And that’s the problem. I was reading a friend’s blog tonight and she said she’d been told by someone wise that a writer has to have something to write about. I think I’ve always followed that general rule in my life, and even expanded it to areas besides just writing. I’ve never been very talkative, or someone who just throws out a lot of something in hopes that some of it will be worthwhile. I tend to not do something unless I have something to say by doing it. This has gotten me into trouble sometimes, like when I’m too quiet around people I want to talk to or when I don’t try out multiple versions of a design in my architecture studios. I’m someone who keeps things in my head until I’ve thought about them, turned them over and over and over, and then decided they’re worth showing to the world. I’ve never liked making empty attempts at something.

I’ve generally always been able to eventually produce something, because I can generally think of something I want to say (“say” as in both the verbal sense and the conceptual sense). But more and more lately, I’m finding I have less to say. I’ve been working on this thesis project for over a year now, and I’m at the point now where I don’t have anything else to say but the project still isn’t finished. I don’t know how it’s going to turn out, I’m hoping that what I’ve already said is enough of a foundation to finish the project, but right now it’s a thing to complete rather than a thing that is alive and growing and full of ideas. I still don’t have a job, and rather than be in a place where I can easily go hang out with friends I’m a pretty decent drive away from people in Charlotte and hours away from Nashville, so the majority of days in any given week I might not even leave my house. I can make the excuse that it’s because it’s so hot outside, but I think if I’m honest with myself it’s because I am depressed about how boring and empty this summer has been on the whole.

I think if I was around people who I could feed off of, who I could get ideas and conversation and energy from, I would have things to say and contribute. But as it is I hardly even go outside these days. I just don’t feel like I have anything to say about anything right now.

Hospitality is one of the things I’ve been trying to better understand since last fall with Theaster’s Plate Convergence, and as I’m learning more about it the more I realize it’s one of the most important things a person can do. It doesn’t always have to be meals, of course, but any intentional act of letting someone into your life, even for a moment, is such a life-giving thing. It’s a literal self-sacrifice as you give yourself up to the desires and needs of another. It’s so cliché to say this, probably, but please just be friends with people. Be kind, be open, be honest, be willing to let people into your life and be vulnerable towards them.

As I’ve been telling people, if this thesis thing is finished this summer I’m moving back to Nashville to either work there or, if there’s no work to be had, live there while I look for work elsewhere. I’ve already written about my desire to start a community design/build program at Trevecca, to work towards giving poor communities good architecture in the form of picnic shelters, bus stops, community gathering spaces, etc. In other words, undermining those power structures both by giving impoverished people good spaces to live in community with each other, and also by calling into question the entire power structure of architecture by showing that people don’t have to have an architecture degree to make good things.

Another thing I want to do is along the same lines of enabling people to better live in community with each other, but it takes a different form. When Chicago-based artist and activist Theaster Gates visited UNCC last fall I was able to work with him and learn from him, and the first thing he did in his week-long visit was hold what he calls a Plate Convergence. These are events he holds, usually in Chicago, where he invites people from different backgrounds and careers to come and eat dinner together.

I think this is a really valuable and powerful thing, and the act of eating together is an intimate one that can do a great deal towards building and strengthening a community. So I want to start holding these in Nashville. If I’m able to have a job at Trevecca, I’d hold it there, but if not I’d find somewhere else. I’d figure out a way to get local, healthy food and create menus for each time we eat together, and then I’d just invite people. University presidents, politicians, artists, musicians, East Nashville hipsters, West Nashville old money, people from the projects, homeless people from downtown, illegal immigrants, priests, atheists, rabbis, writers, scientists, students, then I’d mix them all up at different tables so there’s a good mix, and I’d just have them talk to each other while they eat a good meal. And I’d invite mostly new people each time.

By doing so, power structures and prejudices get broken down and community gets built and strengthened, just by sitting down and having dinner with people once a month. So that’s something else I want to do in Nashville if I can ever get this thesis finished.

Now I have graduated but am stuck here until I can complete my thesis, and my life has turned into one of long periods of waiting, lethargy, and boredom split by much-needed moments of something to do. The World Cup is going on now, and that gives me something to put time into, but otherwise I am held still by circumstances outside my control. My thesis committee is nearly all out of the country, and while I’ve sent them my new discourse and am working here and there on new things to show them, I’ve been told to wait until everyone gets back from their travels. You can imagine the concern I have over this when I have to complete my thesis by early August or else I am stuck here another year, unable to move to Nashville or anywhere else and unable to start my life.

So I am having to learn patience as the days roll by without a call from the temp agency, an email from anyone on my committee, or much of anything to just get me out of the house once in a while.

Not so much that I’m getting a degree in architecture, but more just the fact that I’m about to graduate with a Master’s degree. I guess it’s a big deal, but it doesn’t seem like it. It doesn’t seem like it’s nearly as big of a deal as it was when I graduated from Trevecca five years ago, but it probably is, right? I don’t know why I don’t feel like it’s a big deal, except to say maybe it’s not something I’ve been really striving for and looking forward to like other people have. I started three years ago, I did my assignments and learned things along the way, and now I’m graduating. A series of moments rather than a linear thing. When I started this program it was pretty likely that I’d graduate one day, and now that day is here. And I’m excited about it, but I feel like some of my classmates are more excited about it than I am, and I don’t really know why. I was accepted into the school, I did the work, and now I’m graduating. That’s the way it usually goes.

I feel like the thing to focus on at this moment is what I’ve learned and how my life has changed rather than what I’m about to do in a few hours. I learned architecture, but I also learned printmaking, got better at photography and writing, learned how to think more clearly and deeply, and solidified what I think about certain ways of doing and thinking about architecture. I think I became a better person in these last three years, which is really about all one can hope for, right? The desire is always to be a better person in every way. More creative, more knowledgeable, more human, more caring, more comfortable in one’s own skin, more complete.

I don’t feel like I can stay at this school, and to a larger extent stay in Charlotte, any longer. The school is headed in a direction I don’t like, with faculty and curriculum decisions I absolutely don’t agree with (not that it matters if I agree with it or not, I’m just telling you why I don’t want to stick around). My friends that I’ve spent the past three years with will be gone, and if you know me you know how important the company of my friends is to me. I have friends in other classes who would still be around next year, but it wouldn’t be the same. I feel like I need to get out of this school as soon as I can.

I also need to get out of Charlotte. If I stay here then it makes the most sense financially for me to keep living at home, and I can’t be 27 years old, living at home and 45 minutes from the city and all the life there. I can’t keep coming home after school every day and hanging out with my parents, missing the interaction with my friends in Charlotte because I’m too far away to drive up there and back late after hanging out. I can’t keep debating whether to go home, where I can’t concentrate as well and I’m stuck with my parents all night, or stay at school, where the only class I have to look forward to and be excited about is my film-centric elective class and I get depressed just sitting at my desk after everyone has gone home. I can’t keep waiting around for hours till a party starts because I don’t want to drive all the way home and then all the way back up there.

This sounds worse than I mean it to. I love my friends at school, I love my parents, I’m always excited about my elective class, and I believe in the work I’m doing for my thesis. But there are some very deep-seated thoughts I have about my life here, and I can’t keep doing this for another year. So I’m going to finish my thesis in the summer, and then we’ll see. But I gotta get out of here somehow.

Since I’ve come back to Charlotte it’s been all school. The semester is nearly over, and that means so is my time in school. My thesis is close to the shape I want it to have, and my defense of it is in seventeen days. I then graduate, hopefully, on May 15. The next thing to do after that, besides taking a couple weeks off, is to find some kind of job. The market is awful right now for architects, so nobody is really hiring. So I’m having to think of other ways to make some money while not taking a job that makes me hate myself. That’s where my idea comes in:

I’ve been inspired by Auburn’s Rural Studio since before I began my education, and as I’m about to graduate I find myself wondering what I’m going to do to fulfill the responsibility to the poor that I think architecture has. The idea I’ve come up with is to go back to Trevecca and start a program that will culminate in design/build studios for Nashville’s poor communities. I would use the summer and fall to plan the courses and getting things set up, and then start the program next spring by offering an architectural history class for Trevecca’s students. I’d then move the history class to every fall, along with a materials and methods class. In the Spring semester I’d teach the design courses, starting with a beginning design studio like the freshman take at UNCC. The junior and senior level course would be for students who had taken the lower-level courses from me, and would be design/build courses for constructing bus stops, picnic shelters, chapels, etc. over the semester’s months. I already know people who have connections to non-profits in Nashville, so there is a network there of people willing to help and determine which communities need what the most.

I think this program would fit into Trevecca’s new emphasis on social justice, wouldn’t really cost the school anything besides paying me to teach (funding and materials for the design/build would come from sponsors and reclaimed materials), and it would help the lives of Nashville’s poor.

I’ve sent a message about this to Trevecca’s president, who I know and have a friendly relationship with, and I’m waiting on his reply. We’ll see what he thinks, but I’m going to be in Nashville in May and hope to talk to him in person about it then. I’m excited and inspired about this idea, so hopefully Trevecca is willing to do it.

On the subway yesterday morning a crazy guy got on and sat there loudly talking to himself and telling people sitting in the handicapped seat that if someone with a broken leg got on they’d have to move, until a kid got on wearing shorts. “Look at this guy in short pants! I hope it snows tomorrow!” the crazy guy shouted, and I laughed, and that got him going towards me. He told me it snows here in April, and it’s snowed on Easter, and it snowed once here in July Fourth and that’s where the phrase “Christmas in July” comes from. I didn’t believe that last one but I could easily see how it snows here in April or on Easter, especially since Easter can come in March some years. He then told me he was from Canada and asked me if I’d ever been there. I said I had and he listed a few cities he’s lived in, including Vancouver and Montreal (He’s well-traveled if he’s lived in Vancouver, Montreal, and New York City). I then went back to reading the Post I had bought at a newsstand (still just 50 cents, what a deal) and got off when my stop came. I’d never had a conversation with a crazy person before.

I went to The Whitney to see Theaster Gates’ installation in the courtyard there, and then went to PS 1 in Queens to finally see my thesis site. They were running a big show on the whole second floor dealing with the 1969 MoMA show and all the events going on that year, and the collection had a lot of really interesting things in it. They also had a collection taking up the third floor dealing with performance art and video, which I thought was really great. I realize that the stuff in these museums is the best of the best so I can’t feel like “Charlotte sucks when it comes to art,” but it’s nice to see some really creative and thought-provoking stuff. It inspires me to do things I don’t have the talent to do yet, if that makes sense.

In the afternoon I went to visit the New York Times building again (I’d seen it when I was here last year) and get a couple notebooks from a store there, and then since I was close I decided to walk through Times Square and take some pictures. I don’t really like Times Square much, it’s just a huge crowded outdoor mall, but it’s interesting to watch people. On my way through, right in the center where the streets are blocked off, a lady was doing a stand-up for a news station. I got there about 6 and she’d drawn a big crowd already, and since news is something I’m familiar with from college I decided to stop and wait to see what the story was. The cameras had an NBC logo, so I thought it was one of the local affiliates until 6:30 came and I realized she was with the national NBC news. I was excited because I thought it was going to be some big story live from Times Square and I was going to see this lady report it. She took the throw from Brian Williams and then did a quick report about… the census. I quickly left, disappointed.

I passed a church on one of these roads, and outside the church was a sign that said “Will the road your on lead you to Heaven?” The first thing that jumped out at me about the sign was the simple and common misuse of “your.” But then I began to wonder about the sign’s question. Would the road I was on, quite literally, lead me to Heaven? If I kept driving my car down that road would I end up at the Pearly Gates in front of St. Peter himself?

I kept driving, down the North Carolina mountains, twisting and turning as I moved through snow-flecked forests. I’d been in that area before but never during the winter with snow on the ground, and I was shocked by the unexpected beauty of it. There were times when I could come around a turn and have a view of the top of the world and then minutes later come around another curve at the bottom and see the mountain faces rise into the sky next to me, and each time I was made to be quiet and calm by it.

I got into Nashville later that night, and since then I’ve gone to church, played video games, drank beer, and laughed about all the things we did in college. I haven’t done any school work yet and I feel okay about that. Spring has also sprung here, and today was the first day in months it’s been warm and perfect outside. My friends are here, and I’m seeing more of them in the next few days, and Nashville is still as much home to me as it ever was.

I was able to drive through my family’s ancestral land, wind my way around mountains in the snow, and end up in the company of my absolute best friends in the world, doing things with them that renew me and make me complete like nothing else does. So did the road I was on lead me to Heaven? I think it did.