we call it architorture.

architecture studio x-actos our hearts up, slices them into tiny models of mismatched homes, and fucking slams on em like godzilla rocking the electric slide. life as an architecture major leaves you perpetually lost, struggling to solidify dreams into cubic inches of cardboard and concrete (but always left with toy models too tiny to inhabit.)

we don't sleep so we forget how our eyelids work.

nightlives are spent with a hand saw and a glue gun (how sexy is that?) no one uses x-acto knives because they just can't cut things quick enough. superglue is for suckers, epoxy is the poison of choice. the gnaw of hand saws becomes the soundtrack to our lives. we brag at parties about how we can bend steel bar with our bear hands.

home for me used to be a studio desk lit by a dusty fluorescent light bulb, souls of mischief gently dangling out of a low-tuned radio.

you get crazy when you're tied down to one place for too long:

a gsi once told me to "SHUT UP" when I busted a spoken word poem during an architecture presentation (stuffy shindigs... but free cheese!) but someone yelled "KEEP GOING!" so I did (afterwards, someone came up to me and said "i never seen an asian rap before." i replied "you gotta get out more.")

one night, shaheen dared me to breakdance on an architecture desk so I said "sure" and got up and spun around like a dradle made out of a bell pepper (almost kick flipping my neighbor's model into a thousand bits.)

once, a hummingbird got caught on our floor and couldn't get out for four days, dan and i looked at each other and just nodded - "poor fucker," we thought. we made a bird's net out of failed sketch drawings, baited it, and chased it into the day (these studios are unfit for any bird or beast.)



but last year, i left studio with the sort of frustration that sour your bones yellow, my throat choked with curse words and i picked up a habit of punching walls. i screamed so loud one night the sun must have risen early to tell me to STFU!!! (when was the last time you let out a REALLY good scream?)

it was heartbreak, man, and i didn't want to go through it again.

but today, strolling through a corridor full of tiny models of buildings, the strangest thing: i missed it. sauder my lips shut, i really did.


(architecture grad school? ... naaaaaaah.)