Part 3: Tomorrow

I leave Beth on the lawn, snapping a few photos on my way out. I'm in my car now, on the highway, driving back to my hotel room.

Tomorrow I'll leave Fargo one last time, starting the long journey back to Toronto. I'll pack my bags, head down to the lobby and talk to Schantel, who'll pat herself on the back for the money she saved me, joking to her colleague about how "this guy didn't even know about the Canada Rate!"

I'll set up a time lapse, this time through the rear window, taking advice from a friend, though my fucking GoPro - piece of shit that it is - will continuously dislodge over the next two days.  

I'll leave in the dark, early, driving past those massive streets and big box stores and unending suburbs, going east on the 94, this time turning neither north nor south, leaving the Tower and the 46 behind me as I drive into Minnesota. 

I'll stay at a crummy motel in a crummy suburb outside Chicago. My room will have drooping ceiling tiles, terrible lighting, and hot water that varies reliably between scalding and just-not-quite-warm-enough. I'll wonder how this place got 4 stars. The next morning, I'll eat the most pathetic excuse for a so called "hot breakfast" - their answer to the stale but reliable continental breakfast. I'll wish I had stuck with toast. I'll leave that dumpster-fire of a motel and drive through Chicago, where I'll see the Willis tower, second tallest building in the US, and I'll stack it next to the KVLY Tower and still fail to really grasp the scale of it. 

Driving through Illinois and Michigan, I'll spend an ungodly amount of money on tolls. I'll pay a toll right before crossing a bridge, and then pay another immediately after, and I won't question it because I will simply want to get home by then.

I'll throw a bag of oranges out before crossing the border, thinking they'll be confiscated like the bag I had tried to take in upon arrival, only to curse myself when it won't even come up during questioning.

I'll re-enter Canada through Sarnia. I'll be served my A&W burger by a woman who could use some serious etiquette tips from the friendly folk in Fargo. I'll drive through London and past Cambridge, along that familiar stretch of 401, where - because fuck it - I'll take the Express Toll Route to shave 10 minutes off my drive. I'll approach Toronto and reality will set in. I'll be stuck in traffic on the Gardiner and feel a familiar rage I haven't felt in two weeks. I'll remember how astoundingly bad Toronto drivers are, a perfect storm of incompetence and self-righteousness. Five minutes from my apartement, I'll be bumper to bumper with tourists heading to a Christmas Market, reminded that there are too many damned people in this damned city, and they all insist on driving because it's somehow still faster than the TTC. 

I'll get home and feel the comfort of a loved one. 

I'll get to work the next day, unpacking all of this, thinking about what it all meant. I'll think about all the million little things I could have done differently, not the least of which will be to never use a GoPro again. I'll write the thesis and defend earlier than I thought, and it will be fine. I'll graduate and wonder what the hell to do with myself. Starr will go to grad school and I will follow her, working for a while, and the only pressing question about the world we live in will be how to plug architecture into whatever equation yields the most dollars per square foot. 

I'll think about how cynical the last 6 years have made me, about how our co-ops should have prepared us for this, and I'll wonder why we still create this false sense of hope in studio, despite being faced with the realities of professional practice every 4 months. I'll think about Schantel and Beth, about how their questions about the world cannot possibly be answered by architecture, that those types of questions are the only ones that really matter to 99% of people, and I'll wonder why we, architects, insist on trying. I'll think about the masks our professors wear - The Writer, The Craftsman, The Poet, The Sculptor, The Theorist, The Coder, The Graphic Designer, The Data Analyst, The Photographer, The Historian, The Urban Planner, The Social Activist,                               - and I'll feel like we've been sold a lie, because none of those masks come in handy in the real world - not for most of us, at least.

And I'll write all of this down, these cynical thoughts I've kept to myself, as a sort of exorcism, to hopefully banish them and think about beauty once again, think about the work I've done over the last two weeks, and hope that it will have been worthwhile. 

But fuck it - that's no way to end a story. I'll delete days 12 and 13, ending this story here instead, on day 11, under starry skies and through moonlit fields, reminiscing about long roads and tall towers, replaying the day in my head, alone in my car, feeling a ton of conflicting emotions after a frankly emotional day, but feeling no cynicism, not right now, not on the highway, not as I drive towards Fargo, North Dakota. 

Marco Chimienti
30.11.17