From zombiesquirrels.blogspot

From zombiesquirrels.blogspot: 1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

"the legitimacy of such a broad claim has been debated and challenged, but there is no question that specific metaphors such as text and narrative have proven to be fertile ground for theoretical critique of landscape. In the following shorter extract, james corner (1991) links landscape as text with landscape as site, and in "reading and writing the site" (1992) John Dixon Hunt further develops the proposition that gardens and landscapes are "readable," arguing that the interpretation of their symbolic content deserves as much emphasis as does analysis of their formal properties. Mathew Potteiger and Jamie purinton extend the argument in Landscape Narrative (1998), proposing three realms within which landscape can be interpreted as narrative: as story, context /intertext, and discourse. Using the Crosby Arboretum as an example, they illustrate how these linguistic concepts can usefully inform landscape architecture. "


it was the nearest book... mmm... theory.

Trike Tracks

There seems to be a common thread that has surfaced and resurfaced in conversation in the past few months...

a few weeks ago, I was searching through the vault on my computer, that is sucking up all its memory and slowing it to a geriatric pace... the "my pictures" folder. I stumbled upon a fun image of ceiling of the dark horse saloon. The ceiling is the most amazing thing ever. (and i say that a lot, so i'm sure you'll know that it really IS the best. :)...) it is an inverted dangling playground of carriage parts, old gas station signs, barrels, troughs, signs, and other wheely fun mechanical madness cabled to the ceiling. you could stare at it endlessly. But the bar is also a fun bar, so you find yourself alternating between loosing yourself in the exploration of the seats, signs and buckets, the good beer, the eccentric cooks, the backwards-labelled bathrooms (labelled with images, not words) the unusual crowd sharing their experience of walking into the 'wrong' bathroom, and of course, trike races.

yup. trike races. on tuesday nights.

someone commented on the photo, that I had posted as the background on my computer, and I explained quickly what the photo was, and mentioned the trike races, as i looked up at postcard of a lee friedlander photograph of a circus-ring-like-bike-circle of 4 men riding (circa 1920).

and I thought about the bikes in my life. and my plan to bike through laos. and my superhero flight off my bike (and pancake-like landing) when I bought my sugar, and my first white rim trip, and my first mountain bike, and my japan bike, and my harley bike, and my joking comment about learning to bike in my father's womb and....

I love bikes...

I love bikes, not because i'm particularly good at riding them, but because they make me smile. I like them because they come in all shapes and sizes, because they can be the most efficient machine on earth, but they can also be very inefficient if you fail to lube the chain, or if the chain ring is welded to the frame with rust. I like bikes becuase you can go anywhere in the world and people ride bikes. You can even rent them or buy them, and sometimes this is not a wise choice, but definately an adventurous one. I like that da vinci invented bikes, and if he hadn't, someone else would have. I love that other people love bikes.

home

home

this weeks topic in theory is form meaning and expression in landscape architecture... also the title of an article written by landscape architect laurie olin. because this is a 'slippery' topic as described by our big brained and fantastic prof, we were first asked to think about home. describe it. in words, with drawings, however we could given the materials we had at our disposal that very moment. home could include anything.

home is not necessarily where you grew up. is not necessarily where you sleep at night... not necessarily a place at all.

what is 'home to you'? what does home mean to you? what, then, is meaning?

try to answer these questions...


I described home in words and images in 10 minutes as a place in the desert. my home away from home. an incredible peach orchard that we would drive by, nestled at the base of a Navajo sandstone wall, fed by the diverted waters of a creek. not too far from Capitol Reef. the walls of the canyon are red, and they shade the orchard in the late afternoon, cooling the fruit.

we used to stop there on our annual journey to lake powell... we would slip our dollar bills into the weathered wooden u-pick pay box, climb the ladders and pick the best peaches on earth, in the best orchard on earth, among the sagey sage, sweaty from the sun, barefoot.

I would eat my golden, perfect peach slowly, letting it drip down my arms, onto my feet, into the sand cherishing every bite. but only after I held it in my hands for a while, enjoying its shape, its fuzzy texture, sweet warm smell. I would smile at it, then take my first bite, calculating its size for the perfect mouthful.

sticky for the rest of the day...

untitled... because there is some sort of crazy blog karma, my blog will give me no blog title block. so, therefore i'm currently avoiding titles...

this morning I woke at 5 am, if i slept at all. i packed up the mess covering the entirety of my room into my bag, and pulled on my 'peep show' shirt, sugar shoes, stripy socks and funky hoody. feeling urban. Planning today.

I stride over to the harley in anticipation of a fun and stylin’ ride to school in my fun urban outfit, but alas, a quick ride to the end of the block reveals two flat tires. I flip a bitch with regret, and exchange my very cool harley bike for my not so cool retired mountain bike. Note to self: pump up tires for future fun.

I’m off to get some work done pre-group-Pliny project meeting at 8am, 10am theory, Pliny project again at 12, planning at 1, no breaks.

I fly home on my mtb for a break at 5:30, blogisms on the brain, unhappy bugs in the eyeballs. Thinking of the eccentricities of Ribe, Warren’s philosophy of life, my own transition from non-reader to slight reader and non-writer to occasional reader and sometimes writer with usual severe writers block.

I manage to slip in a mad-crazy dance party with jerry-dog before I’m back to campus for more Pliny-plan.

severed leg

we'll pretend that this post came before the other one. we'll pretend I posted it yesterday before this blog was created. which is when I actually wrote it.

Standing in line, in my week 2, pre-coffee delirium, the man in front of me orders a severed leg. !?! "i'll have a house coffee... and.. i'll take one of those severed legs too, please" I finally looked up from my blank stare in the general direction of the tasty baked goods and looked more with amusement and curiosity than horror at the guy in front of me... how marvelous... I had no idea you could get a severed leg at the coffee shop! I should come here more often!! Apparently it grows too. This 'gruesome growing leg' starts out at a mere 2", and was the starting point for a line of conversation that ended in barista commenting on the generally bizarre behavior of almost all of the customers today. Full moon party, anyone??

bianchi, aardvark and i

full moon five in the morning hovering over the horizon - left over from the night before. i wake up with a cup of coffee and shove an aardvark into the calf of my spandex for good luck (one of the only redeeming qualities of spandex, i've discovered, is that you can "hide" small treasures like rocks, shells and aardvarks in them and they_won't_go_anywhere). The aardvark and I met last night. he arrived via 'ready post' envelope from new orleans. thank you jenn!! he was a perfect riding buddy, and didn't take up much space.

i'm off for my first bike race. a metric century that i convinced my dad to ride with me. he convinced his friend to ride with us. 7:30 am start. 31 degrees. we decide on a 7:45 am start. southern oregon sage brush, fields and farms, 62 miles of it.

the first 6 miles i think to myself 'this is a lot like skiing' ice crystals kiss the grass, cling to my fleece jacket. i can't feel my face, fingers, feet. wind. feels like i'm flying. weeee!!! I warm up around mile 15.

cookies and bananas at mile 23.

bobcat at mile 27, the real kind.

straight lines and curves, rolling hills and flats, fog, sun, wheels, road, bike.