50 SHADES OF LINEWEIGHTS

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“I don’t need sex, architecture f*c!s me all the time.” – unknown

The music is loud, pumping, and intense with a deep beat pulsing through my mind.  A sense of euphoria comes over me as I gently slide my pen in a perfectly straight horizontal line as it caresses the top edge of my scale ruler. Stop. Look. Assess. A sense of pleasure spreads across my body.  I then rotate the scale ruler and begin the methodic scoring of the page from right to left – place rule, place pen, slide/glide, lift, look, assess.  Repeat.  Very slowly the soft HB lines become darker, thicker, and patterned and an image emerges from each permanent pen stroke that reinforces the diagram below.  Each stroke evoking a moment of bliss and release of serotonin.  This continues for hours and as the body tires; the intensity and focus and maintenance of control overrides the pain in one’s hands, wrist, back, and eyes. 

We love this, we crave it.  And we wake up day after day to do it again and again – whether it’s a model that takes 3 days or documentation on the computer that takes weeks. This attraction of combined pleasure and pain that is intrinsically linked with mental and physical forms of control starts during our university days...and probably much earlier for most of us otherwise we would not have made it through undergrad.

For me, it began when I found out I had severe asthma as a result of being allergic to horses.  In order to keep riding, continuing to do the thing I loved most in all this world, I learned coping mechanisms and the mental fortitude to continue riding while feeling like I would suffocate.  And quite literally I was being asphyxiated by my passion; my bronchial tubes were tightening and filling with fluid.  I later became a professional groom during my summers and literally had to brush and clean muddy horse after horse knowing that it would put me in a state where I could not breath.  When it got really bad, I would go hide in a horses stall for five minutes to try and recover my breath.  Sometimes, I would be brought to tears knowing I had pushed myself too hard but it was the required work at hand so I had no choice. I would slowly calm down, catch my breath, and my critically important inhaler would kick in and I would emerge from the stall and no one around would be none the wiser.  I would not let anyone see my weakness. I joke now about the time I completed a "jump-off" round barely holding on over 1.3-1.6m jumps, holding on to the thought that I only had a few jumps left to complete...I then trotted out of the ring, gasping for air I slid off my horse weakly handing the reigns to my trainer and walked as fast as I could over to the site ambulance to get an oxygen treatment.  

From that point on, I was destined to do something that wasn’t easy because everything else would be boring.  Ha, at least that’s what I tell myself anyway…

This week, my colleague and I are documenting, and the euphoria and immense exhaustion I feel at the end of each day from being so intensely focused has brought back memories of university and my childhood.  It’s fantastic – but I must laugh as there wouldn’t be many in this world would look forward to 5 days of non-stop documentation.  And so off I go, “Hi, ho, hi, ho,” the archi-sado masochist!



This might lead nicely into some possible thoughts to come on gender and space in India 😊

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