Posts Tagged ‘no’
What I thought I’d do was…
Traverse the earth. I’d start by going to Los Angeles, and then I’d hitchhike to Phoenix, and by similar processes eventually wind up in North Carolina. Say hello to my mother, than head north to Michigan. Say hello to everyone else. Then, to Canada. Head to the coast and get on a boat and head across the pond. Stroll eastward through Europe and through Russia, go to Alaska. Head back into Canada. Go southwest towards Brazil, get on a boat to South Africa, go north through the Middle East, east into India and through China, maybe go through Japan starting at Okinawa and ending in Sapporo. I could keep going, but I think you get the idea.
I would have no money to my name to start off with, and I’d work as a short order chef in a shitty diner off of a highway if I needed money.
In the meantime, I would make work. You know, art. I am an artist, after all. Or a photographer, I guess. Some people make a distinction between the two. For good reason, sometimes.
Listen—I am interested in all of existence. All of it, I really mean it. It’s magnificent. Even insignificant things are fascinating. All those things, I want to make them my own. I want to internalize the entirety of existence. I do that by seeing something, by putting it into my head or into my camera, by making a mental or photographic document of it.
It’s hard for me to do all of that sitting in one place.
So I left.
I got to Los Angeles. I tried hitchhiking to Phoenix, but I didn’t have much luck. I got tired and slept in a sort-of-alley on a piece of particle board next to the freeway entrance I was trying to hitchhike at.
I woke up and tried again, and then went to Union Station. I spent ten dollars and fifty cents of the eleven dollars I had left on a train to Riverside, CA. It’s a while east of L.A., but still within driving distance.
I talked to people. I decided to come back. So it goes.
I’ll try again when the time is ripe, when I’m sure I can go through with it all the way and not have to deal with being defeated.
I was told to not look at it like that (as if it were admitting defeat), but it’s hard for me to see it any other way. I was gone for not even thirty-six hours, and I didn’t get terribly far. A failure on most accounts, I guess. I hate that. I hate being reminded that I am human, that I am not capable of anything I could possibly imagine just because I want to be.
I wasted twenty-four frames by rewinding a roll that’s been in my camera since March. I wanted a new roll in the camera for when I started my great departure. I might try to reuse/double expose the roll. Film isn’t vegan, so it’s important to me that it not go to waste.
I shaved my beard and my head. I’ve been shaving my head regularly since November, but I had gotten rather attached to my beard. I look like I am twelve, now. Stubble is coming in, now, but I’m impatient to have facial hair again. I like beards, my own especially.
