◌ The Struggle

Agreed, but our culture doesn’t suggest them; if kids have to read physical texts for school, they might not see paper at any other point in their day and, depending on their field, lives. That, more than cost, worries me. We’re too brief as it is.

aye, this is the unfortunate truth of modern life, and lord knows i’m guilty of it myself.

perhaps the saddest part is how kids are growing up never experiencing the certain…slackness and detachment that being engrossed in physical reading material brings. It’s a different body state and feeling than the computer/phone offers. We old.

all of these physical things are still with us, they just have to be actively sought out. there will always be a market for print over ebooks, vinyl and cds over mp3s, 35mm and 120 film over digital, etc… it’s just unfortunately going to be increasingly niche. physicality stalwarts are few and far between; what matters most to the average person in an increasingly hectic world is convenience, and i can’t blame or resent people for that. i just think that it’s a shame that the things i enjoy will become increasingly expensive because i’m in a minority that shares my interests.

my house is less a series of rooms that form a whole, and more a collection of piles of paper and boxes upon boxes that make a series of rooms and corridors within select rooms. it is therefore unsurprising that upon trying to get peanut butter out of a cupboard in the basement, i find some gems from my dad’s formative hoarding days. usually these are dog-eared books or tea-stained news paper clippings, but from time to time i find an old copy of National Geographic.

i myself have had a subscription to National Geographic for the last 4 years, and after reading about pandas in a copy from 1983, i’ve decided not to renew.

it’s not just because i’m poor and feel the need to be fiscally responsible (music, food and crack), it’s also because it’s quite frankly not very good. the old copies i find show so much more evidence of care and craft, the kind of attention to reader enjoyment that i’ve since only found in independent magazines such as Little White Lies.

National Geographic used to be an event. the digital revolution was supposed to streamline and make things easier, but a sad byproduct is that people became lazy. it’s no longer about doing things right, it’s about doing them quickly and for as little money as possible, something more suited to digital consumption. budgets shrink as a result of dwindling readership because it’s just so much easier to click.

does anyone even know what a quality magazine smells like anymore?

…as lazy as i am, did i manage to complete a dual honours masters degree? it only just dawned on me that this must have been some sort of miracle.

also, i just noticed that it’s a year ago today that i handed in my portfolio. happy first birthday degree, now go out and get me a real job (;__;)

Landscape Architecture

Ohhhh i do hope you’re not suggesting that gardening is equivalent to landscape architecture. May Cthulhu (and endless numbers of disgruntled landscape architecture students) have mercy on your soul if you are.

Not Architecture.

Because i gotta sit in Canterbury Cathedral crypt and listen to a Dutch cello octet wash over me.

also: any and all works by Philip Glass will henceforth be referred to as “bangin’ tunes”.