h20 @ 32fps

i woke up in the cold of toledo.

i decided at the last minute to re-route myself towards pittsburgh to visit frank lloyd wright's fallingwater. for as long as i can remember, i've always wanted to visit fallingwater. there's something sort of mystical about the modern house that hovers above the stream. like castles in the clouds, but with more load bearing beams and steel. sure, it was eight hours out of my way, but when was i ever going to find myself anywhere near it again? i set coordinates southbound, called to make a reservation for their last tour of the day and sped past pittsburgh.

fallingwater is astounding. true, all the frank lloyd wright buildings i had visited had their own amazing part about them, but this has a right angle zen tranquility to it that i hadn't experienced before. i don't think i would ever want to live there and have all my stuff be wet all the time, but it's still doesn't seem like a bad place to spend some time. actually, now that i think about it, i was just informed a few days ago that my bedroom flooded again, so maybe fallingwater is better than i thought.

on the tour before mine, i saw someone who looked remarkably like ross. i wondered if jory was ever able to get a hold of him last night and if i would be able to find parking and bagels in manhattan. the ross-clone snapped some photos of the outside of the building before their tour was led away. i shook my head clear and followed our irritated tour guide into the building.

the house is preserved in pretty much the same state that it was in when it was bestowed upon the western pennsylvania conservancy. all the original artwork, furnishings and household bits sit where they were supposedly left by the kauffmans. it's got to be a strange thing to leave your house to a conservancy. that bed that you regularly had sex on will be looked at by millions of strangers. the sink where you brushed your teeth and the toilet where you puked away the party are all preserved for the future to admire.

the tour had ended and i wandered into the gift shop to look at the 3d viewmasters of fallingwater. what a great nerd gift. frank lloyd wright viewmasters. as i squinted into the toy to look at the modern architecture i was just walking through, the doors to the gift shop burst open and in came running ross and his girlfriend, jen.

"lorelei!"

they scared the shit out of me.

apparently, my attempts at reaching ross last night had somehow conjured them out of manhattan and right in the middle of pennsylvania. ross had no idea i was trying to get a hold of him. as a matter of fact, he didn't believe it was me when he saw me earlier in the day. while i was thinking "hey, that guy looks like ross." he and jen were thinking "hey, that looks like lorelei." they had convinced themselves that it couldn't have possibly been me, i belonged in california, not an hour outside of pittsburgh. what a doppleganger they found, though.

as they left fallingwater and walked into the parking lot, the brightest, shiniest space alien green hybrid electric car greeted them with california plates and they turned themselves right around and found me in the gift shop.

true, in the grand scheme of things, stranger things have happened, but... sometimes you just gotta wonder. what the hell? <05.21.04>

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