When denser, darker, smoother clouds than have ever been seen before appear over a science building (even if it’s MY science building), I find myself wondering if some mad science is afoot.
Tag: campus
Outing Castle
The overwhelming Adirondack puissance of the St. Lawrence Outing Club has produced a sprawling compound of housing and storage and additions and canoes and bikes and skis. I imagine the building as an outdoorsy batcave: behind every door is gear for another activity.
Bikes Beneath the New Dorm
A beautiful new dorm with geothermal heat, a fleet of bicycles, and the reflections of a spectacular sunset in the windows: this must be St. Lawrence.
St. Lawrence Campus I
St. Lawrence is an amazing place to spend time in mid-September: the lushness of summer is just barely beginning to crisp into fall, an autumn chill creeps into the evening air, and students (and faculty) have settled into the rhythms of another year.
Vernon Street Night
“Lights so bright they turn night into day!” Vernon Street, home of the Greek organizations of Trinity College, is a place where the time and the activities rarely seem correlated. On a night during the summer, however, the world was quiet and empty.
Downes Memorial (Hiding Chapel)
My last visit to Trinity was a great chance to see all of the Harry-Potter-esque buildings on campus. Their mass and majesty can be a bit overwhelming—so impacting the senses that I wouldn’t be surprised if I perceived a boy flying past on a broomstick.
Reflected Rings
Sculpture installation in the reflecting pool on the Hearst mining circle on UC Berkeley’s campus.
Berkeley Still Life
Berkeley is a pretty surreal place; as I process that, I thought my 400th post on Decaseconds might be a great time to really show it. The yellows of the birch tree are so sharp on a foggy fall morning, amid the hard, stained concrete of the past and the high-tech Li Ka Shing Building (one of my first-ever posts) materials. Visual contrast, both literal and metaphorical, align with the conceptual contrast of a place that prides itself on being countercultural while also being the birthplace of many of the technologies and ideas that make our modern culture possible.
A Spring Campus Panorama
On Mother’s Day, the North Country feels alive and warm and breezy. Smells of vegetation and fresh earth and coniferous trees flood the air. A panorama of life restored to campus (even as it quiets down for the end of the school year) seemed highly appropriate.
Beyond Berkeley
On a chill and cloudy afternoon, the sky hangs low over Berkeley and Oakland. Highly textured red tile roofs, ionic columns, industrial air handlers, all separated from the “mundane world” by a wall of trees: are these the “layers” of the Berkeley experience?
Descent: Latimer
This was a sight, descending the steps to the courtyard of Latimer Hall, that was once everyday and pedantic to me. Now, the sight of it is a powerfully nostalgic mix of strange perspectives and a dozen mishmashed textures and patterns: tiles and bricks and precast and cast-in-place and trees and bushes. In the long run, that red-green-and-gray color scheme means a lot more to me than I thought it did.
Columbia of the North
Having recently finished the fantastic Bioshock Infinite, I’ve had images of early-twentieth-century American exceptionalism floating through my brain. No matter what you think of the (sometimes questionable) policy decisions based on such a policy, the iconography is undeniably seductive. Neoclassical design features and waving flags on a crisp Sunday afternoon! Though this moment on St. Lawrence’s campus might not be literally of that time, the spirit of it was overwhelming.
-29 ºF
After a (relatively) warm weekend, the North Country is set to be entombed once again in winter. Though we’ve been promised by the false weather prophets that this cold spell won’t match the ferocity of January’s efforts, I can’t help but think back to mornings of almost unreal atmospheric thermal energy. On the edge of St. Lawrence’s campus, the sky was clear and the sun rose and cars puttered to work as though everything was normal.
Time-Space Material
I’ve posted before on the strange properties of Berkeley and the Bay Area: the condensation of nature and suburb and weird architecture and intensity urbanity that compresses human interest and life into a tiny area. This high-density material seems to deform the very fabric of space a time, and make the distance of a few miles seem like a light year and the time of a decade seem mere moments. This photograph captures the folding and crinkling as it happens: crunch clouds, sharp trees, an array of buildings from multiple Berkeley colleges within the University, the stretch of Telegraph Ave. and the tiny shapes of Oakland (at the far right) in the distance.
Vanish to Fog
Bit by bit, my memories of Berkeley are vanishing. I can justify that this phenomenon is, at worst, neutral: the daily grind and the stupid time I missed the bus vanish, and only the weekends watching the sunset from the Berkeley Hills remain. Not to be trite: this empty, early-morning, fog-shrouded, post-apocalyptic view of the campanile is now my memory of the place, as well as an operational metaphor for that memory… If that’s not too obtuse.
Decaseconds 