mushrooming thoughts

Pollan does this wonderful job of tying in these poetic threads in architectural theory and history into his little building. I particularly savored his thoughts on the sort of place he was building, Writing House. He explored a person's place of their own, a study, and how it evolved out this notion as an oversized, inhabitable desk. A piece of furniture turned room. It's deep woods turned built-in bookshelves. Intimacy and privacy left the lock and key drawer for the room door. It was Man sanctuary; a cozy nook for his thoughts.

His words reminisce and meander and linger and coalesce with Stilgoe's theories and histories. The difference is that sometimes I feel like Stilgoe tries to hammer it into the reader/Explorer. While enabling the reader to look around his/her surroundings in a new way, Stilgoe, at the same time, seems to accuse and resent the reader for his/her blindness and ignorance in the first place. I never get that feeling from Pollan because he never claims that architecture (well, the thoughts he is exploring in the book) are 'his thing.' He never studied or even attempted to study architecture before embarking on building Writing House or writing this particular book, so he doesn't pretend his observations are more than they are and he doesn't write as if the reader should have already been asking the same questions or exploring the same issues. He maintains an innocent stance; the house was always a project/hobby; not proof of his depth and architectural knowledge. I like that.

I went to B&N and read Spring, Summer, Autumn, Fall. A year of Marcovaldo borrowed. (My copy, coincidentally, I left in Miami. My plans keep changing, I keep staying in Naples longer than I planned, so Marcovaldo sits on a marble windowsill in South Beach.) Marcovaldo is fantastically naive, foolish, insecure, petty, whimsical, and real. He makes those mistakes and feels those emotions/feelings that we call 'human.'

The mushroom story is perfect and reminds me of how a lot people, including me, are about music. They like it when it is 'underground' and not a lot of people know about the band/singer...but as soon as the music is played on the radio/tv/movies, it's no longer as good as it used to be (for some reason)and they just stop listening to it because it's too 'mainstream.' It then becomes the music they (I) 'used to listen to, before anyone knew what it was.'

Exclusivity has allure. Fashion (like music) is alluring. I am being seduced by fashion. I walked in my second fashion show today.