To the Graduates: A time capsule of life and advice

From a time when we could attend commencements in person and get sunburned. Photo by the author.

"Bloom where you're planted."

// attributed to St. Frances of Sales, Bishop of Geneva (1567-1622)

Graduation ceremonies were pretty different this year. Instead of baking under the sun or freezing in the rain, friends and family members sat in front of their computers, dressed in their caps and gowns. Their names were not mispronounced in front of their classmates and colleagues. Speeches were shorter than usual, since giving (or watching) Zoom speeches can be ... well, you know. Acting as dean, my cousin moved the tassel of his daughter’s mortarboard from one side to the other. She and many others have graduated, but this year's milestone was muted by pandemic, injustice, and unrest.

In these strange times, I offer the words of friends who, four years ago, shared glimpses of their college lives with me. For various reasons, those words had been forgotten and unread until now -- but I am so glad I rediscovered this treasure trove. Although these friends wrote during pre-pandemic times, their stories remain relevant. They spoke of uncertainty and disillusionment. They spoke of hope, and even assurance, in the midst of the expanse of life ahead of them.

Here I have included a curated portion of their responses, which are lightly edited but still speak for themselves. I only regret that, for attention span's sake, I am not able to include more of the words and stories I received. (I originally asked sixteen questions.) Some of the participants permitted me to use their first names or first initials, while others chose to remain anonymous. See the bottom of the post for some more information about them.

Whether you are in the class of 2020, the class of 2016, or are simply going through a transition, I invite you to explore this time capsule with me.

And in the time-honored tradition of graduation songs that stir up memories and nostalgia, I've included some musical accompaniment for this look to the past, in order to look forward.

Miscellanea, etc. / 17 Feb 2017

I've had a string of flare ups in the last couple weeks and have been spending more time at home than I would have hoped. Thanks to technology, though, here is a smattering of miscellanea that has kept me occupied in my couch-bound days:

/ / /

_ SCARS ARE BEAUTIFUL

Rachel Sussman, “Study for Sidewalk Kintsukuroi #01 (New Haven, Connecticut)” (via Hyperallergic)

“Cracks represent something in need of attention, and the surfaces we walk, bike, and drive over are usually overlooked until they’re in truly critical condition,” Sussman said. “By gilding them, it’s a way to see what’s around us with fresh eyes and to celebrate perseverance.”

Artist Rachel Sussman takes the Japanese tradition of kintsukuroi, repairing ceramics with gold, to the more macro scale of the floor, the sidewalk. I can't help but be drawn to her careful attention to the scars in our cities. Her work is currently part of an exhibition on gold at the Des Moines Art Center. (via Hyperallergic; emphasis my own)

Late night tracks / Fantastic Negrito

These days if I can't fall asleep, the last thing I want to do is stare at a computer screen. There are all kinds of studies these days that talk about the havoc wreaked by screens and modern electronics on our sleep cycles (for teens and the rest of us).

But here I am again, and my music of choice tonight is Fantastic Negrito. I might have first heard about him on NPR, but those are vague recollections. It was his first single, "About a Bird" (above), that hauntingly drew me in. I bookmarked it. I also bookmarked an article on Consequence of Sound, detailing his life story and the genesis of his album The Last Days of Oakland. I read it. I was intrigued. I then kept going, listening to the album in its entirety. I took a chance on him.

Unexpected London fog

A "London Fog" brightens up a day in Boston

I find God in the unexpected,
those situations that seemed trivial:
a passing comment,
a line from a movie,
an image on a screen.
Serendipity turns spiritual in unguarded moments
because God chooses to speak to me
through the unexpected.

 

_ Kwasi Kena, in The Africana Worship Book, Year C

A friend of mine often reminds me to look for and savor the little joys of life.  Lately, though, I've found this harder to do.

After two weeks of being relatively home-bound due to recent health complications, I've gotten fed up with blobbing on the couch while the world seems to speed on by.  Don't get me wrong -- I do still love my Food Network and podcasts, which have been constant sources of entertainment while I haven't been able to do much else.  But this life standstill has also felt like another endless roundabout in an even longer journey to my goals.

Today, though, I was able to do a bit more than in recent days.  The Tall Man and I took advantage of this crisp autumn day -- a relief from recent rains -- and sojourned across the bridge into Boston.  Our destination was one of my favorite cafes, Pavement Coffeehouse.

Although I was exhausted by the time we got there, the aroma of freshly-brewed coffee cleared some of that brain fog.  I knew I wanted tea -- after all, it was technically tea time -- but instead of my usual herbal option, I took a detour when the barista mentioned a drink called the "London Fog."  It's really just a dressed up Earl Grey tea latte (with milk, vanilla, and perhaps a sweetener), but the name and the add-ins made it the perfect treat to crown this excursion.

I had mine made with soy milk, so some might say this rendition was a cross between a Manchester Fog and Winter Fog (according to this list-happy Wiki).  And the drink actually originated in Vancouver, Canada, despite its British-leaning moniker.  Whatever.  I didn't discover these facts until I returned home.  In the moment, I just savored the sweet smells of vanilla and honey, intermixed with the citrus-y freshness of bergamot.

Deep breath.  Ahh ...  (smile)

It was in that moment that my friend's words came to mind.  This little glimmer -- a London Fog moment right here and now -- was there to put some joy in my heart.  I needed it.  Or I needed to be able to see it.

This honest poem by Kwasi Kena, professor at Wesley Seminary (and jazz pianist!), well captures that delight of small discovery, of finding the divine in the mundane.

Head to the Upper Room to read the full poem, included in one of their daily devotionals.  It's worth it!

Heard @ MIT / Energy

// Heard @ MIT:

Long-locks: “Revolving or normal door?”

Sharp-dresser: “Revolving, obviously - it conserves energy.”

pause

Sharp-dresser: “… But of course, energy is always conserved.”

Long-locks laughs, and they both enjoy a very MIT chuckle.

Normalizing Wonder Woman

A new year, new resolutions, and new reads.  A quote that recently struck me:

"I realized that there was a power in telling these goofy, crazy, messy stories from my life. I started experimenting with that mode of storytelling in the book. It was therapy for me, first of all, to put some of this stuff on paper. But I think it worked, at some level. What I’ve heard from many readers of the book is that it validated some of their own struggles. That has been a good thing for me to hear. It was scary to put some of this stuff out there. But I think what I began to understand when I was writing it, and I’ve definitely understood since the book came out, is that everybody has these stories. Everybody has the breast pump. Everybody has the moments where they are ready to kill their husband and their hair is horrible. They are blowing the presentation because their kid had to poop last night. The more we can get these stories out there without turning this into a massive sobbing event, it just normalizes the image of Wonder Woman, which is a much better place to be than perpetuating this myth of perfection."

Debora Spar, president of Barnard College
Interview by Knowledge@Wharton, "Debora Spar on Women’s (Impossible) Quest for Perfection"


Last summer, I started writing a life update.  Now, I'm still writing it and hopefully will finish soon.  Spar's interview reminded me that we all, do indeed, have these crazy stories from our imperfect lives.  It hasn't been easy for me to write this update, especially since my goal is to somehow express in a coherent, non-sentimental, yet honest way of how my last 2 years have been, especially in struggles related to health.  It's hard to write about this stuff.  It's messy.  I've written so many drafts and not even bothered to proofread my earlier versions because they sounded so not like how I wanted to sound.  But accounts like Spar's and others motivate me.  Writing has been a type of therapy -- getting thoughts down on paper (or screen), figuring out to share them, validating that they are personal and valuable.  Each word written is another step in the right direction.

Getting the fun stuff done first

In thinking about how to work on creative projects:

“Some people will disagree, but for me if I’ve written a meaty, delightful, wonderful bunch of scenes and now I have to do the hard, connective, dog’s body work of writing, when I finish the dog’s body work, I’ll have a screenplay that I already love.   I used to write chronologically when I started, from beginning to end.  Eventually I went, That’s absurd; my heart is in this one scene, therefore I must follow it. Obviously, if you know you have a bunch of stuff to do, I have to lay out this, all this dull stuff, and I feel very uncreative but the clock is ticking. Then you do that and you choose to do that. But I always believe in just have as much fun as you can so that when you’re in the part that you hate there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, that you’re close to finished.”

Joss Whedon

"How to be Prolific: Guidelines for Getting it Done from Joss Whedon"

Humble thyself

Although I usually don't believe in these "n-step" programs (5 ways to improve your health, 10 steps to freedom, etc.), I found the excerpt below on humility to make me stop and think about my worst habits and how to not be so me-centric:

"The best recipe for humility I know of was put together by a dear friend whom I deeply respect. … It suggests that besides waiting for God to act in our lives, we need to commit ourselves to stop doing three things:

1. We need to stop pretending to be what we know we are not. At some point in our growing-up years we make the powerful discovery that we can manipulate the truth about ourselves in order to look good. … If we feel inadequate, we can pretend to be self-sufficient. If we are sad, we can put on a happy face. If life is falling apart, we can look as if we have everything together. Giving up these attempts at pretending puts our feet firmly on the path toward a truer humility. 
2. We need to stop presuming that we are more important than other people. One way in which we can do this is by disciplining ourselves to serve others quietly, without applause. … 
3. We need to stop pushing our will onto others. In Step Three we looked at our deep-seated instinct to be controlling and to play the part of God ourselves. We often tend to do this in our close relationships. Think of how we try to straighten out others, fix them with our solutions, or get them to do what we want them to do. It can be quite humbling to realize that only God actually knows what is best for those around us. The best that we can do, most of the time, is just to be there for them, to listen to what they are going through, and perhaps to ask some questions that could help them know what to do next."

// Trevor Hudson, from One Day at a Time

"I,Steve" on creativity

"Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.”

Steve Jobs, in Wired magazine, February, 1996

Originally quoted in Brain Pickings

What you know when traveling

"In Beijing, the joke among hacks is that, after the drive in from the airport, you are ready to write a column; after a month, you feel the stirrings of an idea-book; but after a year, you struggle to write anything at all, because you’ve finally discovered just how much you don’t know."

From "On Slow Journalism" by Evan Osnos in the New Yorker

[the big day] Married indeed

"If I get married, I want to be very married."

// Audrey Hepburn

Indeed!  :)

Misplaced audience + other news

“Sometimes, I can’t tell if they’re talking to potential clients, or to other architects.”

marketing consultant Richard Staub, 

in response to star-chitects' websites with too much opaque language, aka "archispeak"

from Architectural Record, on the good and bad of architecture firms' websites

My answer: They're probably talking to architecture students.

Other articles of note:

-- Forbes' coverage of the rise of women entrepreneurs

-- Huffington Post on the perpetuating salary gender gap

-- Hoping to be more productive?  Me too!  Some tips from the NYTimes Small Business Summit

-- Using boredom to our advantage in the 99% blog post on its connections with creativity

Staring London in the eye

A bus advert that had amused me all those years ago.

A no-nonsense anti-guide to London (one of our honeymoon stops):

"... You want stiff-lipped men in bowler hats and cheeky cockneys with their thumbs in their waistcoats and fish on their heads. 

I’m sorry, but they’re not here anymore. No city’s exported image lags so far behind its homegrown veracity than London’s, so let’s start with what you’re not going to find. We’re all out of cheeky cockneys, pearly kings and their queens, and costermongers. You’re not going to find ’60s psychedelia and the Beatles in Carnaby Street. There aren’t any punks under 50 on the King’s Road; there are no more tweedy, mustachioed, closeted gay writers in Bloomsbury, no Harry Potter at King’s Cross. There aren’t men in white tie, smoking cigars outside Pall Mall clubs and there isn’t any fog, but you can find Sherlock Holmes’s house on Baker Street." 

// A.A. Gill, in his NYTimes' article "A Profile of London"

 What ... no fog?!  No fish on cockneys' heads?!

Just kidding.  The fog part (amongst other things) I can attest to firsthand.  I was studying abroad in Paris in the spring of 2005.  For our semester break, I ventured to London to visit my friend Jackie.  Paris had been dulled by constant rain and clouds, but just as my plane crossed the Channel, the skies broke open and I was greeted by all sun and cheer in the UK.  Talk about breaking stereotypes.

At least we'll be able to find Sherlock.  Phew.

- - -

As a little epilogue, another photo from the past, evidence that London - although perhaps not so foggy - is still indeed windy:

From the top of St. Paul's - a long but worthy hike for the view.

On the tall man's return

Me : You're back!
The tall man fiance : Is it sweaty?
Me : < laughter >
Tall man : Oh ... you meant ...
Me : Yes, you ARE back.


Both of us, immediately afterward : We should tell L and J !

Thanks to our favorite antagonistic Asian/white couple for the inspiration.  This is a tribute to you.  We might need to work on our insults, but after all, we're only just engaged.  There's still time.

- - -
Text font : Savoye LET, with Nueva Condensed for emphasis

Be still

I came across this recent NYTimes Opinion piece and found it quite insightful, especially during the Christmas holiday time leading up to New Year's Day when we are split between the frenzy of gifts and company and the reflection of resolutions and years-in-review.  This quote struck me in particular:

"When telegraphs and trains brought in the idea that convenience was more important than content — and speedier means could make up for unimproved ends — Henry David Thoreau reminded us that “the man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages.” Even half a century ago, Marshall McLuhan, who came closer than most to seeing what was coming, warned, “When things come at you very fast, naturally you lose touch with yourself.” Thomas Merton struck a chord with millions, by not just noting that “Man was made for the highest activity, which is, in fact, his rest,” but by also acting on it, and stepping out of the rat race and into a Cistercian cloister."

// Pico Iyer, "The Joy of Quiet," 29 Dec 2011

Perhaps this is a secular call to a Sabbath?

Being in graduate school in architecture has made the idea and practice of rest both one of my greatest longings as well as the greatest challenges to achieve when surrounded by pressures to be productive - every moment of every day.  Simply taking time out of the day to pray, to read a leisure book, to take a quick walk outside, to eat a full meal at the table with no distractions or multitasking - are challenges to the idea of "pressing on," but I've realized are disciplines that can make me more productive and less strained, if I choose to do them.

I still need to reflect on this past year and this past semester in particular, but one thing I know is that I don't want to repeat the anxious frenzy that characterized my fall, but remember the "joy of quiet" even in the midst of work and busyness for the spring.

Don't talk, just do

"... it’s true that when we talk about our work, we give ourselves the feeling that we are working on something when truthfully, we aren’t."

and other thoughts on creativity from Donald Miller,
author of Blue Like Jazz

On creative work

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through." 

// Ira Glass, host of This American Life (via FreshAir)

 The nature of long hours resides with creatives, not just 'crazy' architects.

A bit on Ira's history:
Ira Glass started working in public radio in 1978, when he was 19, as an intern at NPR's headquarters in DC. Over the next 17 years, he worked on nearly every NPR news show and did nearly every production job they had: tape-cutter, desk assistant, newscast writer, editor, producer, reporter, and substitute host. He spent a year in a high school for NPR, and a year in an elementary school, filing stories for All Things Considered. He moved to Chicago in 1989 and put This American Life on the air in 1995.

Gratitude ... of sorts

 “Thank you, first sheet of a new toilet paper roll that won’t tear off evenly so I have to scratch and claw and shred three layers of the roll just to get the thing started. But that’s cool. I think I’ll have the last laugh, since I know where you’re ending up."

From "Thank You Notes" by Jimmy Fallon, recently published and quoted in the NYTimes

Maybe it IS easy to write a book after all ...

Summer reading list

from two summers ago, a lovely retreat to an urban beach

"The best summer reading I did in the past was in 1993 — I was working my butt off at a Chinese restaurant in Tuscaloosa, Ala., but I stole some time to read Ezra Pound, Emily Dickinson and William Faulkner on the greasy kitchen floor. Literature had never been tastier."

- Yunte Huang,
author of Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective
and His Rendezvous with American History

This great quote, from a compilation of authors' summer reading reflections, really encapsulates my attitude towards summer reading.  Although I don't always enjoy it with greasy Chinese food, the tastiness of words when you have the luxury of time to enjoy them is a sensation that I really miss during the hectic semester.

I haven't yet put together my own list of summer reads yet, although I imagine it may include some travel narratives, catching up on a peppering of blogs, Haitian Creole lessons, a beta read of a friend's new fantasy novel, maybe some foodie Michael Pollan or brainy Oliver Sachs... and/or countless selections from the many books on my shelf here at home that I've picked up over the years at library and sidewalk book sales but have yet to read.  (That last category will likely take me several summers to get through.  The plight of a loose-fingered reader who perpetually feels sorry for 'orphaned' books.)

What's on your summer reading list?

Revealing through raindrops

Photo by Tarsem Saini, via Desi Comments

While reading about Oliver Sachs' new book The Mind's Eye and perusing some of his research / articles, I came across the story of John Hull, who recorded his experiences and reflections as he lost his vision and then while living as a newly blinded person.  I read an excerpt from this collection entitled Touching the Rock, and his description of rain and what that means is incredibly poignant ... never thought of it in that way.  Perhaps my own senses, even as a completely able-bodied person, need honing to hear nature's concealed symphony.

One particular passage :

I hear the rain pattering on the roof above me, dripping down the walls to my left and right, splashing from the drainpipe at ground level on my left, while further over to the left there is a lighter patch as the rain falls almost inaudibly upon a large leafy shrub. On the right, it is drumming, with a deeper, steadier sound upon the lawn. I can even make out the contours of the lawn, which rises to the right in a little hill. The sound of the rain is different and shapes out the curvature for me. ... Over the whole thing, like light falling upon a landscape is the gentle background patter gathered up into one continuous murmur of rain.

I think that this experience of opening the door on a rainy garden must be similar to that which a sighted person feels when opening the curtains and seeing the world outside. Usually, when I open my front door, there are various broken sounds spread across a nothingness. I know that when I take the next step I will encounter the path, and that to the right my shoe will meet the lawn. ...  I know all these things are there but I know them from memory. ... The rain presents the fullness of an entire situation all at once, not merely remembered, not in anticipation, but actually and now...

If only rain could fall inside a room, it would help me to understand where things are in that room, to give a sense of being in the room, instead of just sitting on a chair.

This is an experience of great beauty. I feel as if the world, which is veiled until I touch it, has suddenly disclosed itself to me. I feel ! that the rain is gracious, that it has granted a gift to me, the gift of the world...

from RAIN 9 September 1983, in Touching the Rock
(italics are my own)