Some other smart aleck from the 70s once said that “plan­ning would be con­trary to our na­tional ge­nius.” I sup­pose that we can blame it on that - we just didn’t plan for this. We all thought our fu­ture would be more like Asi­mov’s sto­ries and less like Frank Her­bert’s Dune. You know, the parts where peo­ple on the dry planet spend their time har­vest­ing the dew and ri­ot­ing over the water con­sump­tion of new non-na­tive trees. We just didn’t plan on the lack of a magic bul­let for our prob­lems.

Most nights about this time, I sit and look out at the bowl to the West and think about how lucky I am. I came up here to run this for­est back when peo­ple were still hot on the idea of bio­fu­els from trees and the tem­per­a­tures in the city were only 110ºF. Every­one agreed that it couldn’t get hot­ter than that, al­though of course it did. I look down through the Qwik­Gro pines at the few re­main­ing lights in the val­ley and won­der how long they’ll con­tinue to flicker on.

When I first moved up onto the moun­tain, I missed the con­ve­nience and close­ness of the city. Hav­ing a drink with friends after work, tak­ing long show­ers with­out check­ing the level in the tank first. And it took a lit­tle while to learn to sleep through a windy night. I put two con­crete foun­da­tions as deep as I could dig but the other end of the cabin is mounted thirty feet up two pine trees stick­ing straight up out of the steep slope below. At first a wob­bly cabin on a near ver­ti­cal side­hill seemed like a joke. But as tem­per­a­tures rose and the aquifer level fell in the city,  I started to get some neigh­bors.

A few years after the tree farm went bust, I was tromp­ing through the woods one day when I found the spring. It ain’t much, but I fig­ured it would be much bet­ter than col­lect­ing the three and a half inches of rain water a year from my roof. If I could get some help lay­ing the ir­ri­ga­tion pipe that is.

So when some friends wanted to build a cabin near me, I said great - let’s put it just up­hill of mine. And be­fore we start build­ing let’s tap that spring and lay some pipe straight down the hill. And let’s just build a kitchen cabin be­tween us - I hate it when bears break in and wake me up look­ing for food. (Be­fore I kept a box of fire­crack­ers near my bed to throw at them when they did. But it was a pain.)

They say mon­archs make the best urban plan­ners and luck­ily I’m king of this side­hill. Align­ing each of my new neigh­bors to branch off of the main artery of spring water has sprouted all sorts of fruit: from the blue­grass on the kitchen porch keep­ing the cooks com­pany down to our gray­wa­ter drip ir­ri­gated tomato gar­den.

Our mu­tual/ver­ti­cal arrange­ment would have seemed bizarre to those used to sin­gle fam­ily houses aligned in hor­i­zon­tal rows. But with about thirty build­ings on this lit­tle hill­side now it’s clear that some­thing about our re­aligned lives works for us here. Bet­ter than the hard­pan down below any­way.

I have my own life

And I am stronger

Than you know

But I carry this feel­ing

When you walked into my house

That you won't be walk­ing out the door

-Ste­vie Nicks

A poster from a show by a small-time metal band I've never seen hangs in my spare room. It's of a con­quis­ta­dor skele­ton on an ab­stract back­ground, a gift from an ex-boyfriend that re­mains one of the sin­gle best gifts I've ever re­ceived. He cor­rectly guessed my fa­vorite from all the posters wheat pasted to the wall of the only good music venue in town. There aren't many relics in my house from the boys who have come and gone. For one, none of them are saints, and for an­other he's the only one I'll al­ways love a lit­tle.

Re­la­tion­ships are rooms oc­cu­pied by the peo­ple in­volved. At best, they are dec­o­rated by two in­di­vid­u­als deeply in love and pre­cisely in sync, each bring­ing ar­ti­facts from their pasts and trea­sures from their hope chests. These are the homes dec­o­ra­tors would call "or­ganic" rather than "cu­rated," warm and wel­com­ing with a feel­ing of fam­ily and his­tory and ha­bit­ual use. At worst, the room is lit­tered with the clut­ter of the past, with exes like awk­ward rock­ing chairs built for worry and stub­bing your toe on in the dark. These rooms can be en­tered into to­gether, or can merely be a cor­ner of your larger life that some­one strays into briefly for a time. The mo­ment some­one walks in the door can be as sig­nif­i­cant as when Ste­vie Nicks first met Lind­sey Buck­ing­ham at a Cal­i­for­nia high school party. The mo­ment some­one walks out can feel as dev­as­tat­ing as Sid Vi­cious leav­ing Room 100 at the Chelsea Hotel.

I bought a lit­tle or­ange bun­ga­low a few months ago after the breakup of a one-year re­la­tion­ship. I didn't know it at the time, but re­al­ized weeks later I went through with the sale be­cause I was tired of wait­ing. I was tired of wait­ing on love, tired of wait­ing to come home. For ten years I've be­lieved in the Bruce Spring­steen fan­tasy that love be­gins on the run and ends in a promised land. If love was true, my man and I would build some­thing beau­ti­ful and im­mov­able. We would be pi­o­neers fi­nally set­tling on the edges of the prairie, our farm­house still stand­ing one hun­dred years later as a cathe­dral to toil and love.

My exes and I, we con­ducted our re­la­tion­ships at our par­ents' houses, in dorm rooms and dingy apart­ments, in the homes of room­mates and past and fu­ture lovers. We went to cof­fee shops and con­cert halls, back seats and brew­houses, tawdry mo­tels and smart down­town suites in dis­tant cities. I've been so many places with these boys, every­where but home. We've never built any­thing to last. I signed lease after lease, keep­ing my op­tions open, stay­ing pur­posely root­less in case love needed me to take root some­where else. After a decade of liv­ing in other peo­ple's homes, I was tired. I was tired of wait­ing for some­one to join me when I could build some­thing spe­cial for my­self. I was tired sim­ply of wait­ing at all.

My house was built in 1920. It has a low front porch and a small front yard, per­fect for the South­ern pas­time of porch-sit­ting and say­ing hello to pass­ing neigh­bors. Its win­dows are the orig­i­nal wavy glass, dis­tort­ing your view in the most de­light­ful way, cast­ing rain­bows on the bed­spread in the af­ter­noon. Though it's not a large house, it gives you a sense of wan­der­ing, the lay­out takes a me­an­der­ing path that is sat­is­fy­ing to walk through. The rooms are square and com­fort­ing, but are well-sized. In other words, it is per­fectly pro­por­tioned for a young, sin­gle pro­fes­sional and a small grey cat who are tired of tiny apart­ments and short re­la­tion­ships.

This is a house that has known many long and happy lives, some of which prob­a­bly began and ended on the premises. I have a hard time imag­in­ing invit­ing a lover here be­cause this house is so en­twined with my­self that merely ask­ing some­one to cross the thresh­old would be an im­mensely in­ti­mate act. Re­la­tion­ships are rooms we build to­gether, a del­i­cate ar­chi­tec­ture that may or may not stay in fash­ion or up to code, that may one day be razed to make room for some­thing new. Whether phys­i­cal or metaphoric, we all need shel­ter, a place to im­print upon and that can mark us in re­turn.

In the back of my house, as in the back of my mind, is this soli­tary sou­venir from a place and time with the boy who made the biggest im­pres­sion. It hangs on the wall, mixed in with pieces of my child­hood and young adult­hood and hand-me-downs from my par­ents. This place is mine now, filled with my small per­sonal his­tory. This house and I are mak­ing an im­pres­sion on each other day by day. We are tak­ing up more and more space within one an­other. To sim­ply have room for my things, to pick out paint col­ors and spread out while I cook, my pulse main­tains a slower pace. At night I lay in bed and lis­ten to my fa­vorite al­bums, in case the house has not heard them be­fore. Some­times it sings back, creak­ing and whistling as it set­tles and ad­justs to changes in tem­per­a­ture and weather. I play it love songs, and in re­turn it sings me lul­la­bies.

There is the ar­chi­tec­ture of a re­la­tion­ship, but also a re­la­tion­ship with ar­chi­tec­ture. This house is more than its plas­ter lath walls and slop­ing heart pine floors-- it is where I first in­vested sig­nif­i­cantly in my re­la­tion­ship with my­self. Per­haps one day some­one will walk in, see what I've built, and de­cide to add on, to mix their things and his­tory with mine. Per­haps he and I will move on some­where new to­gether, seek­ing a new fron­tier. Per­haps this is sim­ply where I was meant to be alone, but not lonely. One thing’s for sure, if a day does come that some­one walks into my house, I carry a feel­ing they won't be walk­ing out the door.

There aren't many relics in my house - Skye Bacus

"I won't be here on Thurs­day but Al­fred here will be col­lect­ing your pa­pers on clas­si­cal or­na­ment. Say 'hello', Al­fred."

“No, Ian, you’re con­flat­ing the two. Yes, bit­coin prices are high but the chances of min­ing a block of them are at an all time low. Just look at the block al­lo­ca­tion model. I don’t want to call it a pyra­mid scheme be­cause maybe it isn’t tech­ni­cally a pyra­mid scheme, but come on. The al­lo­ca­tion model greatly fa­vored the early adopters. The blocks are less com­mon and harder to get and by now you’re com­pet­ing with every dude who likes com­put­ers but is bad at math. Also: prob­a­bly bot­nets. If you could fig­ure out how to do it with­out a sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment in hard­ware and en­ergy, I’d say go for it. Fuck it, why not? You might be able to use the com­put­ers in the lan­guage lab or book time on the Cray over in Tam­many but if they fig­ured out what you were up to, well, at the very least you’d lose your fi­nan­cial aid.”

"That's an in­ter­est­ing ques­tion, mizz, uhm, Berksworth is it? Also, I must con­fess that I ad­mire your courage. Most in your po­si­tion would not so bla­tantly be­tray so poor an un­der­stand­ing of the fun­da­men­tal con­cepts that we have now spent two months con­sid­er­ing."

“Now, for the other half of the thing: there is no way prices can stay this high. It’s all hype. No one thought the Beanie Baby bub­ble would burst but it did. This is Beanie Ba­bies for the 4chan and fe­dora set, for bored tax cheats who want some­thing to brag about at din­ner par­ties, for creeps who want their heroin mailed to them. Peo­ple are buy­ing in be­cause they hear news sto­ries about how rapidly the ‘value’ is grow­ing. It’s a snake eat­ing its own tail. Look at Cyprus. Did the Cypri­ots fall for bit­coin? No, no they did not. But re­ally, do you re­ally want to know how I know that bit­coin has jumped the shark? The fuck­ing Win­klevoss twins are all in.”

“Every se­mes­ter I get a few pa­pers that try to read a life and death theme into the egg-and-dart motif ‘mod­eled’ on a lack­lus­ter piece of schol­ar­ship im­mor­tal­ized in some fra­ter­nity’s test bank. Don’t, just don’t.”

Dave was over­full of dif­fer­en­tial equa­tions, nigh ef­flu­ent. He was all anx­i­ety and no sleep. The midterm was at three so he had four, no, six hours. Ian and Paul were both al­ready on cam­pus, prob­a­bly sleep­ing in lec­tures, so the house was quiet ex­cept for the sound of fans in the laun­dry room. The sim­ple parts of his brain wanted sugar, bright lights, the idea of plenty. They won out, the bal­ance of power hav­ing fi­nally shifted, or maybe the parts of his brain that had been try­ing to mem­o­rize all night just con­ceded.

It was al­most em­bar­rass­ing that Diff. E.Q. was hard. It was lit­tle par­lor tricks; iden­tify the type of prob­lem and then use a pre­scribed method of so­lu­tion. Plug and chug. It seemed like the sort of thing you ought to be able to teach a chim­panzee how to do, or maybe an eager col­lie.

He took the Corolla out on the park­way and thought about how you can’t re­ally make a mo­bius strip out of paper, be­cause paper has an edge, a thick­ness, and any­thing you make out of it is going to be a vol­ume, not a sur­face. That edge, though, would also be a mo­bius strip. So, when you try to make a real life mo­bius strip, you in­ad­ver­tently cre­ate a sec­ond one be­cause what you’re re­ally cre­at­ing is the vol­ume de­fined by two lo­cally per­pen­dic­u­lar mo­bius type sur­faces. Dave liked it when there was a sort of sym­me­try in an act and its un­in­tended con­se­quences.

He found him­self, en­gine off, in the Wal­mart park­ing lot, with no mem­ory of the act of get­ting there. It had been au­to­matic. He went in­side, shuf­fling past the greeters. He likes the high ceil­ings, the idea of space and the thought of those big steel roof trusses, and there­fore the roof it­self, going on for­ever, a study in pla­nar geom­e­try.

Sur­rounded by jars of pick­les, he re­al­ized he had for­got­ten when it was ap­pro­pri­ate to use the method of Frobe­nius. He knew this four hours ago.

He wanted cof­fee and so he wan­dered over to the cof­fee maker sec­tion of the store. A low counter brimmed with GEs and Mis­ter Cof­fees, Dunkin Donuts k-cups. He stared at the ma­chines, grabbed the han­dle of a brushed steel carafe, ac­tu­ally picked it up and pulled it out from under the bas­ket be­fore he re­al­ized the dis­con­nect, that there was no cof­fee in it, and he sheep­ishly re­placed the carafe and tod­dled off to­ward the con­sumer elec­tron­ics de­part­ment where, by the DVDs, they have the movie the­ater style boxes of candy for ninety nine cents.  

“If these or­na­men­ta­tions arose, for use in tem­ples, from a con­tem­pla­tion of the ques­tion ‘What forms are pleas­ing to the gods?’, then their ap­pear­ance in build­ings of state and pri­vate res­i­dences of the last few hun­dred years sug­gests a dan­ger­ous lack of hu­mil­ity.”

“So, yeah, Ian, if you want to spend your time and a small for­tune build­ing an en­ergy guz­zling ma­chine whose sole pur­pose is the spec­u­la­tion of a cur­rency, and I say cur­rency loosely be­cause it is nei­ther backed by any gov­ern­ment, rep­utable or oth­er­wise, nor is it in any way tan­gi­ble, a cur­rency whose pri­mary use, it would seem, is its own spec­u­la­tion and whose value has been tem­porar­ily grossly in­flated by id­iots en­rapt with its nov­elty, then by all means, go for it. Sure.  But once peo­ple lose in­ter­est and the thing crashes and any blocks you might gen­er­ate, though your chances are rapidly de­creas­ing on that, are ren­dered worth­less, re­mem­ber that I told you that this would hap­pen.”

“An­cient forms, with un­known power, re-ap­pro­pri­ated by an ar­ro­gant and ig­no­rant mer­chant class with no un­der­stand­ing of the semi­otics and no piety to speak of. Neo­clas­si­cism is then, at best, un­wit­ting grave-rob­bing, and at worst an act of heresy against the old gods. Again, no class on Thurs­day but pa­pers will be due all the same.”

“Ah! They’re right be­hind us!” Eva shouted, a hint of laugh­ter un­der­neath the fear in her voice. Marco, still run­ning, turned his head around: there they were. It seemed like half the town, chas­ing after them. The most hap­haz­ard army the world’s ever seen – women with wicker bas­kets of flow­ers, car­ry­ing gro­ceries, in­ter­rupted doing their evening chores, men in soc­cer jer­seys and worn, pas­tel polos and cheap, dark suits, some clearly half-drunk, the older ones just stand­ing and watch­ing. Every­where black hair and olive, Ital­ian skin. A few faces stood out: Giuseppe An­to­nio, who ran the cor­ner store, and his two young sons – the boys’ lit­tle feet kick­ing up dirt into brown clouds as they ran. Marco’s fa­ther, his face de­ter­mined, his black eye­brows fur­rowed, lips set, his grey tie fly­ing up in his face and, much fur­ther back, Clara, Marco’s lit­tle sis­ter, cry­ing as she ran, her arms flap­ping at her sides.

“Come on!” There was Eva’s voice again. Marco looked over at her, next to him, and shook his head: her mas­cara smeared under her eyes, her blonde braids un­rav­el­ing. She looked so out of place, he thought, mud from the dirt road spat­tered across the bot­tom half of her navy blue dress, the one with the lace, and soak­ing through her fancy, red leather shoes. He’d asked her again just the other day why she al­ways dressed up so much, and so weirdly too, she wore the strangest things, he’d said, and she’d blushed and looked away, and his mother had laughed and smiled, look­ing up at them from the liv­ing room table, where she was play­ing soli­taire.

They passed the white stone church, and in front of it, the statue of Saint Michael, blue sky and the moun­tains, green and brown, in the dis­tance be­hind it. How strange it felt, break­ing the rules, Marco thought – his arms moved awk­wardly at his sides, full of adren­a­line. At each step, he half ex­pected him­self to be un­able to move for­ward, his legs to stop obey­ing. If they were caught – and he knew they would be caught, they both knew it, of course they’d be caught – his par­ents would… he didn’t want to even think about it. But he’d told Eva he’d do it. He couldn’t turn back. Though he wouldn’t re­al­ize it until many years later, it was one of the things he loved most about her – how she saw every­thing in ab­solutes. He knew there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that he would do what he’d said he’d do.

“I’ll get that,” Marco said, get­ting up from the din­ner table to an­swer the door.

“Hi,” he said, look­ing at Eva stand­ing on his front steps, her blue school bag on her back. He had hoped she’d look a bit sadder. They’d said their good­byes at school ear­lier. She’d said she’d stop by when her fam­ily was get­ting ready to start the drive. When she had told him her fam­ily was mov­ing, to Milan, in his room last Sat­ur­day, she’d been so mat­ter of fact about it. Yes, she re­ally was mov­ing, she’d said. Her Dad had got­ten a bet­ter job at a bet­ter mu­seum, she’d said. She said she’d write, and he could visit, and she’d def­i­nitely come back at some point. They could send post­cards. She had been very ex­cited about the post­cards.

“Let’s go,” she said.

“Where?”

“We’re leav­ing! Come on, be­fore my par­ents fin­ish pack­ing,” Eva said, grab­bing Marco’s hand and run­ning out the door, leav­ing it wide open.

Marco could feel the sweat on his lip, and looked over at Eva, who laughed. They’d been run­ning for five min­utes. He could still hear the foot­steps and oc­ca­sional shouts be­hind them, though he looked back and saw the crowd was thin­ning out. The fear had gone away. The town was fad­ing away be­hind them. There, to their right, was the el­e­men­tary school, a small build­ing of grey brick, two sto­ries high with the yel­low slide and mon­key bars out front. Up ahead, the blue of the sea was just start­ing to show over the last hill.

“What’s in the bag?” he asked, pant­ing.

“Every­thing we need!” she said, grab­bing his hand.

They passed the last pas­tel houses, with their green wooden win­dow shut­ters and or­ange stucco roofs, and there – they were here. The port. It was small and full of small sail­boats that be­longed to the fam­i­lies in town.  A thin wire fence, waist-high, sep­a­rated the prom­e­nade from the bright blue Mediter­ranean below. Eva rested her elbow on Marco’s shoul­der as she kicked off her shoes, and then she was jump­ing over the fence and into the water, and he was fol­low­ing her. He was falling, it felt like for­ever, and then a splash and he felt heavy and the cold of the water pulled him down, and then he took a breath of the un­be­liev­ably fresh air and swept his wet hair out of his eyes. Eva smiled at him, six feet away, tread­ing water, and then she turned, swim­ming to the near­est sail­boat, an or­ange one, Maria, it said in white on the side – they’d seen it a mil­lion times be­fore. It be­longed to Nun­zio, the tai­lor. Marco fought against the water, and in a few mo­ments he was there. Eva held onto the boat with one hand, breath­ing heav­ily, and pulled at her blue dress, which clung to her skin.

“Marco!” He heard his fa­ther’s shout. Look­ing up, Marco saw him at the fence, swing­ing one leg over, and then the other. To Marco’s sur­prise, he was smil­ing.

“Ah, I guess it’s over. The race...” Marco said.

“It’s al­right,” Eva said, and shrugged. “You came.”

Marco heard sev­eral splashes, and looked over to­wards the shore, and saw his sis­ter and fa­ther, and Eva’s mother and fa­ther, swim­ming over to them. There were thirty or so peo­ple at the fence, above, talk­ing and laugh­ing and watch­ing.

“Oh, I for­got,” she said, blush­ing and reach­ing into her bag, which was still on her back. “Here, it’s for this week­end. If you’re free, I mean.”

It was a train ticket, soaked through.

“I’m sure they’ll still ac­cept it!” Eva said en­thu­si­as­ti­cally. “If you want to come, I mean. If your par­ents will let you go,” she fin­ished, busy­ing her­self with the ticket in her hand, dab­bing it with the cor­ner of her dress.

“Yes, I’ll come. I want to come,” he said. Her hand looked clammy as she con­tin­ued to dry the ticket off.

She smiled, and opened her bag again and care­fully put the ticket back in­side it, in a nylon vel­cro wal­let.

“Oh, okay. Well, make sure to get to the sta­tion early, so you get a seat! And I’ll meet you at the plat­form, just call me and tell me where you’ll be. And oh, I’ll bring lunch, and we can go to the park, I’m sure there’s a good park, I know it’s a big city but big cities ac­tu­ally have good parks, I was read­ing… ”

He didn’t re­ally hear the rest of what she said. He took a dive un­der­wa­ter, swim­ming back to shore, and every­thing slowed down -- the re­peated mo­tions, his legs kick­ing be­hind him, arms pulling at the water ahead, drag­ging it to­wards his sides and be­hind him. His eyes were closed, the image frozen in his mind -- Eva, his fam­ily, every­one, ex­actly where they were sup­posed to be. The sun shin­ing on the water in the port, bring­ing out all of the dif­fer­ent blues you could only see on such a per­fect day. If he could just stay under the water, he thought, time would have to stop. He could only hold his breath for a lit­tle while, so it would just have to. But then, how­ever, he felt the tight­ness in his chest, his throat squeez­ing against it­self. As his shoul­ders rose up, to­wards the sur­face, he grasped at the water below, try­ing to hold on, to pull him­self down, but couldn’t. The cold air hit his face and he took a giant breath, and turned around, and saw the boats in the port, green and red and blue and pink, sway­ing gen­tly, just where they had been a mo­ment be­fore.  

When we were 21, my friend Anna and I flew to New Or­leans and spent a week walk­ing around the city. In con­trast to the bleak east coast cities where we lived at the time, New Or­leans seemed mag­i­cal, a place where ad­ven­tures and co­in­ci­dences cas­caded like domi­noes every time we walked down a new street.

One evening we ended up drink­ing beer with a mu­si­cian in his court­yard apart­ment. When he had to leave, he pointed us to an open art gallery event in a nearby neigh­bor­hood. The street was closed to cars and jammed with peo­ple. We wan­dered down it drink­ing wine from plas­tic cups and stop­ping into gal­leries as the mood struck us.

A young man stand­ing in one gallery door­way leapt out at us. “Come in here! You’ve got to see this!” he ex­claimed to me ur­gently. He took my arm and we fol­lowed him, gig­gling, into a room full of peo­ple and art. He in­sisted, with fer­vent, slurred speech, that I ad­mire not the art but the walls and the dis­plays and the sunken riv­ets that held the dis­plays to­gether. He was an ar­chi­tect, he told me, and he had de­signed and built this space.

He in­vited us to drive with him through the city—his lux­ury tour bus with a full bar was await­ing our plea­sure, he said. We agreed, and climbed aboard what turned out to be an old school bus con­verted into a ram­shackle sup­port ve­hi­cle for his brother, a bi­cy­cle racer who had re­tired just a week ago. A group of laugh­ing, daunt­ingly at­trac­tive adults were pass­ing around a bot­tle of tequila. The ar­chi­tect passed out im­me­di­ately, and our first stop was to drop him off at his house; then Anna and I were whisked off to a bar and an­other bar and fi­nally a club where we danced until early in the morn­ing.  

After I re­turned home, the ar­chi­tect and I ex­changed a few emails. He asked what ob­jects were im­por­tant to me, and I sat in the rock­ing chair in my sparsely dec­o­rated stu­dio apart­ment in New Haven and anx­iously con­sid­ered how to reply. The only thing I could think of that re­ally made me happy was the old three speed bi­cy­cle I’d re­cently sal­vaged from my par­ents’ garage. This seemed cool enough to share with this myth­i­cal fig­ure out of my dreamy ad­ven­ture the week be­fore, so I typed it out and hit send.

In ex­change, he told me a story: There was a fa­mous ar­chi­tect who used to ride his bi­cy­cle around the city and shout at peo­ple walk­ing past that they were going too slowly to truly see the world around them, and in­sist that they should get bi­cy­cles too. Bi­cy­cling’s speed and full field of vi­sion pro­vided, he be­lieved, the only way to truly take in a city’s land­scape.

Our cor­re­spon­dence quickly dwin­dled, but the story stuck with me. The email is long gone and now I do not re­mem­ber the bi­cy­cling ar­chi­tect’s name, if in fact I ever knew it. Many years later, after tech­nol­ogy made such ques­tions ask­able from your phone while wait­ing at the den­tist’s of­fice, I searched, but found noth­ing. This one bit of data is lost, or at least hid­den from me, amid the white noise of the in­for­ma­tion su­per­high­way, where searches for ar­chi­tects and bi­cy­cles turn up hun­dreds of thou­sands of re­sults, im­prac­ti­cal to sift through.

Or per­haps this in­for­ma­tion was never con­verted to search­able text. It could exist in a dusty book, or it could have been a fourth- or fifth-hand din­ner party anec­dote. You used to get all your cul­tural in­for­ma­tion from sources like this, gain­ing ac­cess through the ac­ci­dents of his­tory, priv­i­lege, and char­ac­ter that led you to be in cer­tain rooms at cer­tain times with cer­tain other peo­ple—“mov­ing in cer­tain cir­cles” is the phrase that spa­tially de­scribes how you used to learn charm­ing anec­dotes about quirky ar­chi­tects. In this case, that must still be how it’s done.

It’s pos­si­ble that I can’t find a trace of this story be­cause it isn’t true. Myth­i­cal and non­fic­tion sto­ries alike are cre­ated in the same way, based on a foun­da­tion of truth or hope or fear and elab­o­rated within a struc­ture, the way you walk down a street when the street is there, or into an art gallery when the door is opened for you. Given dif­fer­ent struc­tures, dif­fer­ent sto­ry­tellers, New Or­leans is not a mag­i­cal do­main of joy­ous pub­lic life and civil so­ci­ety but a squalid, cor­rupt, crime-rid­den hell­hole. Both these views are true; both are false. Maybe the bi­cy­cling ar­chi­tect him­self was an in­ven­tion, one of the riv­ets that held to­gether my drunken ar­chi­tect’s imag­i­na­tion, as true and false as the promise of the lux­ury party bus, and as what­ever it was he told him­self about me that spurred him to pull me briefly into his world.

The pos­si­bil­ity that this story is a myth didn’t occur to me for 15 years. But by this point, it doesn’t mat­ter. The myth is in­grained. I’m liv­ing out the bi­cy­cling ar­chi­tect’s man­date. My work as a writer and ac­tivist is to pro­vide a new set of myths, a new frame­work for both see­ing and imag­in­ing the world. And while I don’t yell at passersby to get bikes (tempt­ing as this some­times is), I do spend my days try­ing to share what I see from atop a mov­ing bike, and the vi­sion and hope that this view gives me.

Start­ing a cen­tury ago, but par­tic­u­larly in the last 15 years, we’ve re­built much of our world for cars. Travel just a few miles from the cen­ter of New Or­leans, or any other city for that mat­ter, and your view from a bi­cy­cle be­comes a ter­ri­ble vi­sion of apoc­a­lyp­tic pro­por­tions. A land­scape built for cars can only be taken in prop­erly at au­to­mo­tive speed; at best it is a rhyth­mic blur of branded shapes and col­ors, big boxes and park­ing lots. As we in­creas­ingly build and live and work in this type of place, find­ing the sort of human scale en­coun­ters you might get walk­ing through a New Or­leans neigh­bor­hood is like try­ing to ac­cess a spe­cific story by googling two com­mon nouns.

Get­ting on a bi­cy­cle in a world built at human speed is one of life’s chief plea­sures. Search­ing for in­for­ma­tion on the In­ter­net often gives me that same feel­ing of ac­cess, mas­tery, open­ness, ad­ven­ture as bi­cy­cling down a street that’s de­signed to make it easy—until I can’t find some­thing. Then all I can see is a world of bar­ri­ers of spam and non­sense. Bik­ing in a world built for cars is the same way. The view is ter­ri­ble but valu­able, pro­vid­ing a first hand view of the cracks in the land­scape we have built. The view from a car is a false story about the world—you see the major land­marks truly, but the de­tails are omit­ted and along with them the po­ten­tial for in­ter­ac­tion, em­pa­thy, human-scale en­coun­ters with the other peo­ple who fill the street. On a bi­cy­cle, you can see the riv­ets as well as the art­work, and per­haps this is what makes it the ideal ve­hi­cle of an ar­chi­tect, whose liveli­hood de­pends upon ap­pre­ci­a­tion and need for such de­tails.

It isn’t just ar­chi­tects who rely on our abil­ity to roam about with our eyes open to the world’s de­tails and sto­ries. The wide-eyed twenty year olds of the world, like I was, need spaces where peo­ple can freely mix on a human scale, where the white noise of strip malls and in­for­ma­tion high­ways can be parsed down into anec­dotes and en­coun­ters. This is where co­in­ci­dences are made, where myths are formed, where your whole life can be shaped by a sunken rivet and a made up story.

Spe­cial fea­tures within ex­ist­ing ar­chi­tec­ture can im­pact how you ex­pe­ri­ence the rest of your life out­side the space. For me, I keep a shelf of nat­ural won­ders. I found a sim­ple piece of wood on the street in Capi­tol Hill back when I lived in Seat­tle, and im­pul­sively brought it home.

I'm not sure where the idea that it would be my shelf of nat­ural won­ders came from. Maybe from those 18th cen­tury cu­rios­ity cab­i­nets? In any case, once I had this space in my home, I no­ticed that I be­came more aware of the nat­ural won­ders in my en­vi­ron­ment.

A stone sparkling with mica came back from a back­pack­ing trip with my sis­ter in the Great Smoky Moun­tains, near where I grew up. On a foggy North­ern Cal­i­for­nia beach I in­stinc­tively put two lit­tle sea­weed floats in my jacket pocket. A tiny canoe of a seed pod in Phoenix.

Some­times the nat­ural won­ders are frag­ile or don't last long. Flow­ers wither, sea crea­tures some­times mold, brit­tle leaves crack into tiny pieces, a huge cone from a spruce warms in the heat of the house and ex­plodes into sharp petals.

Some­times a vis­i­tor con­nects with one and it's time to let it go to a new home. The shelf is con­stantly shift­ing and evolv­ing, as with the rest of my life, things must leave to make space for new things to come in.

The Pa­cific North­west has so many cones - I doubt I would have no­ticed them half as much if this shelf at home hadn't been keep­ing me on the look­out for new types that I hadn't seen be­fore.

You could built a shelf of nat­ural won­ders your­self, you know. Clear off a win­dowsill or ex­ist­ing shelf. Or keep an eye out for wood and build one like I did. And after you've in­stalled it, go out­side and find that first thing. A stick, a twig, a stone, a leaf, a feather.

Pa­cific North­west Pinecones - Amelia Green­hall

I reached a full sprint in my busi­ness suit and run­ning shoes, imag­in­ing a crank­shaft, sub­or­di­nate to the pis­tons and cylin­ders, spin­ning the fly­wheel. I kept my strides high and long, coast­ing over the in­ces­sant pa­rade of cob­ble­stones that un­doubt­edly ru­ined the es­cape of many of my pur­suants’ pre­vi­ous vic­tims. The three were fast, not used to los­ing the chase--though I doubt they were used to a chase at all. Most the other busi­ness­men of Puerto Madero would have handed their wal­let over within ten sec­onds. I bet a few had run, and the trio had quickly pinned their vic­tim down and used their knives to re­mind him not to run next time. They’d give him a kick, too. They’d see some blood be­fore tak­ing his iPhone and every last mon­eda.

This time I kept all my blood cir­cu­lat­ing in­side me, the red and pur­ple flood­ing in and out of my wrists, my tem­ples, my lungs, sup­ply­ing and de­plet­ing my com­po­nents. My tie flap­ping be­hind my shoul­ders as I roared past the heladería, the fruit stand, and the car­toneros push­ing their rusted-wheeled carts and clink­ing glass bot­tles. Their eyes lifted from the trash bins and fol­lowed me for the twen­ti­eth time, wide and dark and con­fused ever still.

The steel cranes and glass sky­scrap­ers were the back­drop to the free­way below my feet. Across the water the tow­ers rose row after row, their in­fi­nite rep­e­ti­tion in­ter­rupted only by the bridge’s fierce white point that emerged from the boule­vard’s trees. I took a sharp right, my torque con­verter spin­ning. My mug­gers whipped around the cor­ner, and I in­creased my lead from four to five me­ters. I length­ened my stride, let my heels hit the ground for the first time in a minute. I thought in rhythms gov­erned by my ex­hales. The trans­mis­sion churned phrases that kept me fo­cused, kept the fear out.

If I could just make it to la Puenta de la Mujer,

they’d stop chas­ing.

It’s too ex­posed;

they’d never fol­low.

They’d think I’d yell, and the po­lice

on the other end

would turn the table.

They’d radio the po­lice

on the other side,

am­bush them,

turn the preda­tor to prey.

But I’d never yell; that’d ruin the fun.

A stitch clutched deep in my torso while sweat flowed from my hair, a sign for my ra­di­a­tor to kick in. I kept my arms pump­ing, re­mind­ing my­self of the al­ter­na­tive evening: a lonely, spar­tan apart­ment, a bot­tle of fer­net, five em­panadas. I re­mem­ber those nights in my first month, tak­ing a break from Youtubes on how cars work to look out on the city from my apart­ment win­dow. The city lights were minia­ture stars, each with its own grav­i­ta­tional pull, suck­ing peo­ple and cars and mon­edas to­ward it, day after day, night after night.

Ten more strides, and I was on the bridge. I felt my­self down­shift, coast my way to park. My throat ex­panded with each breath; my spark plug di­aphragm ex­ploded my ex­hales into the muggy night and charged me across the bridge until I spun around to see the hunters fade into the black to pre­pare for an­other hun­gry night. This was what vic­tory felt like.

I checked my watch. They had chased after me for a full two min­utes be­fore giv­ing up. Most in their line of work hadn’t both­ered after thirty sec­onds. This was my longest chase since the first time I donned ten­nis shoes and stepped out into moon­light with five mon­edas, keys, and a de­ter­mi­na­tion to end the toxic bore­dom that col­lected in my apart­ment like ex­haust in a closed garage.

I bent over the  rail­ing, pant­ing, gaz­ing at the sky­scrap­ers and stars echo­ing in the rip­pled mir­ror below. Sweat fell from my brow and splat­tered like oil stains be­tween my feet. From my jacket pocket, I re­moved my weights, two Quilmes bot­tles. I set one on the ground and cracked open the other. I held my beer up with my sweaty and scarred right hand to toast this great Janus of a city, with its wealth and poverty, its mon­u­ments and ruins, its storms and fair winds, its vic­tims and end­less blocks of thieves.

I first dis­cov­ered the power of ar­chi­tec­ture in Florida, where my sprawl­ing ex­tended fam­ily used to gather for sum­mer beach va­ca­tions. The thirty-or-so of us would pack into three or four rented houses for a week of fam­ily bond­ing over card games, beach hang­outs, and din­ners. Each year a dif­fer­ent one of these houses would be­come The Place to Be.

These gath­er­ings had rep­re­sen­ta­tives from every part of the po­lit­i­cal spec­trum, with ages rang­ing from new­born Baby Liam to “Happy 80th Birth­day!” Grandpa Leo. Throw into this mix a few vague, deep-seated grudges based on who bul­lied whom as chil­dren, and you couldn’t get the group to come to con­sen­sus on any­thing. Yet, be­fore Day Three, some­how every­one would have tac­itly agreed which house to focus on for that year’s fam­ily gath­er­ing.  As a kid, I strug­gled to com­pre­hend what force could have enough power to unify this un­ruly group.

It was the houses them­selves that had this ef­fect. Each year, the group of Zah­n­ers had the same goals: be near the ac­tion, hang out with your fa­vorite cousins, and play lots of cards.  The house that best ac­com­mo­date these goals rapidly be­came The Place.

This sim­ple rev­e­la­tion first opened my eyes to the power of ar­chi­tec­ture. If the lay­outs of houses could hold such ir­re­sistible sway over a group as vig­or­ously stub­born as my ex­tended fam­ily, what other ef­fects did ar­chi­tec­ture have on our lives?

How En­gi­neers Think about Build­ings

I had a struc­tural en­gi­neer­ing pro­fes­sor who liked to say, “En­gi­neer­ing de­sign is not ‘How big is the beam?’ but ‘Should there be a beam?’” That is, while a build­ing’s struc­ture is gov­erned by build­ing codes with thou­sands of pre­scribed rules, the struc­tural en­gi­neer’s main con­cern is not the mere ver­i­fi­ca­tion of these reg­u­la­tions. After all, it is much faster and cheaper for com­put­ers (or in­terns) to plow through this litany of re­quire­ments. What, then, is left for the struc­tural en­gi­neer?

The an­swer lies in the struc­tural en­gi­neer’s most fun­da­men­tal tool: the con­cept of a “load path.” The idea is sim­ple: how does a force, ex­erted some­where on a struc­ture, make it to the ground with­out break­ing any­thing? For ex­am­ple, con­sider the load path for the weight of a Zah­ner cousin (let’s go with Beth) play­ing cards in one of those Florida houses. Beth’s chair is sit­ting on a hard­wood floor.  The boards in the floor dis­trib­ute the weight of her and her chair to the closely spaced wooden beams below. The ends of these beams rest on the base­ment walls, which in turn sit on the house’s con­crete foun­da­tions. The foun­da­tions bear on the soil below, trans­mit­ting the weight of my cousin (and every­thing else in the house) down to the earth it­self. The load path, then, for any force on that floor is:

floor­boards

↓

beams

↓

walls

↓

foun­da­tion

↓

earth.

Now let us con­sider a less ob­vi­ous ex­am­ple: Beth, sit­ting in the same chair, but this time on the sev­enth floor of a medium rise build­ing. This build­ing has yet to be de­signed, so there are many po­ten­tial load paths that could keep Beth up in the air. She could be sit­ting in a much taller ver­sion of the same wooden house with the same sim­ple load path. Al­ter­nately, she could be on a con­crete slab which hangs, like the deck of the Golden Gate Bridge, from huge ca­bles sup­ported by even larger steel tow­ers. Both these op­tions, like an in­fin­ity of oth­ers, are per­fectly valid.

How­ever, each choice of load path has its own con­se­quences. There are en­gi­neer­ing con­se­quences: a seven story build­ing sees a lot of wind, so what hap­pens in a big storm? Will Beth’s perch be­have bet­ter in an earth­quake if it the floor is light­weight wood or heav­ier (but also stur­dier) con­crete? How do you con­nect one giant beam to an­other any­ways? Then there are ar­chi­tec­tural con­cerns: while a seven story tall stone pyra­mid would be an ex­tremely sta­ble base on which to play Spades, the ar­chi­tect’s vi­sion for the ideal lobby may not call for a blank wall of stone. Fi­nally, mon­e­tary cost is al­most al­ways a con­cern to the one foot­ing the bill. How dif­fi­cult (and thus ex­pen­sive) will it be to build? Is there a dif­fer­ent op­tion that would use less ma­te­r­ial?

The struc­tural en­gi­neer’s job is to se­lect load paths out of this jum­ble of pos­si­bil­ity and con­se­quence. Once a load path is de­ter­mined, a com­puter can an­a­lyze it and op­ti­mize every link in the load-path chain; to use my pro­fes­sor’s ter­mi­nol­ogy, once the en­gi­neer has an­swered “should there?” the com­puter han­dles “how big?”.  Thus, the en­gi­neer’s pri­mary chal­lenge is de­vel­op­ing the in­puts: of the in­fi­nite num­ber of ways beams, ca­bles, slabs, columns, and trusses could be or­ga­nized to sup­port Beth, only one load path will best sat­isfy the owner and ar­chi­tect while still main­tain­ing gen­eral com­pli­ance with physics. De­sign, for the struc­tural en­gi­neer, is find­ing that best so­lu­tion.

Ex­am­ple

Rem Kool­haus and Joshua Prince-Ramus’s Seat­tle Cen­tral Li­brary has evoked a tremen­dous pub­lic re­ac­tion since open­ing in down­town Seat­tle in 2004. Some hate it (it looks noth­ing like a tra­di­tional li­brary: way too mod­ern) and oth­ers love it (it’s very mod­ern: it looks noth­ing like a tra­di­tional li­brary!), but no one doubts that it makes a pow­er­ful im­pres­sion. What role did the struc­tural en­gi­neer play in the cre­ation of this Seat­tle land­mark?

With the Seat­tle Cen­tral Li­brary, the de­sign team sought to pro­vide Seat­tle with a build­ing that, like the best of those Florida houses, would draw peo­ple in and pro­vide them with a fo­cused place for in­ter­act­ing with each other. The cen­ter­piece of this strat­egy of com­mu­nity in­volve­ment is “The Liv­ing Room.” The Liv­ing Room is the first place you come to when you enter the li­brary from 5th Av­enue. The ar­chi­tects en­vi­sioned the Liv­ing Room, like the com­mon rooms of those Florida houses, as the cen­ter of the ac­tion.  Un­like the com­mon rooms of those Florida houses, this Liv­ing Room cov­ers nearly an en­tire city block, with seven floors packed with books and peo­ple above.

How­ever, when you first enter the Liv­ing Room, you are obliv­i­ous to all this weight. In fact, all you see is open space and nat­ural light from the glass walls and cen­tral atrium, with only four or five thin columns scat­tered around the edge of the build­ing. How was the de­sign team able to achieve this sense of open­ness and light given the phys­i­cal mass and weight of the floors above?

The an­swer lies in cre­ative load paths. Let’s move Beth’s card game to one of the study ta­bles hid­den within the stacks of the “book spi­ral” sec­tion of level seven. As be­fore, the weight of her chair goes from floor to beam. How­ever, at this point the load path di­verges: in­stead of sim­ply mov­ing down walls to the foun­da­tions, the force in the beams trans­fers to gi­gan­tic four-story trusses ring­ing the out­side of floors six, seven, eight, and nine. These trusses gather up all of the load from these four floors and con­cen­trate it into one or two points on each side. Slen­der steel columns, sloped to match the fa­cade, sup­port these few points, car­ry­ing the con­cen­trated load down through the atrium and past sev­eral other floors to the foun­da­tions be­neath the Liv­ing Room. By sup­port­ing the whole mid­dle sec­tion of the li­brary on those few steel columns, the en­gi­neers man­aged to es­sen­tially sneak all of the weight of the shelves above down through the Liv­ing Room with­out hurt­ing the ar­chi­tect’s vi­sion of open­ness and light.

De­vel­op­ing this un­usual load path was an it­er­a­tive process in­volv­ing many rounds of col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween ar­chi­tects and en­gi­neers. The ar­chi­tects knew what they wanted: an airy cen­tral space with the stacks hid­den above. En­gi­neers are prob­lem solvers: they knew there was a way to turn the ar­chi­tects’ vi­sion into a build­able re­al­ity. As the de­sign evolved, the en­gi­neers helped in­form the ar­chi­tects on the many trade-offs pre­sented by dif­fer­ent load paths. For ex­am­ple, the four-story trusses that en­cir­cle the mid­dle floors only work if the edges of those floors all match up. These trusses help re­duce the num­ber of columns going through the Liv­ing Room so, since a min­i­mally ob­structed view from the Liv­ing Room was one of the ar­chi­tects’ first pri­or­i­ties, they chose to align the mid­dle floors. As the de­sign pro­gressed from rough con­cepts to its final, ready-for-con­struc­tion state, the ar­chi­tects and en­gi­neers made hun­dreds of these types of de­ci­sions.

This is a gross over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion: I didn’t even begin to de­scribe all that thought given to what hap­pens when an earth­quake hits and all of those books start shak­ing. If you’re ever in Seat­tle, swing by down­town and I’ll give you a full hour-plus tour of how care­ful en­gi­neer­ing helps achieve the ar­chi­tects’ goals for the li­brary, some­times by hid­ing the struc­ture and other times by putting it on cen­ter stage. Until then, con­sider this the the­sis of this essay: ar­chi­tec­ture has power, the re­al­iza­tion of am­bi­tious ar­chi­tec­ture often re­quires tal­ented en­gi­neer­ing, and thus the role of the struc­tural en­gi­neer is to fa­cil­i­tate the cre­ation of pow­er­ful spaces.