Summer Break
Stepping Away Until Fall
(1 min read) Why you won’t hear from The Gothic World for a while.
This is just a quick note to tell you that you won’t be receiving new essays from The Gothic World until fall — likely late fall.
I am halfway through the “Insular Roots” essay but simply do not have time right now to do it justice. Both the “Evolution” and “Anatomy” series require substantially more effort than my countdown did — they involve a lot more conceptual thinking as well as a lot more digging through my photo archives for examples and illustrations. Writing an essay on a single building is pretty straightforward; trying to synthesize several centuries of architectural history for an overview of the British Isles (or France or Italy) is a lot more work.
These essays are harder for me to write at the moment for a simple reason: the conceptual space they need is being claimed by an architectural project of my own. After eight years living as a wandering nomad, photographing museums and historical sites, art and architecture, I have finally decided to settle somewhere. I purchased some beautiful, remote wooded acreage next to a state forest in Vermont and now need to focus my time and energy on the design, permitting, and sitework for a house. Vermont’s building season being what it is, this all needs to be largely complete by October if I want to be able to begin house construction after the thaw next year. And so it’ll likely be October before I can give new Gothic posts the time and attention they need.
Anyway, I appreciate your patience (forced though it may be ; ). I still plan to keep posting at Both/And every other week — those posts are much easier to create — and am still doing my weekly reading of the Daodejing — those short philosophical poems provide a lot of inspiration for the type of house I want to build (ziran 自然 and wuwei 無為 and all that ; ).
Take care, and enjoy your summer. I’ll return in the fall.
You could not have picked a better place! Your posts will have room to grow, as will you! Good on ye, your return will be welcome.
Enjoy a well deserved break Ben and good luck with your building project - perfect spot!