‘Citizen Starchitect’ is not an Oxymoron
Hello,
It’s been a very long time. Since October 2015, in fact, that I wrote my last blog post.
Things have to resonate deeply with me or I won’t waste your time sharing it.
This is one of those times.
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These are my thoughts from last Thursday night, July 3rd when I couldn’t shake the eerie feeling that had come over me. I was irritable all day amid interruptions to my schedule by the very person holding me to a set schedule.
And helpful workers crossing my path one too many reasonable times.
We finally arrived in Austin 2 hours later than expected. We were there to casually hang out with our daughter and her boyfriend and help her with any home maintenance work.
We decided to skip our usual routine of dining at Terry Blacks bbq as none of us seemed hungry enough for that much food.
It was raining steadily and we halfheartedly set out to try a new old Mexican restaurant. Luckily, it wasn’t to busy at all. No wait, no one sitting outside in the rain, obviously.
We opted for the outdoor porch table for 4 with its quiet feel and rain pelting on the makeshift thin metal roof. The waitress stopped by to take our drink orders and warned us that if it rains too hard, it might leak onto the table.
I scanned the porch and looked out into the darkness of the otherwise empty patio fenced in and bordered by mature trees, with full green branches swaying and being dragged low by the wind and rain.
Not my favorite way to start a 4th of July weekend, I subconsciously thought to myself. Never mind about the fireworks shows. Too much of a hassle to park and deal with crowds in the heat and humidity.
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My thoughts as written that night and shared only with my frenemy Chat-GPT (aka Chatty Chatworth):
[This is actually the LLM edited version] —
Journal Entry — July 3rd, 2025
“Where is everyone?”
Tonight feels… strange.
There’s a strange pall over the world. It’s been raining nonstop since morning—thick, steady, smothering. It’s Thursday night—Fourth of July Eve—but the usual lightness and anticipation just isn’t there. There’s no sparkle in the air, no fizz of freedom or festivity. It feels like we’re all collectively holding our breath, waiting for the worst.
Or maybe it’s just me.
Maybe everyone else is napping, curled up at home enjoying the rain.
But I don’t think so.
The other day at the pharmacy, I noticed a woman about my age—born in 1966, I overheard—dressed in pre-vacation summer attire: sunhat, sandals, airy clothes. She moved around the store with a certain lightness, and I imagined she was picking up preemptive meds before a trip to Europe—maybe Theraflu or something to stop the flu virus from replicating. It reminded me of last summer, our dreamy 30-day European adventure, carefully mapped and lovingly executed.
Yes, I was jealous. But not in the poisonous way. Just wistful.
Maybe the heaviness I feel is from doomscrolling on X—even though I’ve curated my feed to include thoughtful people. But still, the constant churn of tech layoffs (even at Microsoft, for heaven’s sake!), mass shootings that don’t even make the national news, and Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill—which sounds like a villain’s plan in a bad dystopian novel—it’s too much.
If you read Umair Haque’s posts, you’d be forgiven for wanting to crawl under a rock.
There’s a false stillness in the air. A deceptive calm that makes my skin crawl.
Meanwhile, my husband is asleep on the hotel sofa with a Hallmark movie on—the kind that feels like cotton candy dipped in corn syrup. A young dancer (considered “old” by NYC standards) is let go before Christmas but finds redemption by visiting her hometown and saving her parents’ failing restaurant with a surprise male holiday revue called The Merry Gentlemen.
It has a happy ending.
But tonight, that kind of ending feels like it belongs to another century.
Fascism.
They whisper it now with less irony.
“Tax the corporations more.” Yes, please.
“Alligator-guarded cages for the unwanted illegals.” God help us.
Where is everyone?
That question haunted me all day yesterday—at the gym, at the car wash, even while sipping fizzy water at an upscale blow-dry bar near the Galleria. But not on Houston’s highways—those were still jammed.
Yet our late-night dinner at the Persian restaurant? Empty.
Driving home on I-10, I glanced down at the Pluckers lot—it was packed even after 10 p.m.
Have all the lucky ones flown away for the holiday?
To where?
Is there any place left that’s truly fun or safe or worth it?
Last April, we finally made our way to Disney World.
What unfolded was a strange disillusionment: the famous speed racer cars were broken—steering wheels turning but going nowhere. As a child, I prided myself on avoiding the center rail. But that night, the car veered wildly unless anchored by the divider. Even the couple behind me looked irritated.
The Rocket ride? Gone.
The once futuristic Tomorrowland conveyor belt? Now just a sad loop through 1970.
We could’ve learned more from a cotton gin.
The blush is off the rose, as they say.
America has seen better days—and now belongs to the oligarchs at BlackRock and the other two shadow giants, according to that sobering diagram on Twitter.
So again I ask:
Where is everyone?
Do you know?
Have you seen them?
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[My raw unedited thoughts]:
Journal entry:
Tonight felt weird. There’s a strange pall over the world. It’s been raining nonstop since this morning. It’s Thursday night – or 4th of July Eve – and there’s not the usual lightness and fun feeling in the air. It’s as if there’s a collective holding of the breath, waiting for the worst to happen.
Or maybe it’s just me? And everyone else , for the most part, are feeling fine and just napping at home enjoying the rain.
But I don’t think so.
The other day at the Pharmacy and noticed a middle aged lady dressed in summer pre-vacation attire, including sun hat and sandals. She was jutting around the store, a lightness to her steps. We landed at the counter simultaneously and I overheard her age: 1966. Oh, 3 years younger than me, I thought. And she was picking up some (theraflu- forgot the actual name- the stuff you take to not let the flu virus replicate). Anyhow, since she didn’t sound sick, I reasoned it was preemptive meds for their upcoming European vacation, half-remembering how we did similarly the summer prior on our way to Italy for a dreamy 30-day tour thru Europe on our own itinerary that we’d carefully crafted.
Yes, I was jealous but not the evil green kind.
Maybe it’s my vantage point: doomscrolling on X (even if I do follow a carefully curated bunch, news of the morose back to back high tech layoffs at Microsoft- one of America’s pride and joys- along with a mass-shooting in Chicago that didn’t even make national news! And just the whole ugliness of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill (the name alone foreshadowed trouble, in my mind). Well, it’s just all too much.
If one reads the writings and posts on X by non-practicing Economist Umair Haque, you’d be forgiven if you wanted to hide under a rock.
It’s just an eerie feeling. A false stillness that I can’t shake.
And it’s in stark contrast to the sappy superficial saccharine Hallmark Christmas movie my husband set the hotel TV to and is now asleep on the sofa, while I tune on off and on to see a young (but considered old) dancer being let go right before Christmas from her dance company in NYC. She turns it all around after paying her parents a visit and saving their failing restaurant by inventing on the spot a Christmas rendition of Male Dancers (called The Merry Gentlemen) to avert her parents’ diner from shutting down.
It’s a happy ending. One that this too-quiet feeling makes me think those days are truly over.
Fascism. They say.
Tax the companies more! (Good idea).
Alligator guarded cages for the unwanted illegals.
Where has everyone gone??
This thought was on my mind all day yesterday, at the gym, at the car wash, in the upscale blow dry bar near the Galleria, but not on Houston’s major highways. Nope. The usual bottlenecks still stacked up. But we had the Persian restaurant all to ourselves for late-night dinner. But driving home on I-10, I caught a bird’s eye view of the parking lot of Pluckers. It was jam-packed parking. Even after 10pm.
Has everyone who could afford to decided to fly out of town? To where? Where does one go amid a pre-Apocalypse time? Is anywhere truly fun or safe or worth it?
Last April, my family and I finally aligned our schedules and went to Orlando to go to Disney World. Once there, it started to unfold just how run-down and lacking the place and its once tip-top congenial workers had fallen from Fantastical grace.
The steering wheels on the famous speed racer cars were simply not working. They turned but the wheels refused to obey. As a child, my goal was to never hit the center metal divider as that’s how I knew I was truly driving the car. No gutter balls for me! But that night, had it not been for the middle divider, who knows where the car would have gone. It was irritating and the couple behind me were annoyed at my crazy driving, too.
The Rocket ship ride was gone. The Tomorrow Land moving sidewalk that was to take us through, well, Tomorrowland was more like a useless and decrepit trip down memory lane circa 1970. Literally nothing had changed. Seeing Eli Whitney’s cotton gin or Tesla’s experiments would have been far more exhilarating.
I could go on, but you get the picture.
The blush is off the rose, as they say.
America has seen better days. And it now belongs to the oligarchs of Black Rock, and the two other companies who own everything – according to that diagram circulating on Twitter (X – a name I hate).
Where is everyone?
Do you know?
Have you seen them?
– Tara Imani (from Austin, TX July 3rd at midnight)