Before Italy, my days narrowed to two places: the big table in my studio and a small plane at the edge of the city.

The table dominated the room. Sixteen feet long, eight feet wide, irregular, low to the ground. I built it from fiberboard, carving out a continuous tan landscape—hills, valleys, gentle slopes. Bridges spanned imagined distances, thin and precise, like toothpicks held in balance. It was beautiful work. Fragile. Absorbing. Hours disappeared while I moved around it, shaping space with my hands.

What surprised me was how familiar it felt.

My father used to do this. He built houses on speculation, moved us in before they were finished, then took over an entire floor and turned it into an HO-scale railroad. Tracks, towns, elevations. For a year or more we lived inside a construction site and an imagined world at the same time. Then it would all come down, and we’d move on.

Standing at my table, I could feel that inheritance clearly. The pleasure of building a whole system. The calm of shaping space. The quiet acceptance that it might all be temporary.

I knew this model wouldn’t last. Most of the things I built didn’t. They were dismantled, discarded, or simply lost. That didn’t diminish them. It was part of the deal. You built fully, knowing the end was already folded in.

Around the same time, I started flying lessons.

No one suggested it. No one needed it. It wasn’t for work or art or anyone else’s expectations. Flying was something I gave myself, almost secretly, as if to mark the moment. A private reward. Proof that the letter had changed the rules.

Flying felt sculptural immediately. Up, down, left, right—true three-dimensional movement. The sky became material. The horizon became a line you could redraw. When the plane lifted and the ground dropped away, I felt a quiet recognition rather than excitement. This made sense.

I took five lessons—enough to understand what soloing would mean, enough to start asking questions. Did I want this to become a life? No. I just wanted to feel that freedom. I had touched what I needed to touch.

The table stayed up in my studio, beautiful and unfinished. The plane waited at the airfield, indifferent.

At the time, it all still felt light. Buoyant. Like play.

I didn’t know yet how quickly these pleasures could harden into obligations—or how close I was to building something too large to carry.