, which is EXACTLY why its such an endeering story.
It made me remember my childhood - sitting in class. The teacher asks a question, and I think I know the answer, or at least have something valid to say. But do I raise my hand and answer? No. Because I think that what I have to say might be obvious to other children in class, and then they'd laugh at me. They'd laugh because the thing which I thought was so important as to actually raise my hand and say it was old news to them. I needed to keep my mouth shut until I knew I had something strange and new to say. And I think that fear still plagues me to this day - just in different manifestations. And now I guess I can say - I doubt I'm alone in feeling this way.
So I'd like to thank Nora Ephron and "Julie and Julia" for a wonderful 2 hours of my weekend. And to enjoy a 2-hour film about food, it certainly doesn't hurt to have a wife who is so incredible at cooking that she single handedly has turned me into the obsessive foody that I am today. So it goes without saying that I need to thank her too. And after just seeing a movie about food, the title of this blog post is about writing...that's the true sign of a well-written human story.

Sick.

I'm sick.

When you're sick, do you focus on the fact that the germs which are currently waging biological warfare against your immune system are actually someone else's germs? They're germs which are not of your own body, but actually travel. They're hitching rides from body to body, reproducing, growing in strength and destructiveness, infecting human after human after human. These are not my icky germs, they're someone else's icky germs, making me feel horrible.

Do you ever think about that? I do.

Thinking About Books

I'm an architect, and enjoy geeking out on architecture books. I have far too many, and know many other architects who have far more than I do. It's something we enjoy doing in our profession - growing our home libraries. (I have a feeling this might have something to do with the fact that if you amass enough books in shelves on a wall, it can almost feel architectural - like the books cover such space that they become divisions of space. Difficult to move, almost structural. It's got little to do with the information within the pages - because really, who has time to read?)

The first book that I ever truly got excited about was a book that I purchased WAY too late - that I had already genuine knowledge of before I bought it. It is a book entitled S,M,L,XL by Rem Koolhaas. This book has around 1,000 pages, composed of large photos, random conversations, dictionary-type diatribes, and some really wonderful contemplations on architecture and design. Anyway, when I was in undergrad, this book was HOT. It was the book that everybody was geeking over. I never bought it because I could barely feed myself on the measly pittance I was making at the architecture library. Oh, I also didn't buy it because I WORKED AT AN ARCHITECTURE LIBRARY. One of the perks. Virtually endless selection without having to pay. Anyway, at some point, the book went out of print. So the prices absolutely skyrocketed for used copies. We're talking 800-1000 dollars per copy. That's how popular this book was.

Well, fast forward about 3 years, and I'm in grad school in Los Angeles. I'm walking through an independent book store, when I happen to come across this book, on sale for 70 bucks. So I natural begin to sweat. I think they made some mistake in pricing this gem, and think that since it's just an architecture book that nobody knows about except us nerds, they'd just give me this thing without thinking twice. PLUS - the cover art is in a new color that I hadn't recognized before, so I get REALLY greedy and sweaty...and the words "limited edition" go streaming through my head in neon colors. This is my lucky day. I'm about to buy a book worth at LEAST $1,500 bucks (if I play my cards right) for like 50 bucks!! So of course, I beg my now-wife to let me buy it and explain to her just what value this thing is. (She is also an architect, but not quite the nimrod I am over bound paper.) So we buy it, I become proud again, and I go home to find out that they've just re-released this book, and within 1 month, every retard at my school has a copy - probably bought for much less than I paid. So now I'm both a geek AND a loser. Mouth shut, Jaimee. Mouth shut.

So now, there's this architect that I love named Peter Zumthor. He won the Pritzker Prize last year, so you should all know him. Well he has a fascination with releasing books in limited quantities. So if you see something you like of his for under $100, you better snatch it up. I have a couple small works of his, which are absolutely wonderful. I was also given a big picture book of a single building that I visited a few years ago, as a gift. These are three of my favorite books. Anyway, there's an old one called Peter Zumthor: Works which I don't have, but was just put on alert that somebody is selling a library bound copy of...so I went on Amazon to see how much the used, out of print version is - One thousand, eight hundred dollars. No, not BETWEEN 1,000 and 800, but $1,800.00. For a book. It's paper.

Now, this guy is my favorite architect. He's one of the most gifted architects of the last few hundred years. He's honestly the real deal. And his books are gorgeous. But almost 2 grand for 200 pages of dried pulp? Even I can say - ARE YOU MENTAL?

Who's with me?

Thinking about Free Time

Many times, I'll talk to someone, casually swapping weekend run-downs and stories. For some reason, it always seems like my weekends are far less interesting than other peoples'. Either we work at the office, we work at home, or we run errands. That's basically it. Maybe once every other month, we'll do something like go to a park or see a film(actually this one is more like a couple times a year). But it seems that most of our free time is spent either working (so what IS free time, anyway?) or cleaning up after ourselves. We like to keep a fairly clean house, but nothing special - usually we just clean extra hard before we know someone is coming over. I guess we might enjoy eating more than your typical family, so maybe more time is spent researching, shopping, cooking, cleaning, and of course, eating. But this doesn't feel like free time - it mostly feels like, well, more work. Work that we love of course, but still - cooking isn't necessarily easy. It's fun, but not easy. So it seems that my life is taken up, mostly, by work, more work, eating, cleaning, and I guess you can throw sleeping in there as well. These things seem to me to be parts of every person's life. Things that I could not do without. But the thing is that after all these things are done, what time is left for anything else? It seems not much. So I'm left to wonder - where, exactly, do people get all their free time?
Sometimes when I hear people listing all the many things that they've done recently, or things they've accomplished, or events that they've seen or participated in, I think to myself "I need to do that more often" or even "sometime." And then I sit down and make a list of all these things I want to do and as I turn over to the fourth page, I think "How?"
For instance, watching movies. I love the idea of watching movies - I love cinema as an art, I love watching the Oscars, I love almost everything about film. Except for the fact that for 2+ hours, I'll have to sit in front of a screen and watch this thing, without interruption, and without doing anything else. If I only have 2 hours free, then that's IT. That's my day. I guess this goes back to the travel post about how there are too many great places to see, but there just doesn't seem to be enough time to make a hobby of that.
Even a bit more worthy pursuits, such as research or independent study. To REALLY get something out of it, one would have to devote at least 5 hours a week to something like that. 5 hours a week doesn't sound like much initially, but think about every single night for an hour, or ALL of one weekend (that isn't spent on chores and tasks.) That's hard to come by. But if you want to get into something, you need to devote the time to it.
So I guess in the end, when I think about it for an extended period of time, I just enjoy doing things that I, myself, don't consider to be "free time." And as always, the grass is always greener on the other side. I'm sure that other people see me and say "man I wish I had time to do that" just like I think of them. But from this side of the fence, it doesn't feel like I've WISHED to do these things, so I do them. It just feels like these are the things I must do - and once I do them, on to the next! Because there just isn't enough time to stop and relax.

Thinking about travel

I've been thinking about travel quite a bit lately. I guess that's mainly because I've been traveling a bit more for work recently. I used to always want to take business trips. I thought it commanded some kind of respect, and displayed a certain level of achievement. These days business travel is more of a headache than anything else. Most of my trips are single-day trips. Which makes for one heck of a busy day. Two flights in the same day (in two directions - not connecting flights) just takes the energy right out of you. The funny thing is - in many ways I prefer these trips, because it means I don't have to spend a night away from home. While I love travel, seeing the globe, experiencing different cities and such, I guess I don't love it more than laying my head down on my own pillow next to my wife at night.
But besides business travel, there's real travel. Travel for the sake of travel. Vacation, if you will. My wife is Japanese, so we go to Japan often, at least once per year. This used to be vacation - now it's just seeing family. I say that as though its not interesting anymore, which couldn't be further from the truth. But after going 5 or 6 times, you have seen every touristy place at least once, and it begins to be more about the family than the place. But there are still those little moments - when I'm alone on the train, a bit lost or confused, or hunting down a favorite house of mine, with music going on my headphones and the perfectly trimmed boxwoods gliding past me as I walk on the textured sidewalks of Tokyo - that the rush of seeing things you've never seen before comes back to me.
But back to real travel. What I personally love is learning things, rather than relaxing. People sometimes make fun of me for never having gone to the Bahamas, on cruises, or even Hawaii. While this does sound nice every so often - the sand between your toes, the fresh beer while watching the sun go down over the ocean - I feel like there just might not be enough time for something like that. Living in the US, its so hard(and expensive) for us to experience different cultures, since our country is so large. In Europe, you can travel 2 hours by car and experience 4 completely different cultures, languages, cuisines. It is the same to an extent in the US, but nowhere near as grand. So I feel like I'm behind the 8-ball on travel. There are so many great places to see, so many different types of food to eat, and currency to spend, that every trip has to be to a new place. The list is impossibly long, but it never hurts to look into the future and say "someday, I'll be there."
I can remember a distinct feeling for each place I've been. Sometimes its from a scent that won't leave me(Japan). Sometime its a taste(Rome), sometime its a temperature(LA, California). Sometime it's a vision(Hartford, CT), or sometime its just a moment that I keep remembering over and over(Vals, Switzerland). But every place has something. And these bits of my life that stay with me are what make it so great.
I love travel, and I think knowing the world, and always wanting to know more of the world and its people is the greatest gift this planet can give us.

A fresh start

Well it's 2010, I'm about to become a father, and I realize that I have hundreds, if not thousands, of loyal readers out there who are just DYING to know what I'm thinking. Just thirsting for some input into my mind. Because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it is people like me, Ochocinco, and Fergie constantly spewing out any scraps of gibberish that pop into our heads. Yes, I consider myself to be in the same ilk as Ochocinco and Fergie.

In a weird way I've grown to hate blogs. I've certainly fallen out of love with Facebook, and only had a casual relationship with Twitter to begin with. Blogs have gotten lumped into the social media category - somewhat unfairly - because these other platforms have skyrocketed in popularity by standing on blogs' shoulders. Blogs have seemed, though, to stay in the picture because of their range. There isn't a single page layout, or tool palette that makes them successful. There isn't a faceless administrator who updates no matter if you're ready and willing or not. There aren't strangers coming from your past that make you either join their e-club or enjoy seven sleepless days and nights due to guilt and regret. The best blogs are the best because of content and personality. The words, images, and information that is added is what makes them redeemable. In a weird way - the effort, creativity and truth of a blog - rather than just "brain-spill" is what separates them. These are just my opinions, though.

So what I have decided to do is start writing on this blog again - I'm not promising every day or anything because that's just asking for failure. But I'd like to keep the ol' fingers in check and make sure my noggin is working. So what I've done is compiled a short list of things that I've been thinking about recently. I think, at its most simple, and probably best, a blog is just a depository for thoughts about random subjects, with occasional links thrown in. There you have it - that's my idea of a great blog. Ground breaking, I know. I'll use these bullet points of interest and expand on them a bit. I'll throw them out there and see what sticks. I doubt there will be any real progress made or decisions come to, but in this case the journey will just have to be more important than the destination. Because there probably won't be one.

So that's what I'm going to give you. Just some topics, with my thoughts on them - as random and all-encompassing as I can. I believe that is what will make this space interesting for me to write and for you to read. In the end, as all blogs do, I'm sure readership will dwindle down to 0 (or maybe 1 if Brett stays as loyal as he has for the past few years. Good morning, Brett), and this blog will be by me, for me alone. So for this space to be truly successful, it has to clear the cobwebs out and nimble up my mind so that the net can be cast farther out than I've ever been able to cast it before.

We'll see how often I post, and for how long this lasts - hopefully for many many posts to come. And if anybody came here looking for posts on architecture, football, or food - you might yet be in the right place. Or, you could just go to http://www.plexdesign.wordpress.com/, http://www.urbanpalate.wordpress.com/, or http://www.sportingo.com/ (and search under my name.)

I couldn't come this far without a little self-promotion, could I?