BOMBS , BUMS, BUNS, BUMMER

The past few days has been hmmm unbelievable.  I wanted to go to bed everyday with somebody singing me to sleep.  Not leaving me and not waking me up in the morning.  Yes, that's how we all want to be, all we want to be, all we want.  Isn't it what all we want to be?  To not wake up alone anymore.  Let it be known.  There is a better world in deep sleep.  There must be.  Rooms that remain unbroken.  Rooms that need not be shown with the world of the awaken, awaken.   

I heard about the news.  They do not make sense at all.  They somehow steal the senses out of a moment.  They could also somehow mend ties or I don't know.  I would have said enough to know that the things in my sleep should be over in the awaken world.  The need to tell other people to be happy, and kind.  The gladness that's often misunderstood to be the thing that you somehow have felt funny before.  Clever, wit and all the things that bother laughable things that are not really the things that make one glad. 

Tonight will be a nice night to cuddle in the arms of sleep.

MONTHS OVER LEAPING CHANGES

Have you noticed that most people got so serious this year more than any other years?  Okay, it just so happens that it is a leap year and everywhere across, a keen observant can feel that there really is something different going on.  There is the Olympics and the ever spreading confusion and clashes that happens every election year.  You can't deny how it managed to still affect everyone in the whole planet trying to keep abreast with the present goings-on across countries.  And since our country seem to have this awful sense of trying to keep this participation, in no way can we escape the heat that goes on.  Unless you'd try to live some place , some other dimension, or in some other alien part of the city, it can't really affect you unless you make it so.  But then we are all a part of this universe.  The universe that sells its wonder to us everyday and the international network that has managed to play a very big part of our lives.  It sometimes get so tiresome though.  

FULL PLEDGE

What's Going On?  What does it take to be a full-pledged architect? I am still bewildered.  They say or I have read once that the key is not to ask permission.  I may misunderstood the fact that out here, an architecture student needs to graduate from college and then take the board exams after taking an apprenticeship with a licensed architect.  It did not work out that way for a lot of us down here.  I know for a fact that some of the architecture students even started working or have undergone training as an apprentice since their first year (freshman year).  If not a whole lot of us, then quite a few if you insist.  I may not understand the reality that goes on as this happens, but of course, one can never be that expectant. Advocates of the never ending arguments may prove unnecessary since each and every one of them students don't have the same predicament or family dilemma pertaining their need to study and finish, out of respect of their own interests, abilities, capabilities, capacities & from peer pressure.  The school must have been more than happy to oblige with their need just to keep them safer, keep them safe from their own selves.  Making them a more knowledgeable and  productive member of the society.

But what if that system, however good the intention may be, could or would be that very same thing that prevented him or her to reach his or her very best potential.  Wherein the student, could or would have had just said no to all the goings on outside school, and just focused on his own goal.  But however hard the student may have to insist to that ideal notion, the reality seem not to work well with him.  While studying in college, there is this pressure to have the ability for him and his or her peers to pay for the tuition fees and all the necessary needs to stay in school.  And it takes a super humanoid robot to be that careful not to be influenced by his or her own environment.  It is impossible for say a real student to just keep a blind eye to the reality that goes on around him.  It may be possible for those who do not really care.  For those students who seem to have that ignorance to just keep to themselves however much distractions that set in.  It is like the nature and the conflict of the study.  Who knows some other student on a doctorate course must be studying about how this problem persisted in my time?  

But it was real hard to stay focus back then. I have classmates who never seem to have that same determination as I had.  I have classmates who had children way early than they were suppose to.  Unaware of their behavior, almost laughable.  One can't help but just be amazed about the madness.  I have this group of classmates,  one classmate who seem to keep asking me about the answers to the  math problems he had.  Sometimes he would even go out of the room, brought his test paper along with him, and made me answer the test questions outside.  It was really quite embarrassing for him before but I kept wondering why he never really felt that bad before, bringing me in to this state of wonder.  His case was sort of like another guy who just had a child and in no way do we have to settle it but just to help him.  And of course he was more than happy to help in other ways he can.  But all along we became friends, and I eventually became the godfather of one of his child. Of course he was more than happy to keep accompanying me on our saddest days, just as some other classmates who seem to have been closer to each other, and I  always did feel

like the outsider.   

As  we did try and manage to fight for it.  Architecture school is sort of different in so many ways. I'm not really sure how it was with other generations.  But the rooms were quite a few before but it grew much to my amazement.  Before I could even try and go outside it and play music, in a band, with some other group of friends.  Somehow another group needed that exclusivity.  That needed exclusive apart from another group. That gang culture, that group culture, that essence of a tribe.  

But the rooms seem not to stay the same as time goes by, and as we progressed.  Learning locations were set to another place, another environment, different atmospheres.  We adjusted, we were set closer to the Engineering, bringing us to a little more hostile environments.  We see more of nature, and lesser of the cityscape.  We had to walk more further than we used to.  We also had to see more face pollution.  More people to see along the way, along the walk to school.  And stairs got much higher, higher, wooden floors became concretes and students became a lot more than one can expect.  It was like heaven before especially when it rains, showers.

Books were at bay at the library, there's a lot to get lost upon.  Classmates became jumbled up, subjects piled up, and apprenticeship became something to brag about, almost like a full time job.  Walk and walk and walk and walk.  The transport seem to evade me, I needed my own transportation which did not materialize until now. I lost the will to mobilize that fast. There were more conversations that made more sense during walks to and fro.  Teachers were like Gods.  Classmates were like brothers and sisters and bosses were like godfathers. What's going on? This does not need to end I say.

But look at how funny how things work out in the end.

PRETTY CONCRETE FIXATED REINFORCED MASONRY PERSUASION

There really is a big difference,,hmmmm not that big though.. when you get to go out and see more of what you drew on paper is about to be built or to be constructed, to be laid out as something tangibly, concretely real.  Out here we call it "the actual".  Yes, like everything done before is not done actually, if you know what I mean.  But hey it is fun.

Say you have this task where you had to build a flight of stairs.  Like the kind which has a landing in between.  What do they call that kind of set of stairs again? Yes, the rectangular kind, with the landing?  And so, (construction proper)  if you try to be so meticulous about it, it will take a lot of time.  But if you just try to just think of it like clay, or just blocks, or molding a jello, with bones or sticks as structural members inside, that's it!

And there is that partnership with the foreman.  I also have heard about why do engineers and architects keep passing on the great task of manul labor by passing it on to the foreman.  It seems that it is the usual kind of buzz that hangs around every construction task.  And in no way do I need to complain about this hierarchy.  It's like a ball that gets passed to another player, to another player, to another player , and zoomed for a slamdunk.

CLEAN CLEAR, OH DEAR

It cannot be denied.  Words.  This is a year that's just too hot.  And it rains.  The only thing to do for me is just breathe in, breathe out.   But if you try not to care so much and just continue with what is in store for each and everyone.  I do not believe that we will have to panic.

This would sound like the way a person would feel if he or she is suddenly put into a very hard situation at work.  Say a construction task. Or maybe a major urban development.  A major structural endeavor hanging in the balance.  They say we basically have only two ways to go.  Vertically and Horizontally.  I think it is the safest way to build. Most that is built for horizontal use is for transport, and vertical is for people.   There is still a lot to think about the architectural possibilities of a nation.  The question is whether we have the vision to pull on through, or would we much prefer to remain as we are.

TRUTH BRUSH

Today is the last day for the month of May, the 31st.  As I just got up from bed, pangs of hunger is starting at the pit of my stomach, hmmm belly.  As I am writing this piece, playing music in the background, something from a Math Rock band "And So I Watch You From Afar".  Like compressed inside your belly, we or I do can just blow it all out, fart it out.  The string of thoughts that could prove otherwise when you are hungry can differ after or during every meal.  Hmmm.  Let's try to deduce about that.

Skip that thought.  Hmmm. Okay, now am brushing my teeth using my Oral-B toothbrush,, yup of course with a toothpaste.  And whenever thoughts keep racing inside my head, I always get this feeling that I have to write about it.  Put it into paper or something, to appreciate my own wit afterward.  And just smile or just feel glad about it, to feel blessed with this skill.  To somehow have the sense of putting thoughts into paper,  To write about it. How wonderful!  Right? So I won't have to keep using my voice, my teeth, my mouth, my lips, my tongue, my nose, my head, my heart to express it.  Some may have to keep it inside themselves.

Like a story that does not need to be told, or a story that needs to be told. It is just something, something stealth, a light that kept us on our feet each day. Like something that happened years ago that needs to be told.  Like something that could be exaggerated or with details left untold, forgotten. 

ZONE ROCKS

The way things or tasks happen around here really is not that different with other environments.  Well that is what the zoning is for I guess.  Zones, not the twilight kind of zone.  The Residential, Commercial. Institutional and Industrial zones.  Every city or province has to have this classification.  No, of course I am not the first to play this game.  It has been decided long before and during I was studying in school.  And in no way do I or want or can change it anyway.   Like they were the authority, authorized, the most competent to do so.   I believe they had to be the best , hand-picked for the never-ending pursuit of happiness, order and beauty in the land.

RELATIONS: OCCUPANCIES

I may have read it.  Yes, I have, had & of course understood it.  The way it has to be practiced, the Architecture industry along with Engineering, Business, Health, Economics, etecetera , etcetera, etcetera.   Why it had to be so much like a very complicated thing to do, maybe that is why the Professional Practice has to be very meticulous in nature, to the point where some may prove unnecessary.  Panic sets in to some professionals who can't handle grace under pressure.  The question of who is going to be responsible for doing this , or doing that.  The confusion of who is going to have to be picked out to be chosen as to who'll be awarded for a commission.  

And after doing so, meaning, to accept the responsibility for a project to be done properly, would mean a certain amount of formality, modesty, honesty, integrity, & decency.  It had to be decided though that through all of these  requirements built up by an enforcing authority which can or may prove to be really necessary, can produce an "obra".  

Analogies and inspirations from nature, the need for it.  The overwhelming need.  That overwhelming call of the times.   That trend, fad, I think holds supreme, because of the presence of the present which can't be denied.  That thing obfuscated obviously had to be presented.

EDUCATION IS NOT A CRIME, RIGHT?

Tell me if I am wrong but I need someone to point this out clearly to me. Somebody needs to prove to me that "Education is not a crime." I have always been at this helm of trying to understand everything around me. But of course exhaustion does set in at some point. I can't keep learning things. I need to show you why that I have done all my best and had to leave school, the world of learning. It means that I have done my best and my best was always good enough for me. Everything else is just a distraction, a comparison, a translation, another perception, an angle, a twist. I need the freedom from competition. I need the freedom to not agree. I need the freedom to do things the way I want it to go at my own schedule.

SOMETHING IN THE AIR

There is always something in the air.  It is not in the water nor in the river, the oceans, seas, streams, brook, lake.  There's just something in the air.  Come on.  Smell it.  Breathe in and breathe out.  Come on, something that can't be heard but keeps calling.  

Let's keep working, making money when we just don't need it. Forget the news, no, don't forget the news just don't believe everything it says.  How surprising how some things can end.  Some season or some trend that keeps coming back.  Come on.  It does do come back, it's like a memory, it's like something you can never forget.  Like your name that they keep calling you, popping up, your nickname that obscures your real name.  Might just be your birthday.  Come on, no one can really forget their birthdays.  How about the day the Christmas falls on? Or that food that keeps bugging you, your mother's breath,  your father's arms, you teacher's smile, your brother's laugh, your sister's eyes, your family. 

Somewhere somebody misses their own family.  I just wonder sometimes how would someone define a family these days.  Does a family include a dog? A cat?  Do your houses need to have cars? Some kind of transportation like a bicycle?  At some point if somebody plans to have one, a family besides the one he or she is being tortured upon, has to decide to build a house, a place for reconciliation, for solitude, for serenity.  

And thereupon as one decides for it, will it make life easier?  Will it ever be the same again? Well, who knows?  Life is getting stranger and stranger everyday.  And the music still keeps playing reminding us what we should believe to be right and truthful. Something that keeps holding the torch for a light that never goes out and the strength that is within. Hey, have you lost your hearts, your arms, your fingers, your head? Your head is still there I suppose.