Time

However strong I wish to appear to everybody around me (for some reason...), I feel that I cannot keep it up. I am NOT doing fine. I am not eternally happy. I crack up at the smallest things and wonder what the heck is going on around me. I wish I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it somehow is not appearing. I am static, however much I'd love to be capable of moving on swiftly.

This is going to take time.

hmm..

I'll try again, and then hope that this time it lasts :.)

light through windows

Although things have been dark recently, and I have been split between feelings of emancipation and deep heartwracking pain, I am in relatively good spirits. I had a week in Brussels, treating myself to that most precious of all things: time. And cake, but more about that later.

I stayed at a pleasant hostel, and tried to come to terms with the happy and spirited vibes in such a place, full of young (American) travellers in Europe for the first time. Difficult when you've been crying your eyes out for three days. But it was actually delightful to hang out with them, nobody knowing of all the woes that were at the back of my head. I did my best to be cheerful, but did get moments of feeling ancient and dull. Oh well, nothing new about that.

I managed to walk basically all over the "pentagon" that makes up inner city Brussels, coming across flea markets,the botanical gardens,patisséries with lovely cakes,
cosy cafées, an urban design exhibition (imagine just bumping into something like that!), a Hergé museum (tintin, eh?), oodles of chocolate shops... The city has a wonderful, walkable scale, and I felt very comfortable walking around for hours on end, losing myself in the sunny, winding streets.

After one night and two full days bound to a youth hostel, S. came back from Denmark, meaning that I could move into her's and A.'s apartment. Admittedly, I intended on getting my head straight when I left for Brussels, but the opportunity to simply forget about it all (at least for several consecutive hours) was too nice. The garden is lovely, and I made good use of it.


This post is a lot more cheery than I imagined it might be when I started. That's just me I guess. But things are changing a lot right now, and it has been and will continue to be difficult to deal with. It's like losing the frame of my life, and needing to piece together the contents as well. Me.

new look

...less gloomy perhaps..

the neverending story...

I remember hearing about a book, written with red and green ink, and which would continue in a coherent fashion if you were to re-start it once finished. I was very fascinated by this and naturally read it as soon as I could ahold of it. I read virtually anything I could get my hands on back then, incuding the dictionary and any obscure mathematical/feminist books stored by my parents. Amazing as the book was, I didn't have the energy to re-read the book after the first go, at least not more than a few pages. I was however striken by the weaving of story lines and time that was necessary in order to create this endless loop of a book.

Now I find myself in a situation, that seems similar. Whenever I "finish" something, I need to redo it. Doing my portfolio for this semester, I am virtually redoing it all (and I am sure that I could easily redo it all once more when I am done) in order to make it just remotely attractive to the tutors. Perhaps not "just" like in the book, but the general drift is there. This is one long year of studies. And I am NOT impressed by the weaving and general messiness of this course.

∞

edited to add...

UD overdose?

Even though I seriously (err, relatively seriously) considered changing my career into that of a house wife the day before the crit, a few days of relaxing can do a lot for a struggling mind.

It was quite inspiring to see the other students' work during the two crit-days, a lot of very different ground is being covered. However, there is a strong tendency towards landscape/ecological systems/land tracings etc. My project is also in this field, dealing with the meeting of town and countryside in all kinds of ways. The project seeks to create a new form of city that is based on an analytical and relational reading and interpretation of landscape and town. Existing and desired building blocks of nature (hedgerows, watercourses, path systems, enclaves of plants) and of town (a variety of building typologies, programmes) are used to create an overlay that generates the new development. This is guided by basic principles of sustainability, connectivity, an inter-relational evolution between the town and the countryside. Really quite interesting. Unfortunately, due to time issues, we didn't manage to conclude the process, which was and is still very frustrating... Now that the crit's over, it's time to move on to the portfolio hand-in next Friday.. A week after that, the submission of a 6000 word essay, and a week later another crit. This time we're to propose the subject of our thesis project and report... Another 3 busy weeks ahead.

Perhaps I'll have a relapse to my desire to become a house wife during that period.