Last month, the website BlankSpace put out a call for "architectural fairy tales." While their intent was to inspire the design of futuristic architecture, I took the call as an opportunity to draw one of the bedtime stories I recently told my kids. They love stories and beg for them each night--but making them up after 6 years is an increasing challenge. To do so, I often find I pull from current events and whatever's going on in the world at the moment. This one came after a day of Marriage Equality headlines. Nothing particularly 'forward-thinking' about the architectural form, simply my attempt at translating for the kids that love is love, no matter who are. Enjoy!
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Young Boy : Will you tell me that story about the violets again?
Old man : Okay,
here’s the story, and I’ll tell you what I know. I can’t guarantee that this is
exactly how it happened and I’ll tell you that not everyone believes it. But I do. And I’ll tell you why. I’ll also tell you that everything is
based on what people have told me, people who lived it, and those of us who are
in large part a product of another generation who once long ago lived in a very
different place.
Young boy: How was it different?
Old man: Well let’s start with your question about the violets,
which we’ll have to take in two parts: do you mean how they came to be? Or what
they started? In either case, the
answer starts at the same place, on the corner of A and B.
See,
the violets were always here, just not as freely growing as they are
today. Once, a long long time ago,
everything was arranged by districts: “Letter Districts” according to the
letter of the alphabet. Everything had its place—everything in A started with A,
B things were in B, and so on; and everyone who lived in those districts had a
name of the same Letter. Like zoning, (I don’t know if it was law), but
at the time it made sense. Leslies and Lauras lived with Lenards and
Lionels and Whitneys and Warrens wished for wonderful weddings and wealthy
lives lived in the confines of W. Sure, we could roam the neutral ground,
but people couldn’t enter any
district but their own. So the
perimeter really became our way of contact: we could gaze in from the outside
but the interior was really another realm, offlimits. And that was just about the only contact people of differing
zones came to have.
Young boy: What stopped you? Why didn’t you just go in?
Old man: That’s a good question, and the kind of question the young
should ask. But for us, it simply
wasn’t something we considered.
There were Walls and Fences and Barriers of all sorts, but of course
there were also plenty of Openings that we just didn’t transgress because we simply
weren’t suppose to, or didn’t know how to, I’m not sure. We didn’t see them as “Opportunities”
like everyone does now. I do know there
were expectations then, rules, social mores against it that we all understood
and abided by, as difficult as that might be for someone of your age to
understand.
Out
of fear? For some. But for most,
myself included, because we simply didn’t think about it. It was simply the way things were.
Young boy: But wasn’t there anything you missed? Anything you longed
for?
No,
not really. The city, keep in mind, was beautiful. Despite my birthplace, I saw Balloons from my Skylight,
heard Music in the distance, and in general, all of my needs were
Satisfied. I had everything I
thought I could want, as I imagine it was for everyone—at least until I met U.
Young boy: Me?
Old man [smiling]: No,
not you—U. See, I and U, the story
goes, is that they were each in a rush of daydreaming (Imagination? Unreality?)
and not looking where they were going.
I, on his way back to the Icehouse from his afternoon of investigating
the Perimeter for Inspiration; and U unwinding to see what kind of Undertaking
she might take Up next. Imagining Unknowns you might say, until they quite
clumsily ran into each other causing each to lose their balance and for a
connection to be made.
Because
there, in that instant, it was Immediate, Overwhelming: Attraction, Desire, Lust,
Relief. It was all of these things and Other Things that neither of them had
names for. It was as if something chemical within them was ignited causing both
to feel Unfathomable Intensity they’d never experienced until that moment. It was Want. It was Love. In that moment, they realized an Unspoken Intimacy between them. They realized I cannot live without you.
I
cannot live without UI cannot live without you
The
world shifted then as they saw themselves in the other, imagining themselves
together in all sorts of ways, seeing themselves years from then—a flood of
impossible familiarities, like the recognition of a memory not lived.
Young boy: What did they do?
Old man: I don’t know
the details, but they began with Secrets—meeting in Secret and sharing Secrets
and we imagine that this must have been when U confided her love of violets, a
flower so soft and vibrant she’d stare at these little blooms from afar from
across the street, how she wanted one so badly, to see its violet shade up
close, to touch it’s little petals that had so many lives inbetween Blue and
Purple…
Young boy: Is this when
they started?
Old man: We guess so, yes.
We know that at some point they decided to sneak into V in the middle of
night and take some. Violets. Nothing drastic at first, a little
scoop, a little potted plant or a patch from a nearby park, which they then
planted here and there across the city; surprising, subtle, mysterious little
bursts of color where it’d never been before. Whatever it was, it was the beginning of their exchange and
what would become the first of many such transplants that would eventually
change the subconscious of the city.
Over time, people grew accustomed to seeing this little flower out of
place.
Hell, some people even started to steal
some for themselves, watering their little pots on their balconies as if It
were a child.
Young boy: And that was all,
people just changed?
Old man: Well, no, not exactly. There were other things that followed
and it took a while before Things could go Anywhere and People could be with whomever
they chose. But that was the start
and that was the act that set everything in motion for Everyone to pass the
Perimeter; for Everyone to explore the Interiors of Other Realms—in essence for
Things, Ideas, and People to move about freely.
And
you know the funny thing is? In the end, the city didn’t really look all that
different. We just mingled in new
ways.
