Monthly Archives for: February 2012
2012 February
FYI/411: The Grand Planyon
“The best laid schemes of mice and men / often go askew.” — Robert Burns
PREAMBLE
So. Here we are. Twenty-twelve, Year of Our Lord. (Whatever that means.) The Mayans thought they had it figured when the world was gonna come crashing to a halt. Twenty-twelve. Except for they didn’t have much truck with this Year of Our Lord business. The Nazarene never made it to the Americas, leastways nobody knew about it until 1830, when Joseph Smith let that particular cat out of the bag. Anyways…
Point being, even if the Mayans are wrong, time’s not slowing down and I got places to go, people to see. Things to do. Namely:
#1. Take a cross country road trip.
#2. See the Grand Canyon.
#3. Make a movie. A real one. (Whatever that means.)
There’s other things on the list. But that’s #1 – #3. And that particular triad, I gather, would be better with company. Especially if one got the wild hair that he wanted to do all three at once. Hence I approached three of my friends to see if they’d step out on this limb with me. A mega Misfit Pilgrimage. I thought it would be more, like, official or something if I wrote something up. A proposal of sorts, that they might ponder and, hell, maybe even sign or something. 3,748 words later, what was just a vague notion became a full-fledged Grandiose Scheme. Here’s some of what I wrote… (more…)
1. Mayans!
2. Blog sabbaticals!
3. Building a bat cave…
4. …with gadgets!
5. …1000 lbs. of flour!
6. …and rice!
7. …300 lbs. of honey!
8. …plenty of water, cold and clean!
9. Which is to say: all of that’s related. At first I thought we’d all get zapped and/or swallowed up by lava when the clock struck midnight on January 1. Not so. Turns out, the Mayans gave us all but ten days at the end of this year to get our affairs in order before it all goes kablooey. Nice of them. So now that we’ve made it through the whole of January, I figure it’s relatively safe to peek my head out (virtually/digitally, that is).
10. But I also figure I better get going on that bucket list.
11. Hence: I’m headed to the Grand Canyon! (Mega Misfit Pilgrimage!)
12. Also: I’m gonna document it. Sounds. Images. Words.
13. Also: I will have friends, Romans, countrymen with me. Yes…
14. …I have friends!
15. Road trips.
16. Road trips across America.
17. So yes: America.
18. Also: America!
19. Horses! with no name!
20. Being out of the rain!
21. No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July.
22. Beginners by Mike Mills.
23. It Chooses You by Miranda July.
24. Serendipity, synthesis, and symbiosis, especially as they relate to seemingly disparate creative projects. It does all fit together. You just don’t know how yet.
25. No but seriously: blog sabbaticals.
26. Which is to say: figuring out (finally) what this blog is.
27. Which is to say: I love this blog because it’s a creative incubator for me. A creative commonplace. I share it because (A) it’s often a contract with myself: if I say I’m going to do something on my blog, “publicly,” well, then I have to do it, and (B) maybe somebody else might be inspired to make such a creative contract with him/herself. Win-win.
28. Which is to say: the blog serves me. Unless it doesn’t. Then I take a sabbatical until it does again. Easy enough.
29. Which is to say: “In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting [Irony!], but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!” — Rainier Maria Rilke.
30. The relatively calm awareness that “figuring things out” and “finally” are way squishier terms than I tend to admit. Far more are they akin to heartfelt wishes than they are to unassailable verdicts.
