Categories
Travel

Yesterday we were in Milan

We woke up saying that the first morning at home in Ohio. What a trip, I am  thankful we have a long weekend to think about it and settle in before work days on Monday begin.

After living out of a backsack for a month, coming home to many clothes and many chores, I consider the things I want in my life and those things that I should consider doing without. But, it’s great to come home, home to the luxury of friends and family, familiar things, common things you know to enjoy like a bath, a comfortable bed, and the corner coffee shop!

My ultimate vacation day included 4 hours of walking, a few hours of eating and in discussion with Phil, my husband, an hour or two of rest mid-day, and at least an hour to write or draw. All other time awake was left to explore a town, talk a new language, meet new friends and question a different way of life.

I went to Europe with a thought in mind -to question and write about how people spend their time. How do Italians spend their time and enjoy life? I have a stronger grasp on how I enjoy spending leisure time more than I can describe how those people I came into contact with are enjoying their lives.  Most people we met were hosting a great commodity of their local economy, by supporting tourism, serving us countless prosciutto pizza, pesto pastas and vino. Italians were driving busses, manning shops, tabaccerias or news stands. Gentleman behind the espresso bars served strong shots of coffee and liquor. Everyone kept a clean stoop. Women and their daughters hosted new travelers each day in their seven room bed and breakfasts. Women in wine country hosted five couples and small families, cooking four-course means, dinner and dessert. There were culinary boat tours off the coast of Cinque Terre held by a husband and wife team – fishers of tourists they said.

We met a lot of west coasters from the U.S. hiking in the Alps, booking their accommodations each night along the way. We met most people on their 8 week to 6 month travels all the way from around the world -down under in Australia. We had liters of wine on the sun warmed porches late into the night in Menaggio.  Off Lake Como our voices rose until almost two in the morning -two of us from Ohio, Ken from Slough, England, Stephanie from CA, Josh from Australia. We talked of healthcare and taxes, traveling and work, how we most enjoyed spending our days, family and siblings, parents and traditions, growing up and festivals, and when the chef joined us, of families in Napoli.

New people gave dimension to our meaning and thoughts. Walking with Tokeko and her husband through the gorge of the Alps leading to Interlaken, meeting a married couple our parents age over the course of a few days around Cinque Terre peaks, the Australian friends we sat next to at dinner one evening in Siena -he a contractor and she a reader and past flight attendant -we followed one another home to bedrooms that were right next to one another! We met up again a few days later in a different city. Funny how small the world could be, even when we were all moving. Train riders were great -trying to communicate with the older man who called his daughter to try to translate, the fourteen year old school girls (four of them) who were done with school at one o’clock and headed home, who thought we were Australians and then when found out we were from the U.S. assumed we were from N.Y. or Boston.

Along the way I was so fully relaxed and inspired I thought a way of tapping into that up on my return home would be just to go day by day, recalling photographs, video and my journal. Then, with the ability of the Internet now, solve some of my unanswered questions.

So, here we go, two traveling backsacks…

…into the land near where my grandfather’s family is from Giulianova, Province of Teramo, Abruzzo Italy.

Categories
Architecture

Italy, My Secret Garden

Welcome to Italy, my secret garden, iron gate doors, cobblestone courtyards, skinny women in tight black clothes.

In Como… Circling storms around the Duomo covering empty space, tourists with an agenda to experience, supporting Italians working to serve them their pranzo, lunch.

Hot spot candles melt in the dark cathedral. All the people bring in the street and the sky with their shoes. The wax collects as more and more people pray for their diseased. The echoing air cold and colorful by the only light between the clouds. Because it is apart of my unscheduled day.

Bologna, Italy…  We are in the city of vaulted archways, a city of hallways and interior courtyard lives. The porticos, for which the city is famous are pedestrian covers from the rain and sun.

Students in this ancient city commune in the few piazzas for a Friday evening to defend their scientific thoughts.

Today we may climb the 4 kilometer portico of San Lucca. It is near the Italian Football stadium.

Across Italy, and most prominent in Padova Italy where the students are, there is a fashion crisis jumping back to the 80,s! American T-shirts, tight black, green, turquoise Jordache jeans ending with their very popular Nike tennis shoes. Tennis shoes that are hot pink, orange and blue. Away from those pegged pants are the Bologna dressers. Dressers dressed in vacation, buttoned up linnen dresses, scarves and pretty sweaters. I read Walden under a lunch portico, below an old and crumbling brick sidewalk and watch the city of peole for an hour.

Categories
About Me

In Italia Now

Its good to be mixed in with other cultures

elbow rubbing with people who believe in siesta

and a different pace of life.

Society has a way of engulfing the nature of my actions.

I find myself enveloped in walking without a purpose in Italy

but remember finding it difficult to sleep in, in Ohio.

There are saturated people and buildings today in Como,

our first day in Italy. Streets are flooding near lake Como.

My husband and I are confined together under an umbrella we bought.

Only when we sit for paninis at a cafe or walk into the Duomo are we apart.

We are spending our time in the new places being aware and loving one another.

Walking, seeking, questioning, writing and acknowledging what we see and each other.

Being creative by drawing, filming and photography. Some days we physically challenge ourselves to cross mountain saddles, hike long distances and earn the views to which we rest at with great leisure, because of the endurance.

We address time with no concern but for curiosity and compare what it means to the people and places we visit.

I feel at home and at rest in Italy. I have the Adriatic Sea in my blood and it is here that I feel right and confident, relaxed and in love.

My husband appreciates this.

Even though a barrier of language exists the puzzle is a wonderous maze that seems childlike and fun with its mystery.

Even stepping from Switzerland to Italy was unannounced and seemed to pass too easily for the two of us. No one asked who we were, just directed us with sign language to follow the chained walk way, past border control offices that sat vacant.

It is a rebirth, but if only in spirit, to be here.

Categories
Poetry

Tsy Architekts en Die Alpen

Two Architects in the Alpen.

To the Alpen

Flying kisses over a black sea

the german children wake up to

church bells tolling for the long hour between

orchestras rehearsing in the tall stone walls

built up into the Zurich sky.

.

The Aplen opens form the clearing clouds

we climb steps to sit with the Suisse and clap

for the school bands play in the streets their long triumphs

.

Rounded the earth and met the sun

 a new moon in the vertical spruce forest

slippery roots and large slugs

soapstone roads up to the saddle.

Perineal waterfalls after the heavy rains

cascade into the gorge from 1000 meters.

The river becomes a lake trapped by rock

a mirror to the snow-capped secrets that hide the stars.

.

Wind carved rock, creamy white rivers

waterfalls deep in the bellows of a mountain

climb like ants carrying their weight

on the shoulder of the ridge, towns are built

with views into the face of an onlooker.

.

Well marked paths from Griesalp, Steinberg, Murren

to Gimmewald cross barn porches, beneath low slung roofs

chalet with rounded stacked wood

 four-year old blonde children gathering pine dust,

flat sump hills in the background.

.

Cow bells like plunking stones in a shallow river

hollow hills with windy skies

pine cones playing harmonic tunes thumping hollow ground

wind chimes swirling light melodies

soft sounds of the hills.

.

The direct triangular orders of The Alpen turn with each hour

a shallow spine falls 1000 ft or more on it’s underbelly.

Round the mountain curve, sunken forest paths

grass planes with small rock gravel collected by many hikers into man-made streams of way finding.

A floral ski town quiet in the September rain.

.

Spoon and bowl cupped in the mountain crown

the slanted stance of spruce held in the upraised heavens of granite rock.

Slowly stopped water dripping into rock holes

easy to live between, easy to be disoriented.

Holland hands grasp circles and surround the base of Mt. Eiger

from Griendelwald are the plains that slowly rise

to make mountains where lesser known glaciers

have come before the gorge formed

a slowly paused ocean.

Categories
About Me

The Ultimate Alpine & Tuscan Adventure

Where we will be via Google Maps.   Thanks to my girlfriend for plugging all of this information in! I can’t believe it, we leave in the morning!

I found these great blogs and architecture sites while searching for places to travel in Italy.

One of my favorite blogs to reference is Italy beyond the Obvious. What do you know? The post I read today is about biking in Italy. Tempismo Perfetto! A past post I’ve enjoyed talks about hot spots in Milano.  

To make sure I visit Aldo Rossi Architecture the online architecture guide, MiMoa, has been wonderful. 
This couple has been kissing around Ubria.
Here is a list of more hot Italian blogs I’ve been wandering through.
 
Ah, and if we need a night in to watch Architecture lying somewhere here is the Sam Mockbee Film online!
A closer view.
Categories
About Me Food & Exercise

TRI like a Girl!

What a slogan for two girls competing in their first Triathlon!  My best friend came to cheer Allison and I on as we prepared for Saturday’s Sprint Splash N’ Spin in Morgantown, WV. It was a great weekend and we finished five minutes faster than each of us estimated our time to be!

We started out the weekend by meeting at our hotel and then quickly took off to eat burritos at Black Bear.

I’d say the spinach, rice and bean burritos I ate with a handful of chips and salsa was a good combination for my race the next morning. I was worried it may be too heavy, but by the 9am start time, I was fine. A combination of hydrating well the day before and a race breakfast of peanut butter bread and banana, gave me enough energy for my race.

A race highlight for me was that we got to have our numbers written on our arm and leg. My age was written on the back of my leg, and my race number on my arm.

A few race blunders happened before we even had time to set our bikes into the transition stall. First, I got us lost getting to the race and we arrived only 40 minutes to our race time. We were supposed to be there an hour early, and even having been to a race meeting at the same place the night before, I was able to get us lost again. Then, I lost my goggles. They were found later, later than when I began swimming, in a t-shirt box in the registration area. Allison just had to throw her goggles at me when she jumped out of the pool right before I started.

I keep looking on the I Play Outside to see our individual event splits but they are not up as of this Monday morning yet. However, there are some great photos that  covered the race, the foggy morning starts and then the hot afternoon progression. Our start times were not seeded, but Allison and I did begin one heat after another. Perhaps it was organized by the timing in which we signed up for the triathlon?

We put on our numbers, got ready on the pool deck and Allison went in first. She was the first person in her heat to jump out and complete her 5 laps! Someone later commented to her that she was part fish! She had a great swim time and I was so proud of her.

Swimming that early, even if the water was cold, was wonderful. The sun was just coming up, I could see rays hitting to bottom. It was so much nicer than swimming at Bark Camp where I could not see a few feet in front of me while training. The race was run so smoothly, so well. The mood on the pool deck was calm and organized. A volunteer sat at the end of the pool counting your laps with you, which made racing a lot easier. When I began this race, after the pool whistle was sounded, I just began swimming. I have never raced in water and the swimming was my weakest event. But, I finished it, with only one flip turn, probably a lap of back stroke, and the rest breast stroke. I only hit my lane partner once, and thankfully she did not seem to mind later when I apologized.

The  biking was tough because I had not been able to ride the race course and I was not able to judge how far I was going before the turn around. The way out seemed to be mostly up hill. There was no one around me, no one to push me, so every time I saw a slightly up hill portion I tried to push it to that point. I am really eager to see what my 11 mile time was. I passed Allison on my way out, on her way back in. We passed again for the run. The run was my best event. I was by this time used to the jelly legs I have when jumping off a bike to go running. Even though the sun was hot by this time, I took the 5K race at my pace, following the even bike trail, which again I imagined more up hill on the way out than on the return. That part of the race went fast. On my way back to the finish after the turn around, I opened my stride, enjoyed the Morgantown art park signs, gave words of encouragement to those runners headed out, and finished strong. I felt great!

Allison, #112, finished in 112.09! I, #127, finished in 117.?? something! When we finished we waited around to congratulate others in our heat, we sat on the sunny hill and drank powerade. We moved to the shady trees to rest for a while and then all of a sudden it was 1 o’clock.

We checked how our race times compared to other heats and when we left Allison was 3rd in our age group, I was 6th! Overall she got 72nd, and I 107th. Very good. I was impressed that we estimated five minutes slower than our actual time! It is hard to believe that 10 weeks of training went by so quickly. Allison and I are talking about what the next goal should be. We have enjoyed the comrade of training together. I have a honeymoon that this training will help me with. I will think of her while climbing the alps with my husband. When I return we will determine how to keep in shape over a snowy winter!

Categories
About Me Food & Exercise

Sprinters, Splashers & Spinners… it is time!

What has two hundred, sixty-three participants, involves fitting your head in a tiny red cap, and promotes racing through Morgantown? Why it’s the 2010 Sprint Splash N’ Spin!

My good friend and I have completed ten weeks of training, as shown by my refrigerator calendar.

We averaged exercising at least three times a week, which among work and social weekends fit in with no room to spare.

After three months of training, biking countless miles around our Ohio town, running the bike trail from end to end, and finding a different pool to swim laps in, we are ready to compete.

We found four different places to swim while training.  The Wellness Center in Wheeling, The YMCA of Wheeling, Memorial Park pool if we were feeling lucky on middle school night that we wouldn’t have to dodge teenagers the entire time, and the lake at Bark Camp.  The lake allowed us to train for all three events last Saturday, August 21st. We swam, changed into our biking clothes, took off in the rain for a fifty minute ride and then concluded the day with a 20 minute run. We think training on our hills will give us an advantage for this race that is mainly over a rail trail.

There are three of us together for the weekend. Two of us competing, and the third gal, my best friend, (who just started her own blog) will be there to motivate and inspire our competition edge. She may even make a hot pink sign.

I am looking forward to writing my number in marker on my arm.  This will be my first sprint Triathlon on my own and today I have mixed feelings of nervousness and excitement. Now, it is time to go find a big salad with spinach for lunch.

I thought hanging this second place metal over my rear view mirror would give my training partner a kick. We won these metals on a triathlon team together in April and I thought it would bring us good luck or at least smiles while we are on our drive down there today.

Categories
About Me Architecture Resolutions

Traveling Thoughts

On my drive to work today a friend and I discussed progress and balance. How do you judge your progress? Is it accomplishing your daily plan you set out for yourself each morning? Is it taking the time to accomplish your resolutions, exercising more, knowing what you eat, doing something creative everyday? Is it knowing what makes you happy? I know that writing, drawing, reading, traveling, attending lectures and deep conversations make me happy. So, why is it that in the pathway to progress my tedious work gets in the way? I love design work when I can dream of how to make someone’s living space more efficient, more beautiful and usable for them. I enjoy making three-d models, choosing local and sustainable materials, and presenting my findings. I enjoy searching for inspiration and then adapting it to my use.

My friend and I discuss the fun things and why these things are sometimes left to last, after the running around appeasing meetings, instead of focusing on the tasks that we know make us feel we measure up. Maybe it is the way we perceive what we should be doing, or hope of ourselves to accomplish. When the day turns out differently we need to focus on what we did accomplish and not judge ourselves negatively on what we did do. It is about having the confidence to know you did your best, and your best is different from what you thought it may be in the beginning.

I took half an hour to write this morning on the image below and let my mind wander.

Architecture Inspiration

Outpost, Olson Kundig Architects in Architectural Record

Designed for an artist and designer, this house in rural Idaho uses rectilinear forms and simple materials to create an elegant, spare composition. Worked on haltingly over a protracted, 10-year development period as the owner negotiated with zoning boards, both at her previous home and the new one, the design was pared down further and further until only essential elements remained. Built to withstand the extreme changes in temperature in this harsh region, the house’s steel frame, concrete-block exterior, and interior exposed wooden joists all portray the design’s toughness and show the means of construction in their roughest form. Eleven-foot-high walls extend out from the house to create a long garden, where the client has planted rosebushes, grapevines, and fruit trees. (text from Architectural Record)

This projects reminds me of Carlo Scarpa, who built busy concrete volumes over Italy’s country side. In the Brion Cemetery Scarpa uses the concrete form to step over a still pond, invite you into a door, and cover the dead. He raises an altar and glazes tile on two interlocking circles made of thin shadows against the venetian sky, and bordering landscape slits.

My husband and I will be traveling to Switzerland and Italy in 16 days! For our month-long honeymoon we will be flying into Zürich, hiking the alps 4-8 miles per day from mountain town to town, taking a train into Italy ten days later, heading to the east coast to see Scarpa’s Brion Cemetery and Venice, traveling by train to Bologna and nearby cities, hopping on the train again to get to Florence for an evening before renting bikes to ride the Chianti hills of Tuscany. Our trip will end in Cinque  Terre before flying out of Milan. We’ve put a lot of research into our trip, setting aside time for Italy dates every week or so for the past few months.

Thinking about Italy, architecture, inspiration, my work, travel, a new language, the happiness project along with my resolutions and continuing to train for the Sprint, Splash N’ Spin this weekend has left me in a full state of mind wanting to write more about the balance I am to be maintaining. It is a good thing I have a month in Europe to reevaluate and write. I think we all need a break in monotonous days of work, work, work, and cleaning the house. We all need to take an hour for lunch to sit by the river and be quiet.

Did anyone see Mockbee’s PBS special last night? I haven’t seen it yet.

Categories
Book Review

Italy, India, Indonesia

If a picture is worth one thousand words, why is a motion picture always missing something? Monday night was girls night out to see Eat Pray Love. I enjoyed the movie and wondered why it received unfavorable reviews, why it left one person praying for it to end? I read the book when it came out four years ago and was glad to have some background knowledge on Elizabeth Gilbert. While the movie tried to place her quickly in marriage, the book left me with a more desperate feeling of Liz crying on the bathroom floor, more frustrated in stagnant life to leave it. The movie picked up as we shared in the first views of Italy. The bridge scene looked like something more from Florence than Rome, but she was in Rome by  sun down.

The two-hour film was enjoyable, Liz finding a group of friends in Italy, running the streets to learn language with your body, tripping over the t’s, rolling the r’s. She found a balance of people to be thankful for as she filled up on food. The food in the book tasted better, or maybe the book described eating more often, and more enjoyably than I saw in a simple spaghetti plate with basil. In the book I was more in Elizabeth’s mind, instead of watching her from my Napoli window. Elizabeth Gilbert had more dialogue with herself, the voices in her head, and when she overcame her relationships, found balance in meditation, so did I.

Before Elizabeth left for her year-long trip, four months to eat in Italy, four months to pray in India, and four to close out the year in Bali, Indonesia, we got a glimpse into why. Her travel box was a collection of maps, notes and starfish. It was a point at which she stopped walking down the American sidewalk, stopped in her tracks, and began to wonder what life would be like if she lived each day reaching for what amazed her. Within the first few scenes of Italy, Elizabeth finds herself laughing in a barber shop, learning the social problem of Americans, that an American doesn’t know how to enjoy doing nothing well at all. Ah, but Italians do- smiles, loudness, bluntness, finding desert in business man packed cafes, eating pizza with a girlfriend, watching soccer in the piazza, then buying bigger jeans to fit it all in. Elizabeth curls up one late evening with her asparagus and sunset on a thin pink rug in her flat and considers just this.

Just at this cozy point we are shifted to busy,  stranded, starved, filthy streets, through all of these pan-slamming passage ways of India to an Ashram Shrine. It is here in the book that she begins to release her guilt, release herself from expectancies of the tight rope, straight line, straight-laced marriage agreements her husband and she held up for one another under vows. We sense that in the touching moments she spends with her new-found friend from Texas, up on the rooftop as morning comes to the Ashram.

Then, we ride through the Bali rice fields, the palm forests planted in successive years many years ago. The cinema photography is beautiful here, among the palm tree silhouettes. She has come here to love herself and ends up finding love that is opening, surprising and out on a limb sort of trusting. It is unconventional, she takes the advice of Ketut, balancing more than she sought out to.

The movie is at the pace of the book. It is slow in the most enjoyable way. You can’t find yourself quickly, and the journey you set out for will be different from what you expect. But, isn’t that is the point of reaching?

Categories
Uncategorized

Water World

Water World

The gray world, the inside of a palm

cupping the surface of a still pool

a world of water enclosing on me

it’s seeking victim

dive in, surrounded by something unnatural

this buoyant liquid I find my time through

sift into and become entranced with

like the willow tree’s soft arms

hairy branches at the bayou covered in moss

curly angel hair

the world when I was a child

only as large as I could see.