Midnight Train to Georgia

i Can't get enough soul and funk these days.

ii Just won't stop wearing black leggings because they go with everything.

iii Miss my gramma.

iv Looking for part-time job -- maybe building stuff?

v Good job, city of Berkeley, for standing up for the Kyoto Protocol; not every American city likes to regress the country further into indiscriminate pollution and waste. Thanks for representing something tangibly good. The citizens of the US are not a homogeneous bastion of ignorance!

vi Eating regular meals is super good. Cabbage salad -- who knew it could be so tasty?

vii As deduced from the lecture he delivered tonight at Dwinelle, Tadao Ando might not be the misanthrope I thought he was (as according to rumors). He seems like a pretty cool guy. Evidently, he thinks people into money are "dead." I adore that he never went to architecture school and hung out with Gutai artists. I think it means he was mostly free from the academic pressure, mimickry, and dogma, and able to think on his own with his ideas ideologically unpolluted, architecture books and travels of his choosing. Outcome: an unrelenting minimalism with iconoclastic, signature form; freedom from excess. You can't mistake his stuff for anyone else's.

Can you still do that these days? Is there hope that, if you are talented, and without going through the typical avenues, be built? Alas, IDP/licensing/prestigious grad school/wealthy clients (how many people really appreciate it for what it is?) ... Ando is an inspiration for us who are bound to make mistakes.