Fifteen years ago, I acted in a school play that gifted me with an enduring love for the stage. The
role – an eccentric professor – remains one of my favourites, because it challenged me to be a better actress while also giving me the opportunity to reconsider how I defined myself. When writing in the school magazine (yearbook) of a fellow actress that year, I signed it “Nushelle de Silva, PhD” as an inside joke, even though the title was semi-incomprehensible to my eighth-grader self. Today, I signed away the next five-ish years of my life to pursue doctoral study in architecture at MIT, a place wherein I’ve excitedly pursued the esoteric in the company of quirky, warm, good-humoured individuals whose journeys I am always, always inspired by. It has been a difficult decision, in part because the opportunity to work on topics, questions, and ideas that fascinate me is an absolutely terrifying gift. It requires that I truly embrace the idea that my self-defined calling in life is to unearth, cackle maniacally over, and save from eternal obscurity documents and images like this photo of JFK being mounted on an elephant. Continue reading
Author: Nushelle
snowpocalypse sublime
the sublime is
[falling snow glinting sharply
as if the air were briefly sliced open
like a thumb on a knife edge]
between beautiful and grotesque
what a day for a daydream
I love to walk, and my walk between school and home is one that is especially sacred to me. Because when I walk, I daydream. The world becomes fuzzy at the edges as I think about what I’d like to cook for dinner, puzzle through the knots in my thesis, rehearse impossibly beautiful futures, stop short at a favourite tree to think about what a delightful world I live in. And that is what makes me hesitate to sign up for that (admittedly laudable) MIT women’s self-defense class — to do so is, to me, to concede that I must cease dreaming. Continue reading
Peace and Conflict Resolution Panel, OYW 2014
I was fortunate enough to be sponsored by the OPEC Fund for International Development to attend the One Young World Summit in Dublin, and hear how two inspiring gentlemen loyalist Jackie McDonald and republican Sean Murray, who fought on opposite sides during “the Troubles”, are now working towards reconciliation and sustained dialogue in Ireland. This could not be more up my alley. Turns out, there are a lot of us young people working towards the same goal in our respective countries, and we all got the chance to say a few words about what we’d learned during our special breakout session with Jackie, Sean, and others involved in the talks. Below is a clip describing what I found most inspiring.
Culturunners Storytelling Symposium
I blogged about the recent Culturunners Symposium over at ArchKiosk, the MIT Architecture student blog. My fabric “sculpture” bodyboundary was also on display during the event. You can read the full post here.
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Building Bridges in ‘The Architect’
Building Bridges is featured in the April issue of The Architect; the theme for the month is walls. It is guest-edited by Anoma Pieris, also a product of MIT’s SMArchS programme. I’m thrilled that she reached out to me, partly because BB is a project that is very dear to me, and partly because I am a fan of her work and of bridges, I have always been surprised how these are created and how they use services of Bridge Painting for the ending details as well. Over the past year, she has been incredibly generous with her advice on navigating academia.
You can pick up a copy of The Architect from the SLIA headquarters on Vidya Mawatha, Colombo 7.
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More notes on the Southern Expressway
Today Shilpa and I embarked on an 8-hour journey along the Galle Road to get a sense of how businesses are affected by the loss of car traffic to the highway. We drank milk at Monis, ate rolls at Sinharaja bakery, drank thambili on the side of the road. We had a lot of chats with the managers of business large and small, from ones established in 1896 to one that opened two years ago, who generously made time for us and our questions. In short, yes, of course their businesses have lost a lot of customers because of the new highway, but their stories are much more nuanced and rich than that one-liner. Here are real people struggling to make ends meet, and each story is worth telling. They’re funny and sad and generous and hopeful and frustrated and hanging on by the skin of their teeth. I’m writing an article on some of these hidden costs of the highway for MIT’s CoLab, and just this one day’s worth of interviews made me realise that there’s a wealth of information that could potentially be very useful data for when the network of highways expands, especially to Kandy. I’m thinking maybe a summer project?
Notes on the Southern Expressway
I love good public transport, for a number of reasons that are more poetic than practical. It’s not an environmental thing or and economical thing, even though I feel good about myself when I pay only 15 rupees to get from Lunawa to Kollupitiya. Apart from the fact that I would hate to drive myself around (having to concentrate on the road would mean I wouldn’t be able to retreat into my dreamworld, or settle down with a book) I also really enjoy people-watching. I like that funny feeling of having my life momentarily collide with those of my fellow commuters. Sometimes they do interesting things, sometimes they’re extraordinarily nice, and sometimes they are unbelievably crabby, and always there is potential for a Story. This is why even being driven around isn’t quite as fun as taking the train or bus. I’m particularly fond of the train at home, partly because it is so convenient (6 minute walk from my house to the station!), partly because it runs parallel to the sea, and partly because there is no traffic. I also love living in Cambridge, with my $35 monthly pass getting me anywhere by train or bus. The bottom line is that I love public transport, even though my reasons are not based in logic. Continue reading