Last night I had a dream that one of my best friends (hi, Anet!) bought Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater house, the one I’ve been thinking and writing about fairly obsessively for my novella.
there's a cantilever for you
She bought it for the low price of $179,000, which, in my dream logic, I could only attribute to its location in the middle of nowhere and to the fact that she was now going to have handle its million-dollar maintenance. (The guides talk a lot about the costs of maintaining those cantilevers.)
photo I took from the bridge
Anet and her husband and four kids promptly moved in and started tearing the place up, and I kept wondering if that was what FLW or the Kaufmanns who’d commissioned it would have wanted: an active family really living in the house.
I should have sensed something was awry when I spotted, high above the crowded treetops, flying elephants. One was using its ears to guide it to a landing on the roof of the garage. It was only when it got closer to the ground that I noticed the elephant was mounted on an electric wheel-chair-type flying machine, which explained the fact that the elephants could fly.
ph.d. in creative writing 
Perhaps Wright would be happier to see the house collapse into the stream–organic architecture and all that.
I had trouble understanding your dream at first, but then the elephants in flying wheelchairs pulled it all together for me.
Cheers,
D.C.
Delayed reply in 3…2…1…
Definitely possible that Wright would like it if the house collapsed into the stream, but then again, I think it would make him even happier to know how demanding the house is — how much time and money and people have gone into keeping the thing cantilevered.
In some ways, Wright’s design flaws are just your typical leaking roof or bending beam; but in other ways, they seem symbolic of his high-maintenance style.
Thanks for your comment!
Kelcey