Erring on the side of the status quo (or romaticizing nothing)

While driving north on Route 52 recently, I saw a sign. There it was. The familiar feeling of dread that I hadn’t felt since my late teens. A ‘good’ parcel of land is given up to a large residential development. But why dread? Am I not an architect? Is not this what I yearn for in my spirit? A chance to make a mark on the landscape?

With the few seconds that it took for me to choose to look away from the yellow and white-striped asphalt stretching in the proverbial one point perspective in front of me, I began to hark(en) back to a time in my life when I abhorred these signs. Were we destroying the land? My sister was convinced that I was the graffiti artist in the early 90s that spray-painted the words FREE THE LAND all over the signs dotting the landscape in my suburban section of Centerville, OH.

Many years have passed since that time, and I find myself reliving that moment whenever I make a line on a page to start a new project. Is ‘nothing’ better than finding a space to fill with ‘something’? The giddy feeling of changing the very foundation of the earth, and our perception of it, is tempered with a reminder- from my graduate school days- to explore each project with rigor and in relation to its context.

Failing to do this will lead me to doing, and ultimately romaticizing nothing.