“The architectural competition illustrates processes of change in society that are technical and organizational as well as social; it shows up constructive dilemmas, the borderline of rationality and the relative, creative insecurity of knowledge production in architectural projects.”
Source: Architectural Competitions - Histories and Practice
“Last week, I was the golden goose and this week I’m the golden dipshit.”
Source: Tom Collins: A 'Slightly Crooked' Novel
“The dilemma is more like wet cement. You can get rid of wet cement before it dries, but, once it hardens, you’re fucked. The dilemma dried and hardened. I’ve been fucked all day.”
Source: Tom Collins: A 'Slightly Crooked' Novel
“Her clothes sprinkled all over my living room remind me of the scattered thoughts I had about our predicament. But her body is a glowing light pole in the night. Just leading me further into the abyss.”
Source: Tom Collins: A 'Slightly Crooked' Novel
“There is something wonderful in being a stranger, in being foreign, something to be relished, something as alluring as sweets. It is good not to be able to understand a language, not to know the customs, to glide like a spirit among others who are distant and unrecognizable. Then a particular kind of wisdom awakens—an ability to surmise, to grasp the things that aren't obvious. Cleverness and acumen come about. A person who is a stranger gains a new point of view, becomes, whether he likes it or not, a particular type of sage. Who was it who convinced us that being comfortable and familiar was so great? Only foreigners can truly understand the way things work.”
Source: The Books of Jacob
“Traveling is not only the art of getting lost, but true travelers, in a sense, never return home. If they do return, they never see home the same way they did before leaving. They begin to see the foreignness of home after experiencing being at home in other foreign lands.
Traveling, I have learned, is not all about the touristy and the beautiful places as we see them in tourist guides. Traveling can be frightening in many ways, most important of which is the realization of how much sadness, pain, impoverishment, and despair exist next to, behind, under, over, and above the mountains, the blue lakes, the pristine beaches, the highly rated hotels and restaurants, the well-designed museums and historic and cultural sites, the fancy shops that, in many places, most locals can neither access nor afford. There are places so sad that the fanciest building one can see there is the airport! There are other places where the airports are run down and depressing, but once you step out of the airport, you discover that such places are full of life, meaning, and physical and spiritual nourishment. There are countries, namely the developed countries, where everything looks shiny and perfect, yet as soon as you enter, you encounter so much loneliness, depression, hate, racism, and lifelessness. Things are never as they appear at first glance. Traveling leaves us with more questions than answers – it is so bittersweet."
[From “Can We Travel Without Being Tourists?” published on CounterPunch on March 15, 2024]”
“I feel something foreign bloom between my husband and me, an intruder, a mold. I see my husband with eyes that don’t know him, as if he quite suddenly became a man from Brazil, or grew a beard, or started speaking in a southern accent. As if after eleven years of marriage he somehow had all of his secrets returned to him, made secret again.”
Source: The Dark Dark
“«No adoptes esa idea errónea de que todo extranjero, porque exhibe su diferencia, es incapaz de ser solidario»”
Source: Un extranjero con, bajo el brazo, un libro de pequeño formato
“Our uneasiness with our own feelings of foreignness, our own rapidly fraying sense of belonging. To what do we pay greatest allegiance? Family, language group, culture, country, gender? Religion, race? And if none of these matter, are we urbane, cosmopolitan, or simply lonely? In other words, how do we decide where we belong? What convinces us that we do? Or put another way, what is the matter with foreignness?”
“[...]Cosmopolitan evolutionism is an illusion, and it is everywhere being exposed as such.
There is no solution to Foreignness. It is eternal - and radical. It is not a matter of wanting it to be that way. It simply is so.”
Source: The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena