skaters go by, night goes on

27 Feb, 2026

or a lengthy imagining of one night in the academic architecture world

Skaters go by my window behind layer upon layer of branches and pines and browns of winter.

This last summer, I met a man who went through my same architecture program, only 40 years earlier than I had. One day towards the end of the summer, when the prospect of returning to school was edging past a vague swatting away of the future and more towards a tangible cliff, him and I talked about the differences between our experiences there, of which there were many. The similarities, though, however few there were, were far more fascinating.

Skaters go by the same way they did yesterday, the week, year, decade or four before.¹

He laughed to himself as I described black winter nights, when the only warmth we studio slaves got was from the fluorescent glow of the lights above our desks, just bright enough so to keep one wired awake into the wee hours of the morning. His laugh sounded a thousand miles away, measuring a stretch of time that, to him, must've felt like yesterday and a century ago all in one breath. His eyes strayed from mine, as one can only picture events of past lives in grave detail when they're not being distracted by the lives in front of them.

Early 80s, maybe '81, where would he have sat in my studio? Would he have been close to the door, where you greet everyone who shuffles in at sorry hours of the night for their graveyard shifts? Or would he have been like me, tucked in the back, his own little corner of the world? Of course, there's a certain magnetism to the back of the room that makes the front nothing but a transitional means to an end, so I like to imagine him sitting right where I did, in a self-serving way.

The only real shift that storied room has experienced from then to now is the lights that we take in. Those incandescents over cream-toned paper would've put me to sleep, that's for sure, over the blue-ish white scratchy glow of laptops, clicking, clicking, clicking. For the sake of it, I imagine him sat in the back, sepia-toned, dreamlike. The blackness of night outside is a constant no matter where or when you are.

I imagine him hunched over the drafting board, glasses pushed up to the bridge, and if he really honoured the future of my desk, a lukewarm french press coffee would be sat next to his paper, dangerously close but never too much so, as we all know the value of our work is a measure of sanity and sleep. In an inexplicable way, I imagine he would've had a digital watch, however it wouldn't be on his wrist. It would be removed so to not scratch his paper and set to one side of the desk, angled so the time poked at his peripheral with every stroke of the pencil.

This is not my retelling, only my visualization of what is a universal story to a finite group of people.

To the right of his desk, beneath his feet, he would have a pair of skates unceremoniously tossed down with loose laces overlapping each other. This was his his cigarette after a hard night's work, his certain death of the night for a brighter tomorrow. All he had to do was line, line weight, poche, and be at peace. With his work, with himself. Only then would he have earned the light grey smoke that'll fight back against the dark sky.

When that time would come, the blackness of night would have slowly transferred from the sky to his sunken under eyes, or tracing that line back another direction, maybe the blackness of the coffee that once sat cold in his mug, leaving only the stained empty of what it takes to work. Only then, when the transaction of time and energy had been done, can he push his chair back, strap his watch back on, only then can he look down. Because in this visualization, he is me to a certain extent, he would've made it to, let's say, four or so. A sigh, the glasses pulled off, a scratch at the temple. At least it's not five, or six, or whatever hour he hasn't made it to quite yet, he would think.

The ceremony of carrying those skates out would feel triumphant, to say the least. He'd walk from his own little corner in a rejuvenated saunter, that last breath of life before the eventual crash. The battle has been won, in what will be a lifelong war, the way this career is going. Just as you nod in the transition in, a wave on the way out is customary for all who are still on the frontlines.

On that walk to the canal, I imagine he would watch his breath against the air, the sky now that deep teal that signals you're on thin ice between yesterday and tomorrow. Which one is below or above is unclear, only that he'd be skating on the surface.

The laces would feel like silk between his calloused fingers from the hardness of the drafting pencil, indented on his middle and index like they were always meant to hold it. These nights are a loud destruction of the body and a quiet construction of the mind. As he ties, I imagine he would think of the lace hooks as the clamps, the laces as steel cables in a miniature world. I imagine he would think of the steps down onto the canal, the railing as an architecture of free people, those who choose to skate, and skate fast. He would skate all the way home, down the canal, up the steps, some four decades ago.

#thoughts