James Fulton -- Blog #6

"Then he saw them coming back again. They were walking slowly, hand in hand, as village lovers do. Luc was carrying the pail.

After kissing him again, the girl went on, nodding carelessly to Jean. She did not offer him any milk that day.

The two little soldiers sat side by side, motionless as always, silent and quiet, their calm faces in no way betraying the trouble in their hearts. The sun shone down on them. From time to time they could hear the plaintive lowing of the cow. At the usual time they arose to return.

Luc was whittling a stick. Jean carried the empty bottle. He left it at the wine merchant's in Bezons. Then they stopped on the bridge, as they did every Sunday, and watched the water flowing by.

Jean leaned over the railing, farther and farther, as though he had seen something in the stream which hypnotized him. Luc said to him:

"What's the matter? Do you want a drink?"

He had hardly said the last word when Jean's head carried away the rest of his body, and the little blue and red soldier fell like a shot and disappeared in the water.

Luc, paralyzed with horror, tried vainly to shout for help. In the distance he saw something move; then his friend's head bobbed up out of the water only to disappear again."

The complete works of Guy de Maupassant is a collection of short stories published in 1903. Maupassant's short stories are elegant and efficient, subtly packed with drama and emotion by the use of admirably precise language and carefully composed scenes. This careful execution of craft and attention to detail, present in both the stories and the construction of the book they are contained in, serve as a source of architectural inspiration for me. I find myself drawn more and more into this kind of hyper-subtle expression in the architecture of firms like SANAA and some of Jean Nouvel's work. At the same time, I recognize the pitfalls of taking this kind of design philosophy too far -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIO31Rm595k