O Leão (lion), from Generosidade (Generosity) by Machado de Castro, Palácio Nacional da Ajuda, Lisbon
It's raining in Lisbon. I ate something that upset my stomach, and I can't sleep. No pandemic stats today, I need a short break from them. Laying half-awake, my brain fixes on an old story from my early days as an intern architect. I'm trying to sift out all the names, all the old friends, from some dreamy, nostalgic memory hole …
I spent my youth being angry at the world. I had a long list of excuses for this behavior: the middle-child thing, the violin lessons, the racist bullying, all the other bullying. I carried my anger to boarding school, where I began to channel my anger into subversive, though (I thought) creative, outlets. I made a set of prison bars from packing tape, cardboard, and black paint, and installed it over my dorm window. I designed a (subjectively) pornographic poster for a black-box theater production called "Rubbers", and hung them all over campus. I went to the communist bookstore in Harvard Square, brought back a bunch of leaflets for Bob Avakian's presidential campaign, and filled the student mailboxes – annoying non-sense like that.
I was angry when I arrived to college (art school), though I knew enough to make an effort. A student on my floor failed an early art history test. Believing that art school should be 'about the studio work', he expressed himself by shouting down the hallway and scrawling on the bathroom stall: "How can you learn what you don't want to know?" Well I thought that was just childish – also, I may have aced the test. So later, when I saw what he had written on the stall partition, I switched his words: "How can you know what you don't want to learn?" And I snidely added: "Get it?" That night, after dinner, a crowd from my dorm gathered at my door and asked if I had made the correction. I admitted that I had and asked how they knew it was me. They said, because the gesture seemed so angry. Still, I think they appreciated the word-play, even the student who wrote the original.
Art school was the best time of my life, but I was not my best. I did not want to be 'the angry kid', and I had some ground to cover. By the time I graduated and took a gap year, I was calmer, but a work in progress.
My first job out of school was at a small architectural firm in the old Russia Wharf in Boston. I chose the firm because they did public work, and I wanted to design things like schools and libraries – wholesome places to benefit the community. Valiant as that sentiment was, I soon realized that I had committed myself to a pauper's life toiling on small-scale, publicly-funded contract work.
My first project was an airport maintenance building in some small town south of Boston (I don't recall which one, it may have been near Weymouth or closer to the Cape). In most cases, engineers were subcontractors for architects, consulting on structural work, or heating and ventilation. In this case, we were subcontractors for a civil engineering company, as the 'design' work on an airport maintenance building took a backseat to its functioning: can the specialized trucks fit through the bay doors? are the safety bollards spaced to allows easy turns?
The engineer in charge of the project was, if i remember correctly, a fellow named Mark Pilla. I remember him as heavy-set, with short or thinning hair, a round head, and a messy mustache. Our office manager, Janice, nicknamed him 'Pilla the Gorilla', because of his foul mood. Janice was good with the nicknames, going so far as to give herself one that she proposed we use – 'Blonde Bombshell'.
I never got to know Pilla, as a junior team member, I was not invited to the project meetings. But I did get redlines from him. My drawings were returned with violent slash marks and big red letters: "NFG" (No Fucking Good). There was no other comment, just "NFG, NFG, NFG". I didn't know if that was an engineering thing or a military thing or what, but it was not practical or pleasant to get drawings back without any useful feedback. His anger was demoralizing and it was meant to be.
During lunch, the office staff would de-construct Pilla: why so angry? why spread misery? Janice mentioned that if we could turn the conversation to 'the beach', he would calm right down. A kind of mindless bliss would drop over his face, as if a movie screen had descended and he was watching a little show: "Oh yeah, the beach." This was an effect that I actually witnessed – Pilla went to his happy place. His shoulders slackened, the red sharpie at ease, and his brain drifted to some unknown shore.
Our lunch conversations evolved, and we shared our own happy places. Whether it was doing art, visiting museums, touring historic buildings, or gardening, I had this sense that the happy places of the other designers were 'architecture-adjacent'. We were doing what we loved, or very nearly so. On then other hand, we worked with Dan, at the time a recent BU grad who kept our books, and his happy place was fishing. And I imagined planning, preparing, and making an office-career as an engineer or accountant just so you could spend your free time on a beach or fishing.
To be fair, Dan wasn't miserable in his work, he wasn't cruel in his interactions, and he was contented to work on the ledgers. There may be engineers who enjoy designing airport maintenance buildings, but Pilla was not one of them. Perhaps Pilla had his excuses: maybe he was a middle-child, maybe he was bullied, maybe he was going through a rough patch. Acting as prime contractor, maybe his obscene acronyms were a form of emotional retribution for past wrongs by other vindictive architects. His example was a ghost of future-me, illustrating a lesson to avoid a professional life of anger (I was not always successful).
In the end, the project manager, Chris, and I pulled a couple of all-nighters to finish that airport project. It was a forgettable building, and an awful way to start my career. But we found a line in the office manual that said if we worked a certain number of hours in a day the company owed us a meal. So after we finished, Chris and I walked over the Fort Point Bridge to the floating restaurant there by the Children's Museum and across from the Boston Tea Party Ship, the 'Beaver' (Janice's nickname, 'The Beave'). We ordered lobster dinners. The day after we submitted our expense requests, the office manual included a price limit on meals. Chris and I became good friends.
I had more of a 'design' role in a later project, renovations to the Upham's Corner Municipal Building in Dorchester. The building included a Boston Branch Library, and a Community School with some athletic facilities. The grand arched-windows on one side were bricked up to hide some racquetball courts. There was nothing specifically in the contract regarding the exterior, but I pitched an idea to the City's Public Facilities Department to restore the look of the windows by painting them. I suggested that this would make the building look 'whole', and present a more gracious face to that side of the neighborhood.
… I snap from my languid napping with a lingering curiosity. I don't keep a bed-side notepad, so I shuffle to my MacBook. I drop into Google Street View, and search '500 Columbia Road'. After thirty-five years, I see the painted arched-windows. Russia Wharf is now a skyscraper, the floating restaurant is long gone, Chris is a partner in his own firm, who knows what happened to the airport maintenance building, but the painted windows are still there. I smile and hope that means something.
After a zigzag career, bouncing from architect, to IT guy, to tech entrepreneur, to museum staff, to teacher – I made it to my happy place. I'm exploring Portugal and Europe, touring old palaces and museums, and doing my drawings. Acknowledging that I leave my own trail of misery (I am human, and I am sorry), and trusting that I account for just as much joy, I hope my life is a net-positive. And I make a mental note to ask Chris what his office manual says about compensated meals.
I think of Chris, Janice, Dan, and everyone from that little architecture office, all their support. I can remember most of the others – I am really bad with names, but I think I got this: Gail, John, Larry, Susan, Odell, Laurie, Nancy, Robert, and especially my professional mentor Bill (who passed way too soon). I consider the shouting match(es) that might have occurred, the decibel levels that may have been reached, if I had to deal directly with our bosses. The person who my friends saved me from was, mostly, myself.
Though I did not tell them at the time, I am grateful for all the generosity. To Mark Pilla, wherever you are, you have my thanks, too. I hope you found the beach.
UPDATE (Apr 16th): The world passes three million deaths, so here are the pandemic stats, after all.
cases: 140,505,912 global • 32,305,912 USA • 829,911 Portugal
deaths: 3,011,554 global • 579,942 USA • 16,937 Portugal
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