Reading in a Cold, Desolate Night

The night was getting considerably colder when I found a decent looking reading space. It was a type of space I have been wondering around for in the last hour and a half. A courtyard lodged deep into the concrete masses of downtown, a haven for the suffocated office workers. I had founded it on the 4^th Street, between Congress and Brazos. Biting into a hunger managing rice cake I bought from a nearby grocery store, I began a closer examination of the space. Annoying drone of the courtyard’s artificial light sounded increasingly depressing. My neck began to hurt as I looked up at the surrounding architectures, all ugly brick structures. Skinny naked trees and the dead concrete benches seemed as lonely as I was in the cold miserable night. Really just concerned about finishing the assignment before I caught a cold, I ignored all the dread of the site to read. I instantly remembered that I hated reading. The space had four benches, but not a single table. The sits were arranged in pairs around a dirty trash can. My body was curled uncomfortably into a letter “C.” My hands and face were stinging from the frigid air. I sat there holding the printouts, unable to focus.

I was on the third page when a man walked out from an adjacent building; it had an exit at the end of the long courtyard. Then, I heard a loud truck engine from another adjacent building, a multistory car garage; its wall facing the courtyard was perforated, so the sound streamed through unhindered. My head turned once more as a car from the street turned into a courtyard, apparently, a third of the space was a 30-minuate delivery parking. When I returned my attention to the paper, I found myself hopelessly lost. I found myself sitting on a dead concrete block, miserable, confused, and indifferent.

Ped Bridge

Helmet-clad and brandishing fleece mittens, a cyclist cuts through the frigid air with a smiling sanguine expression. Despite swerving to avoid a garbage-can feast and the constant tedium of work (the location to which he is currently commuting), he maintains an air of joy as he bypasses the congestion of the city. Innumerable convoys of traffic surge to his right on Lamar while a string of clacking graffiti billboards rumbles to his left. An isolation created by the pedestrian bridge spanning Town Lake near Lamar quells the vehicular chatter to a background noise. The space separating these circulatory paths allows for a removed presence despite overwhelming sensual bombardment. This separation space is enhanced by the great distance above the water and then up to the sky above. The wind rips and across the valley, whistling through the handrail, bench, and below the bridge registering the path’s height and removal to those perched in its grasp. The series of bridges spanning Town Lake when assessed from this standpoint are pinch-points for the inner-city traffic of Austin that become a source of repetitious beauty and a stimulus for societal interrogation. Cresting the pedestrian walkway, the individual elements become self-sufficient entities, sculpic objects isolated above the plane of the ever-undulating river.
This spatial relationship is noted and can be metered against the traffic on the water. Graceful rowboats and ducks are chess pieces below, traversing the slow water and pacing the eye as it explores what is both the intermediacy and heart of the city. After the overwhelming space and scale of the whole are accepted, appreciated and internalized, the immediacy of the pedestrian bridge itself and its presence on the larger identity of the waterway and city become apparent. A steady flow of bike and pedestrian traffic animates the bridge which vibrates publicly under each step, creating an environment that strives to engage people in the community of the place.

Ped Bridge

Helmet-clad and brandishing fleece mittens, a cyclist cuts through the frigid air with a smiling sanguine expression. Despite swerving to avoid a garbage-can feast and the constant tedium of work (the location to which he is currently commuting), he maintains an air of joy as he bypasses the congestion of the city. Innumerable convoys of traffic surge to his right on Lamar while a string of clacking graffiti billboards rumbles to his left. An isolation created by the pedestrian bridge spanning Town Lake near Lamar quells the vehicular chatter to a background noise. The space separating these circulatory paths allows for a removed presence despite overwhelming sensual bombardment. This separation space is enhanced by the great distance above the water and then up to the sky above. The wind rips and across the valley, whistling through the handrail, bench, and below the bridge registering the path’s height and removal to those perched in its grasp. The series of bridges spanning Town Lake when assessed from this standpoint are pinch-points for the inner-city traffic of Austin that become a source of repetitious beauty and a stimulus for societal interrogation. Cresting the pedestrian walkway, the individual elements become self-sufficient entities, sculpic objects isolated above the plane of the ever-undulating river.
This spatial relationship is noted and can be metered against the traffic on the water. Graceful rowboats and ducks are chess pieces below, traversing the slow water and pacing the eye as it explores what is both the intermediacy and heart of the city. After the overwhelming space and scale of the whole are accepted, appreciated and internalized, the immediacy of the pedestrian bridge itself and its presence on the larger identity of the waterway and city become apparent. A steady flow of bike and pedestrian traffic animates the bridge which vibrates publicly under each step, creating an environment that strives to engage people in the community of the place.

Reality, Fairytale & the Human Experience

Reality & Fairytale: the human experience sits somewhere in between, I think. The human thought process, particularly in spouts of internal dialogue, often dives off the flat earth of reality. Its not that we don’t realize what reality is, the perception of that is directly sensed, but on the inside we like to spice things up with a little ‘what if’. Internal dialogue is one’s personal narration of life, a silent, but often loud voice that announces feelings and thoughts inside which others on ‘the outside world’ will only ever experience in a suppressed degree. That flicker of a smile breaching the face of the internally amused is inwardly accompanied by hundreds of words or images an observer will never be privy to. This is for the most part because the ‘experiencer’ will never be able to translate that flight of fancy into the realities expected in the spoken world. In the outside world there is strong divide between the categories of fiction, and non-fiction (reality). A human being is expected to act and speak with the decorum of explicability, a salute to the rationalism so valued by the unromantic. But consider the names of these categories. Which name is derived from the other? The real human experience, the unspoken one, particularly when considering that of internal dialogue, can only be defined as a defiant mixture of fairytale and reality; the movements of the outside world and the ‘experiencer’s’ inward story. The narration takes reality that we know to be true and blends it with all significances we may store in the deepest pockets of our brain. This is how we live life, in-between the experiences of a moment, and a lifetime of past.

So what richness of experience could be found in the dialogues of a human-being? Or at least, say, one centered on an insignificant bridge; a structure unspectacular at its finest description? There must be, undeniably, some charm to the structure, some favorable, experiential aura it entails, or she wouldn’t have come here. She must enjoy some beauty on this contraption, where dirty city water trickles through crevasses of ratty concrete and stone, and where it does not, dams and swells, a putrid mixture of rotten leaves and sordid clay. Perhaps it is not so much the major appearances or flaws of the bridge that add appeal, but the minor details, the pattern of ripples from a pooling rapid, the curious wanderings of a moth in daylight, or the comments and gesticulations of the passersby who interrupt her musings: small things that spark some deep down memory or amusement. It is not just the scene itself, the reality that prompts delight here, but the past as well. Inside, her experience is a mixture of fairytale and reality.

She sits, unmoving except for her pen, half an hour on that stone bridge. The day is cold, and interruptions on this typically well traversed crossing are few and far between. What amuses her? It can hardly be said that nothing passes through her mind in this extended period of time. Instead she tells herself stories, embellishes the surroundings with happenings she is already quite familiar with: fairytales, memories. And so it happens, this space means more to her, something different to her than anyone else. Are these stories she tells herself true? Are they reality? Perhaps they are not, but they are in truth, what she experiences in this space, why this space means something to her. This interior dialogue, which she fruitlessly understates, separates, and incompetently interprets to the spoken word below, is flashes of her understanding in that time and place.

*In the outside world these flashes would consist merely of an amused smile, if not less.*

Three True Tales in Suspension from Reality.

an attempted translation of interior dialogue.

The Magic Creek of Troubles

She sits by that creek, on that stone bridge for half and hour. Half an hour, and it’s cold and hardly eventful. She thought this crossing, this bridge and intersection between nature and human existence would be the perfect place of exchange, but it seems not too many people use it in weather such as this. She looks up, but the sky is so white and cloudy she is almost blinded and is forced to look back down. Below her feet the dark murky waters are lethargic, their flow barely visible to the human eye. Dirt and slime on the oily surface obscure the view to its depths. Cynicism occurs. What craze prompted her to travel to this place which now seems ridiculous to like? She closes her eyes, and sighs at her stupidity, listening to the gentle trickle of a small waterfall, the call of birds she cannot see. And relaxation comes. Cynicisms and troubles are washed away. This is no ordinary creek. For in its waters dwells infused magic. Nymphs and fairies line its edges, embodying the branches who stretch out over the water, Narcissus trying to see his reflection. But the water is to dark to reflect well, as is the day. But she understands now, appreciates its darkness, for it is she, and many others who have contributed to make it so. The water flows clear and thin over the rapids, between the rocks she sits on, but as it pools over the waterfall, it thickens, darkens, tainted with the troubles it has selflessly washed away from those who sit in askance at its edges.

The Troll on top of the Bridge

A woman disrupts her ponderings as she approaches the incline of the bridge with trouble. “I seem to be looking and acting more and more like my grandmother everyday.” But she smiles, amused, as her troubles wash away, “Sorry to disturb your musings, but I’ll probably be back in fifteen minutes.” It’s not long before a man, too, comes to the bridge’s edge. “I keep passing you,” he mentions. “Yes, I’ve seen you twice already” the girl responds. “Well, have a good day.”

“You too,” she murmurs back. And it continues. Each person who passes the bridge keeps speaking to her, unprompted. ‘Strange,’ she thinks.

But then again maybe not so strange, for after all, this is her bridge. She, an evil troll starved of company for the last five thousand years, lies in wait of the unsuspecting passerby. There is no simple password however, no clever trick that will allow some to pass uneaten. Deep beneath this troll’s crusty surface there is a soft interior, a gentle spirit that longs for conversation, understanding, friendship. So it sits on top its bridge, in hope that the sensitive soul will realize this in passing. Luckily the man and woman did. The others get eaten.

The Moth and the Mountain

The troll goes into recession as a moth lands on the rock beside her. Its fluttering beige wings are perfectly suited to the rough limestone she’s been sitting on for quite some time now. She finds it hard to understand why something that can fly chooses to crawl around with no small amount of trouble. These rough outcroppings of rock must seem like mountains in comparison to its size. And then it is on her, a burden so tiny she cannot feel its impact upon her pants leg. But she has become the mountain, its landscape. It does not differentiate between her and the rock! If only there were more of its kind. She would be Gulliver in his travels, tied down by a minute people of moths, trapped by their multitudes of clever ropes. Then it comes to her. He is only the scout. In a voice so small a mountain such as herself cannot hear, he is silently calling droves of moth compatriots secretly hidden in the brush along the creek. He is calling. She sits and waits patiently for them to come. “Where is that lady?” she ponders. It had been more than fifteen minutes.

What my eyes see

Michael Nadel
Design IV
1/17/2008

Narrative

My gaze stretches on. Everything is visible. Every wisp of smoke, every shingle on every rooftop, every shining light. The sheer vastness is magnificent, but all the more melancholy. For no matter how far it goes, nor how bright it shines, it remains so obviously indistinct from every other city ever built. Its inhabitants may claim that this city is unique, that it has a soul, but these statements are nothing more than their own opinions, which are so vastly corrupted by the various brain-damaging substances in circulation on these streets. These people are now my peers, and the thought is disgusting. This is the public that scampers about beneath my feet, living out their lives. This great maze steers their movement, directs their feet, and draws them to their next mindless task. Do they even comprehend how these dense blocks control them so? Not likely, but supposing that they did the only difference that it would make is that they would remain controlled with knowledge of their own bondage. But here from this lofty vantage, this city's sins feel forgivable. It may not be special, but it is not unbearable. This Trude of sorts, just like every other Trude, is one and the same as every one of its analogs. The similarity is more than superficial; there is no gap between this city and the next. They may have been separate entities at one point but no longer remain so. And so I'm left here, a full hundred feet above the ground, to ponder what I'm to make of these surroundings. Is this compartmentalized room truly shaped with wisdom? Do the innumerable lights have a meaning? Does this framed view exist to show me some aspect of this concrete jungle that serves some divine purpose? Or could it be that I've simply given the subject more thought than it provokes.

My gaze stretches on.

The Lonely Square

The sun is setting and the trees are bare. Their leaves have fallen and cover the terraces of the stone amphitheater like dust that lies on shelves. Symphony Square sits silently, its stage and seating staring at one another over the stream that separates them. There is a bridge that connects the top terrace to the stage and the building that is perched behind it, the backdrop in the invisible performance. I am alone in the theater except for the two light boxes which stand stiff to my right and to my left; they look like people without limbs and big black box heads. Their spotlight eyes are fixed on the spot of the stage where my eyes look when I look up from my laptop. Every now and then a man will walk by along the creek that separates my side of the square from the stage’s. I’ve seen him a couple times now he doesn’t seem to notice me; as if I have blended into the stone steps I am sitting on. Behind me there is a restaurant which welcomes someone new every now and then; I hear their conversations as they pass behind me; they will be seated in front of a window that looks out on stone creekscape I am propped on. Behind the glass they can only watch me as I read and write; they see what I see but can’t feel what I feel—the wind, the cold, the leaves, the loneliness don’t touch them.
I move across the bridge to the stage side and sit against the ivy covered stone wall. The light boxes are fixed on me, their spotlight eyes focused in. On the top terrace of the far side a man walks up on his cell phone he faces me and gives me his subconscious attention. The stone terraces below him lose their depth a little from this side; their individual rises form one wall of stone and mortar. When I glance back the man turns and goes into the restaurant. Abandoned, the loneliness of this place returns. Forgotten, the two sides of the square have nothing better to do than return to the stare down. What happened to the symphony and why did it left its square to be forgotten. I wished it would return and fill up the seats of stone that were facing me, with moms and dads and kids with popcorn. Its song would echo over the water and off the stones jolting the square from its painful sleep. The restaurant would open its windows to hear the song; those inside would feel the breeze from the river; those outside would smell the warmth of its kitchen. Life could return and maybe it does, but not tonight.
I return to the side of the seats and remember my car is at the meter across the street that was to expire fifteen minutes before the meters went free. Instead of going I sit and finish reading in the dwindling light; the same homeless man wanders by again and a few more customers are seated behind the glass. I finish reading; stare at the stage again, and then leave. There is no ticket waiting for me—even the law has forgotten symphony square with no symphony.

The Cold Night at Flight Path Coffee House

My phone rings but I do not want answer it; it rings again and I got out of my bed and reach for it. I see that my friend Isabel is calling me. I finally answer; she says she want to have a coffee. I told her I didn’t know where to go so she said she was the Flight Path Coffee House. I got there and I see m many students working on school assignments. Although students make the vast majority of the guests, few business men stop by. When I arrive to the corner of 51 street and Duval, I can the full parking lot of the coffee house which is about 15 feet away from the place. Once I step into the space, I can only hear the low-tone music playing in the background. The wood floor and the low ceiling make the Flight Path makes me feel warmed and cozy. Right in the middle of the space, I see a little bar where guests can buy coffee, snacks and drinks. I buy my hot coffee and go to meet Isabel.
Once I seat down on one of the wood and metal legged chairs, I can see how most guests are working on their own computers; they seldom talk to each other. The place stays quite unless somebody comes through the entrance door. People tend to pace slowly inside the place because they do not want to bother others. The space has a moderate flow of guests, not too many people stay there at the same time; it is never full. The low-tone lighting inside the house gives the guests more privacy.
I look out the south glass door and I can see the wooden roofed backyard. The backyard is the hang out place for some students. It gets noisy once in a while but the noise barely comes into the indoor space. Students play games such as chess and checkers in the backyard. I somehow see the chess pieces moving by themselves. I scream out loud but Isabel wraps me by the hand and says you need to finish your architecture assignment. I look at the painting on the walls, they are quiet and sad which make the place scarier than what it is. I suddenly wake up.