Craig Shepard and I have begun work on a book of photos and writing from his “On Foot: Brooklyn” project. At the moment there are no deadlines or schedules – we are just gathering the media we have, organizing, scanning, writing, editing, researching, and browsing through bookstores. It’s an exciting time – I’m not sure exactly where we are headed, and that’s a good thing. Right now we can just experiment, play and entertain any ideas that come up.

I’m in the midst of sifting through the thousands and thousands of photos I took on the thirteen Sunday walks, both en route and during the performances. I have photos from all over this large land mass we call home. Brooklyn is 71.82 square miles according to the Census Bureau. Of course we didn’t cover every square mile, but we passed through a good portion of it. I plan to include photos representing the vast diversity of architecture, people, landscapes and ecology that the real-heart-shaped boundary of Kings County (aka Brooklyn) encompasses.

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-Beth

Presents Gallery

64 Washington Ave. Brooklyn, NY 11216 b/w Flushing Ave. & Park Ave. (by the Navy Yards)

Friday June 15, 2012
8pm

C or G train to Clinton / Washington

$5 suggested donation

“Skaters”

I finished a short experimental video called “Skaters” and am beginning to submit it to festivals and look for places to show it.

Still from “Skaters”

Here is the synopsis:

“Skaters” is an experimental short video drawing on the techniques of stop-motion, animation and collage to build a visual composition from photographs of skaters performing tricks in a Brooklyn park. Starting from the simple idea of combining and overlapping images shot in the same space, O’Brien builds complex rhythms and movement from the sequences of still images. These skaters are not the pros, rarely landing a trick, but the heart of the sport: the kids who roll down to the park on a sunny afternoon. The result is an unmistakable ode to the repetitive and failure-laden process of learning and perfecting any sport, as well as the simple joy in movement, and the beauty of bodies in motion.

“On Foot: Brooklyn”

I am also continuing my documentation of Craig Shepard‘s “On Foot: Brooklyn” project which ends in a week.

You can read an article I wrote for the Brooklyn Rail (May 2012) here:
“SILENT MUSIC: Craig Shepard’s “On Foot: Brooklyn” Project”

I have been photographing each of his Sunday walks and performances (there will be 13 total) and creating videos sequences of still images. Here is an unedited example from one of his performances:

Craig Shepard performing on March 4, 2012, in Canarsie, Brooklyn.

I feel it mostly in my hips. With each step, I can vividly picture the ball turning in its socket, all the surrounding cartilage angrily inflamed. I’m not tired and my muscles may be tight, but it’s not debilitating. What makes it hard to continue is the focused, grinding pain in my hips with each step. It feels dry and scratchy, and I daydream about inserting the long red straw of a WD-40 can into the joints, coating them with soothing viscous oil. Problem solved. If you had asked me what would be most difficult about walking long distances I would’ve guessed exhaustion. But the pain comes before exhaustion – long before I run out of energy.

On Sunday morning, February 26th, 2012, Craig Shepard and I set out from northern Greenpoint to walk to Bensonhurst, a far-southern neighborhood in Brooklyn 9.9 miles away. It was the first of thirteen Sunday walks he will be doing over the course of three months. When we arrived, Craig set up on a concrete island under the New Utrecht Avenue elevated subway train at 18th Avenue and 85th Street. While he played his composition on a pocket trumpet, I took photographs of him and the activity swirling around him.

But there was an epic journey before us before we got there. And I think I wore the wrong shoes. In October of 2011, Craig and I walked the entire perimeter of Manhattan in one day. It came out to 39 miles. We stayed as close as possible to the border of land and sea, tracing the edges of piers when we could. For that walk I bought a pair of high-tech, high-top, super light Salomon walking shoes. They were magical: so light they barely registered and I didn’t get one blister from the moment I first put them on. I don’t recall the hip pain effecting me much until we were half way through that walk. That’s 20 miles.

This time I forgot to bring the Salomons. The shoes I had were a much heavier mid-calf boot with thick, soft insulation. Well-made with a good sole, but not necessarily built for long-distance walking. I didn’t think too much about it, assuming it wouldn’t be a problem and that I might appreciate the added warmth in the mid-30s weather. I was wrong. My hips starting hurting before we reached Prospect Park.

The walk was silent, though we decided that some gestures would be allowed: for stopping to stretch, or needing a drink or a bathroom break. We could talk again after the performance in Bensonhurst.

At first the silence was uncomfortable. I’m not sure if it’s cultural or particular to my experience – most likely a combination of both – but I tend to equate silence with anger. My mind will often jump to that fear first when conversation ceases. Even when the reason for silence is explicit, as it was this time, the fear can still arise. That connection is deeply entrenched.

How I tolerate silences with someone can be a useful benchmark for the evolution of the relationship. I know a friendship has reached a newer, more intimate level when we begin to successfully and happily ignore each other in close proximity. We even have a phrase for it: comfortable silence. It doesn’t mean the fear of anger lurking amidst the not-speaking disappears entirely, but only that it is more easily internally dismissed when it arises.

A friend recently told me about visiting a place she associated only with an old, devastating memory. She returned to the place with supportive friends, spending a long weekend in relaxation and recreation. The idea was to write new positive memories over the old one to diffuse the place’s singular, painful association. The nervous system can very stubbornly hold onto a perceived connection, even when you can prove to yourself it is logically false. My experience is that my brain’s reasoning capabilities have little effect or sway in changing an entrenched pattern of fear response to certain stimuli. But experiencing the situation again (and again and again) along with the non-dangerous outcome can lessen fear over time. In other words, you can’t talk yourself out of an unpleasant association, but you may be able to re-train your memory experientially. For me, “silence is always equivalent to anger” is a false association. Practicing silence with others is one way to teach my nervous system it doesn’t have to be scared.

The other thing I noticed was how eagerly and repeatedly I wanted to share my observations. At first, maintaining silence required a continual internal reminder. I was looking all around us at the places and people we passed, enjoying the light, colors, textures and shapes of the buildings, stores, sidewalks and people. The elaborate art painted on walls. Remembering times I had been on film sets. Places I and my friends had lived. The first two-thirds of the walk was through neighborhoods I knew very well from ten years of wandering, living and working. Greenpoint, Williamsburg, South Williamsburg, The Navy Yard, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene, Prospect Heights and Prospect Park. We didn’t pass one place I hadn’t passed many times before. Some corners I had spent twelve or more hours on, seeing the spot from before sunrise, through both rush hours and well into the night.

Part of what was nice about the silence in the walks was it allowed us to have our own experience in the moment, less influenced by the other’s ideas and reactions as it unfolded.

All of Craig’s Sunday performances are scheduled to begin at 1 pm, giving us a little over four hours to walk 10 miles. He had planned the walk expecting a 3 mph pace, which is commonly cited as a typical walking speed. It turns out that maintaining a 3 mph pace for four hours, though, was a grueling task. If you do not take any breaks or slow down at all, it would take 3 hours and 20 minutes to cover 10 miles. But, for me, walking that distance requires many short breaks to stretch, drink water and rest. The more time we lost to stops the faster we had to walk to maintain the average. Which became more and more difficult as the hours passed and the aches and pains of repetitive motion built.

Part of Craig’s project is what he calls a “transportation fast.” For three months from February 21st to May 21st, he is only walking, eschewing all other forms of transportation. No riding bikes, in cars or on the subway. He moves from one place to another only on foot. This means that, at the very least, he is walking 9 miles a day during the week to commute to work. By the time of the Bensonhurst walk he had already spent five days walking, on top of a few training walks before the project began.

I’m not participating in the “transportation fast” part of the project. Though I am generally in good shape, being prepared to walk long distances apparently requires not just general physical soundness. I had not particularly trained before the perimeter walk either, and, just as with this walk, I paid the price physically. It took about a week for me to recover from that one, but I was lucky enough not to do any lasting damage to myself. This time I was wearing heavier shoes and carrying a heavier pack since I was bringing photography gear I didn’t have on the perimeter walk: a tripod, extra lens and my larger and heavier DSLR.

My experience on the perimeter walk taught me something else: I couldn’t expect to photograph the way I usually do. Composing carefully requires stillness and I knew we would be moving most of the time. I decided to snap photographs more casually this time, while walking, and edit after the fact. Since the photos also record time stamps, they could also serve as a record of where we were when if we wanted to determine our speed later. Still, I couldn’t resist stopping on occasion to compose. As this usually required me to jog afterwards to catch up to Craig, a prospect that became less and less appealing as the we got farther into the walk, I didn’t do this very often.

Another byproduct of our silence was the ability to catch snippets of conversations of those we passed. The lovers’ quarrel on an outer path of Prospect Park, a woman complaining loudly to a friend in a pronounced Jewish-Brooklyn accent. And, even with our best intentions not to communicate, I could sometimes tell when Craig overheard or saw what I did. We might catch each other’s eye while smiling, or with raised eyebrows.

My favorite memory was of the two adult men playing a pretend baseball game with two little boys on a diamond in Prospect Park. As we approached, the first boy, a toddler, ran from first to second with the encouragement of the nearby pitcher/father figure. With a little help he finally found second base and stopped to bend over, inspecting his feet and the ground with intensity. The other man stood at home base with the other boy, also a toddler. The pitcher made an exaggerated display of throwing the non-existent ball towards home plate and the batter swung a fantasy bat making a resounding silent hit. They yelled for the boys to run. Run! When the pinch runner reached first, the batter yelled to keep running to second.

“But I want to stay here!” protested the boy.

“That was at least a double I hit,” the batter half-seriously complained as the other boy rounded third and headed for home.

The area that was least familiar to me was Borough Park, the large Orthodox Jewish neighborhood just south of Greenwood Cemetery. Their religion is the most conservative of Orthodox Judaism, sometimes called Haredi and sometimes called ultra-Orthodox, though from what I have gleaned, both terms cause offense to some people. I have always just heard them called Hasidic Jews, though I know the Hasidim are only one branch of a tradition that takes many different forms. As an outsider, all the nuances of difference of observance between sects are beyond my understanding, but the general style of dress is very distinctive. Men commonly wear black suits, long black coats, and hats. A black hat with a wide, circular brim is very common, as are long beards, black kippahs and short hair or shaved heads with long, uncut sideburns. The women dress very conservatively in long skirts, sleeves past the elbow, covering their hair with scarves or wigs. The style of clothing decidedly not modern, and the effect is starkly anachronistic. It also made Craig and I easy to distinguish as outsiders at a glance. I felt the most like an interloper or tourist as we traipsed through Borough Park, my tripod strapped to the back of my backpack.

I am familiar with the Hasidim, as there is a large population in South Williamsburg, near where I have spent much of my time in New York. Despite the proximity, though, I have had very little interaction with anyone Hasidic and there is a lot about the culture that still seems very mysterious and remote. It is an insular community, very difficult to engage with in any meaningful way if you are not a part of it.

When we finally reached Bensonhurst, known as the “Little Italy” of Brooklyn, Craig was multiple blocks ahead of me. I had stopped to take a few pictures and didn’t have the energy or desire to catch up to him again. 1 pm was rapidly approaching.

When I arrived and began to set up my camera, I was happy to see he was wearing his bright blue windbreaker. This would work great in the animation, making him easier to spot in the frame.

I barely heard Craig’s performance. Not because I wasn’t interested or couldn’t physically hear it, but because all my attention was on my photography.  When I am most fully engaged in photographing, it’s as if all my brain power and focusing ability is diverted strictly to the visual, leaving no bandwidth for my other senses. I can’t carry on meaningful conversations when I am in this state. It’s one of the main reasons I have chosen not to photograph during important events in my life: if I want to be fully present for something, I can’t have a camera in my hand.  I often leave the casual documentary snapshots to others.

While perched near the curb, my tripod set up low to the ground, a woman stopped.

“OK, I just have to ask, what’s going on here?” she said gesturing to Craig playing across the street.

Unable to give her my full attention, I said something like this, “His name is Craig Shepard and he’s doing a project…..”

Not unkindly, she replied, “But he’s only playing one note…?” as Craig sustained a long note on the trumpet in the background.

How to answer? “They’re his own compositions he’s playing,” I responded, while continuing to watch the action in front of my camera intently while I snapped photographs.

She began to walk away, saying as she left “Oh! Very interesting….I wish him all the best….very interesting….”

I wish I could’ve spoken with her more because she was clearly engaged and interested, exactly the kind of passerby I appreciate. And her question was the kind that opened up many possible avenues of conversation about Craig’s work, ideas of what music is and isn’t, public performance and audience expectation.  The fact that she stopped to wonder about what she was hearing was a great sign.

On the walk back, we decided to slow the pace considerably. There was no time constraint on the return and it was pretty clear I wouldn’t be able to manage walking very fast.

As we rounded the southeast corner of the Navy Yard and turned onto Kent Avenue for the home stretch I felt a strange tug in my right hip. Something was wrong. I had been in near-constant pain for the whole return walk, but this felt different. I was limping. After resting a while, stretching and walking about a half mile more, we decided I should catch a cab home. I left Craig with only 1.7 miles to go. I was sad to have not completed the walk, but immensely relieved to be sitting in the back of a car, five minutes from home.

Craig Shepard and I moved in the same social circles in northern Brooklyn, frequenting some of the same spots, but we didn’t really know each other. The impression I had of him was someone with a tendency towards intense silences. A concentrated and slightly disconcerting silence had been the defining feature of the few interactions we had. It was a collaborative project, these silences, as I am decidedly reticent with new people myself. Rushing to fill a space with words has never been my role, as my mind tends to react to even a whiff of awkwardness with a complete cessation of all activity. My sense was that his silence was not out of discomfort but simply an aspect of his personality and relational style.

What finally brought us together is a very North-Brooklyn-2011 story: he is a composer and I am a graphic designer, and he was putting out a CD.

Graphic design is a side-project of mine; it’s more of a hobby than a career, allowing me the luxury of choosing only to work on projects I like. It’s too bad that CD packaging is most likely on the way out – it’s an art form I really enjoy. I’ll do everything from creating artwork, photography and logos to the layout. The largest project I’ve ever done was for a Brooklyn-based band named Nakatomi Plaza. You can see the project here: “Unsettled.”

Craig’s project and the album is called “On Foot”. In the summer of 2005, he walked 250 miles across Switzerland, carrying a pocket trumpet with him. Every night at 6 p.m., wherever he was, he would play a piece he composed that day.

After our initial meeting about the job, Craig sent me home with a rough edit of the CD. The album has six tracks chosen from the thirty-one compositions he wrote on the walk. Each piece is performed and recorded in the musicians’ own spaces. Though ranging from sparsely melodic to a series of elongated and repeated tones, all have one thing in common: ample space and time in which the musicians do not play. They are silent, but the recording is not. The non-instrument sounds, just barely audible, are an integral, though muted, part of the recording: indispensable background. You can hear the soft clacking as the keys are depressed, saliva smacking and the inhalation of breath. A refrigerator humming, heating or cooling systems, wind blowing, distant traffic noises.

In Craig’s own words, his work is meant to “frame the everyday sounds of the place in which they are heard”. In its philosophy it is a kindred spirit of anarchy, and the political ideals of non-hierarchical, egalitarian structures. It is in stark contrast to the idea of man in dominion over nature. His compositions are not written or presented with the intention of monopolizing the space, but in their delicate, simple melody or impressive precision, open your ears to all sounds.

As I laid on the couch listening, and occasionally dozing off, the recorded sounds of the instruments, players and environment amplified into my space, mingling with the sounds inside my apartment and outside my window. Mingling past and present.

It was in the many silences that punctuated every piece that I recognized Craig. What I had observed as a personality trait is, not surprisingly, an integral theme and concern in his work. Craig is a member of the Wandelweiser Group, a collective of composers and musicians founded in Germany in 1992 by Antoine Beuger and Burkhard Schlothauer. For the artists of Wandelweiser, much thought is given to silence as an important building block of a composition; to silence as a concept, a subject, a theme. They are the heirs to the work of John Cage. Of particular importance is “4’33,” the infamous piece in which no notes are played.

Though the silences in “On Foot” make the strongest first impression, they are not the most important element of the album. The musicians do, in fact, play their instruments. The incredible care and skill with which the music is performed and recorded is essential – the compositions would not work otherwise. The lovely, simple melodies of the second track, “Grottes de l’Orbe, le 22 juillet 2005″ are rendered rich and compelling by Katie Porter’s nuanced performance. At times the piece hovers on the edge of dissolution, the intermittent notes from the clarinet sounding like wind whipping through the eaves of an abandoned house on the edge of prairie. At these moments the piece mimics the accidental beauty of unorganized sound. But then it regroups and continues on with a complex sequence of notes, asserting its genesis in a conscious mind and realization through a skilled performer.

The first few times I listened to the album it was not with the intent to study or critique it. Listening this way, casually, I wasn’t immediately aware that the two tracks “Vallorbe, le 23 juillet 2005″ and “Dornach, den 2. August 2005″ were ensemble pieces.

On “Vallorbe”, four musicians (flute, clarinet, cello and percussion) play each note together with such skill and precision that they are nearly indistinguishable – at least to an untrained ear such as mine. There is melody here, but glacially slowed into long mournful tones.

The final piece, “Dornach,” is the simplest and most direct of the tracks. As an invitation to listen, it is the most straightforward. The 27 minute track is mostly silent, occasionally broken by the striking of what sounds like a large church bell. This crashing metallic sound never fails to jolt me awake, either from slumber or reverie. Its effect, and sound, is similar to the gonging of a metal bowl in Buddhist meditation practice: it brings the listener’s attention back to the present. Thus awoken, I listen intently to the following silence, until I wander again into sleepiness or into one of the myriad distractions, internal and external, which pull on my attention. For those who really listen there is a reward, a hidden treasure, in each tone. It was only after reading reviews that I finally heard it. Along with each percussive gong, hidden through a near-perfect matching of pitch, is a cello.

The final packaging for “On Foot”:

You can purchase the album here: On Foot.

I imagine coming across Craig performing a piece on a street corner, and, in the contemplation of his sound in the silences, I would become more aware of sound in general: the swishing of a passing bus, murmuring of pedestrians, blowing leaves, barking dogs, chatter of birds. It is an invitation to a fuller experiencing of my world as it transpires in the moment, an invitation to inhabit more fully a richer sensory present.

In this sense, his work reminds me of my first experience with Stan Brakhage’s films. Though opposite in its conceptual framework of presentation – the images are projected in silence within a space intended to block out all other aural or visual stimulus – the effect on my sensory experience of the world after is parallel. Following watching a series of Brakhage’s short films, notably including “Window, Water, Baby, Moving,” I engaged in a common post-cinematic-experience activity: I went to the bathroom. I still have vivid memories of this one bathroom visit, an experience of the world that was so painfully rich visually that, though I was completely sober, it bordered on the hallucinatory. The cold, occasionally flickering fluorescence, light bouncing off the small square tiles of the floor, the texture of tiny pebbled paint specks on the matte gray bathroom walls, the silvery shininess of metal fixtures, gleam of white porcelain sinks. No detail seemed to escape me – the world had become manically hyper-real. Brakhage’s work induced a shift in my perception towards really looking at things, as Craig’s work presents you with the opportunity to really listen – to everything.

In a letter to Dorothy Crisafulli on December 4, 2000, posted on the Wandelweiser site, Craig says:

I also enjoy sitting and listening to the interstate, or a busy intersection, or birds singing. The sounds just are. The beauty is in the sounds themselves, as opposed to their relation to each other (melody, harmony). I understand much classical music in terms of a story, or a journey. Tension, resolution. A melody ‘rises’ and ‘falls’. It moves and invites the listener along. I think with Cage, and with much of the music of my group, the Wandelweiser Composers Ensemble, that the music doesn’t move. It’s just there. It opens up the possibility of listeners finding their own way through the sounds. There is no specific journey.

Though the music itself may not be about story, it was created within a classic story framework: the journey. And this was the first aspect of his project to which I connected, before even hearing a single note of the CD. Walking 250 miles across Switzerland in 31 days, even without the production and performance of music each day, is an enviable and compelling feat. In 2009, I traveled to New Zealand and, amidst a two-month-long journey, spent four days walking the 33.5 miles of the famous Milford Track. Though only a fraction of the journey Craig undertook, it was an exhausting, exhilarating hike. (Read about it and see photos here: Milford Track Walk)

The second aspect that interested me was the idea of walking long distances. As a meditative practice and creative catalyst. As a rebellious and almost ascetic act in an age of much faster and less personally taxing mechanical travel. As a distinctly slower and rich way in which to interact with the world. As a way to experience distance and space in direct proportion to human scale. As a challenge.

Craig and I plan to walk the entire perimeter of Manhattan in one day. 34 miles. That is one half mile longer than the entire Milford Track, in three less days.

The idea for the walk and the planning was all Craig’s work. Unlike the Switzerland walk, he has no plans to compose or perform. I realized last night while talking to Craig about his “On Foot” album and project that the plan for the walk is itself a composition. An indeterminate one in the tradition of Cage. He has created a structural outline, with points to reach at certain times during the day. What happens in between will be determined by the performers (I am one) and the uncontrollable events of the world at large. Having dispersed the information about the walk we are not even sure who will be joining us and at what point.

As I have told people about our planned walk the most common question is “Why?” My usual response is “Why not?” I think the true answer is closer to this: to see if I can. Or, maybe, to see what happens. But most likely the heart of the matter lies here: I want to have a story to tell. And I prefer that it be a good story.

To my right on the plastic chair sat my iPhone, amplifying tinny versions of a mix I had made the night before. Including some of my favorites songs from: eighties art punk icons Gang of Four, the Talking Heads and the Pixies, edgier punks the X-Ray Spex, Stiff Little Fingers and Husker Du, country-influenced folksters Sarah White and Langhorne Slim, beautiful storytelling from Townes Van Zandt and an underground hip-hop anthem from the Streets. Hipster garage rock from The White Stripes. A ballad from Andrew Bird and one from Iggy Pop. All dedicated to my contradictory and occasionally teen-anguished feelings on love and romance. The same as almost every mix I have ever made. And you can’t find a more abundant theme in rock’n'roll lyrics.

I’ve only hand-washed my clothes a handful of times in my life. Having only about 10 articles of clothing with me on this trip, washing is not a time-consuming task and I welcomed a wet activity in the midday heat. The novelty of the work transformed it from chore to vacation activity: I became a laundry tourist.

There are washing machines on the grounds here, but they are often in use by the cleaning staff and I didn’t want to ask. I could walk into town and pay $5 for one load, like I did the first week. But that’s just silly. It’s faster and more economical to just do it here in a bucket, at my temporary home.

An older Tica woman who does the housekeeping passes by my cabina with a steady stream of laundry to and from the lines in the garden I look out onto. Some of it is obviously connected to her housecleaning work, things like sheets and towels, but some of it is clothing. Maybe you can pay her to do your laundry as well. She often says “Buenas” or “Hola” to me as she passes by, but there seems to be no space for acquaintance. I don’t think she speaks English and my Spanish is miserably minimal, encompassing not even as much as a Costa Rican spanish phrase book will get you. I wish I knew that much! When she saw me washing my clothes, she began to take the drying clothes down, smiled at me and told me (in spanish) that I could hang my clothes “aqui”. Maybe the sight of the vacationing surf bum doing a little work softened her.

I have found just the right mix of simple living and technological modernity to keep me happy for the moment. For a start: my cabina, which I am absolutely in love with. It is a one-room and one bathroom building standing in a semi-circle with four other identical structures. It has plaster walls and an angled wooden ceiling supporting one fan. Three large windows, one on each wall. The roof is covered by sheets of metal molded to resemble terracota tiles. I often hear the scratching of iguana feet scampering above. A lengthwise opening in the apex of the ceiling allows both light and air in as well as creating a little space outside that seems ideal for nesting.

This little home has everything I need. A fridge, gas range, coffee maker, rice maker, toaster, a small assortment of pots, pans, and dishware. A nice shower (with hot water! a luxury!) a toilet and a medium-sized metal lockbox. This last item is of special importance in a country known for its thieving.

I have no internet or phone service here. When I am home, I am home. And that is that. If I want company, I need to leave or hope that someone comes to find me. Social interactions are thus simplified. If you say you are going to meet up, you can’t text ahead to bow out. You have to show up to tell someone you can’t show up. Fortunately this town is very small and all my friends, while here, were within walking distance.

My first world devices are these: a laptop computer, a fancy digital camera and a hard drive/viewer, and an iPhone whose sole use at the moment is as a music player but has been used on occasion as a camera as well. And all the power cords and firewire cables that hook tham up to each other. Add a couple of books and the occasional newspaper and I have everything I need. Still more than I _actually_ need, but tools for intellectual stimulation and creative output I consider important for mental well being. Yes, a pen and paper would do the trick, but I am not a luddite. Writing digitally expands my world. And my leanings toward living simply are not out of aesceticism or a desire for isolation, they are in fact a drive for the opposite – to be fully alive and awake in the my world now. Connected.

Add to that a bike, a surfboard, and a flashlight. A nice canteen for water. I could probably use some tools, for the bike especially. And I have an assortment of medicines and bandages just in case. And lots of sunscreen. And a bag of wax for the surfboard. I am certainly not roughing it.

Back home I feel like I am in a constant battle to rid myself of things. Such a strange and inverted way to live considering the vast poverty of so many people in the world. And it’s not that I lack gratitude for all I have, but just that I am highly sensitive to the toll excessive material consumption has not only on the environment but, in multiple ways, on my own psyche. First there is the burden of ownership – having to have a place to store things, care for them and move them when you move. They literally weigh you down. And I feel too much responsiblity for these items to just throw them away where they will only end up in a dump somewhere, useless to everyone. Finding someone to give something to that you no longer want is not always the easiest of tasks. Freecycle is a good starting point. Check it out if you haven’t already.

More importantly, and much more sinister, is how easy it is to slip into a lifestyle where acquiring things becomes a driving purpose. This mindset, which I have certainly experienced in the longing for any material thing, is destructive to a sense of wholeness and well being in the moment. It only reinforces a sense of not having enough, one that only seems to grow as you acquire more. Traveling lightly and spending months living out of a backpack brings a tremendous sense of relief – it reminds me how little I actually need to be fine. I am fine.

Something to think about: according to the NASA Langley Science Directorate website, “clouds are a major variable in Earth’s climate system.” Clouds play a big role in the heating and cooling of the earth. With so many planes in the air every day, many of them artificially creating clouds, what is the effect on our climate?

Here is an interesting article: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/contrail.html

The only reason I brought this up (and went on an hour-long internet tangent reading about it), was that my sister Kerry and I recently stopped outside National Airport in D.C. to watch the planes land. Though I often see the planes passing very low overhead while driving in or out of D.C., I hadn’t made this specific trip to stand underneath them in many, many years.

There are certain things in life that can still inspire in me the same awe I felt about them as a kid. Riding a bicycle. Photography. Planes. Though I understand now how they all work (at least basically), it still feels like magic.

Planes probably hold a special place for me in that pantheon. My father was a pilot in the U.S. Navy. I have one very clear memory of standing on the tarmac in Jacksonville, Florida, six years old, watching my father’s A-7 take off on his way to meet the Carrier. Admist the goodbye hugs, he promised to wave to us in the air. As one of those planes with the wide-open mouth like a hungry shark – I could already pick out my Dad’s plane from a lineup – dipped its wings once to the left than once to the right, I knew it was him. He was up there in the sky driving that speeding, flying machine. I believed it, just as I had naively accepted one after another of the bizarre and miraculous first-time experiences the world offers unsuspecting children. Maybe my lingering sense of awe is directly related to the fraternal twin of innocence – skepticism. A kid’s natural trust only has to be laughingly teased a few times to learn this necessary lesson: always double-check that someone isn’t just pulling your leg. That’s the thing with mystery (and learning)- we don’t always know what we don’t know.

Off of George Washington Memorial Parkway near the airport is a parking lot alongside the Mount Vernon Trail. This narrow asphalt path is a quarter mile north of the end of the landing strip, bringing you as close as you can possibly get to the action. It was after dark and Kerry and I positioned ourselves right underneath the flight path. Almost immediately we spotted a plane coming in to land. It dipped a wing to the side as it turned to line itself up. I gasped and held my breath – the plane was already really low and seemed to be heading straight for us. We both leaned backwards as it passed overhead, our chins pointed upwards, scanning the bottom of the massive form until we were almost in a backbend. Laughing in that childlike way you can’t help when something both scares and exhilarates you at the same time. A laughter of improbable survival. Turning quickly, we watched it touch down as graceful flat white ribbons of cloud trailed off the wings reminding me of the colorful tassles kids attach to the ends of handlebars. Talismans to the love of movement. These, I just learned, are not contrails but wingtip vortices. The air behind the wing spins in a circular motion so quickly that it creates low-pressure and low-temperature areas in the center of the vortex. If the temperature there drops below the local dew point than condensation happens and the white ribbons appear.

The most surprising and delightful part was yet to come, though. As we turned back to watch the next plane arrive, the jet rumble receded behind us. There was a brief stillness and quiet. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a crackling tin foil impersonation whizzed overhead, hissing and complex. We both looked up, seaching for the source. I pictured darts or arrows chaotically slicing through the atmosphere above us. Clearly these sounds were chasing the plane, but it was the serene gap between cause and effect that made it seem autonomous, like magic.

On my parent’s bookshelf this Thanksgiving I found “Blue Highways: A Journey Into America” by WIlliam Least Heat Moon. I’d never heard of it but all I had to do was look at the inner flap with its solid gray map of America circumnavigated by a thick wandering black line to be convinced it would be my next read. The southern route of his journey traces my near-future cross-country route. Even better, the back flap proclaims “The most ingratiating, life-affirming American travel memoir since John Steinbeck told of roaming with his dog, Charley, more than twenty years ago…” It was just recently, on my last road trip in New Zealand, that I realized just how much “Travels with Charley” effected me when I read it as a kid.

Even better, the inscription on the first page says “From Tim: 19 Dec ’91″. Uncle Tim approved! Sold. Uncle Tim is my Dad’s oldest brother. A proudly, (and possibly studied), curmudgeonly character, he is also an adventurer and travel writer himself. Years back he built a houseboat in his garage. It’s been an object of much family lore and jest over the years, but it wasn’t until about a year ago that I saw any documentation of it. The photo immediately inspired jealousy. I enjoyed one week staying on a houseboat in Montauk last summer, and I have to say it suited me.

Uncle Tim launched the boat, which may be more properly described as a barge, without any mode of propulsion and floated downriver for multiple days. What river? When? I am hazy on the details. I know he didn’t get far at all and some close calls with larger vessels were involved. The story is much better left to him to tell. Obviously.

Uncle Tim’s storytelling style is an uncanny mimic of his father, my grandfather, a man 76 years older than me. Pregnant pauses, cocked eyebrows and twinkling eyes. All part of the tale – an entertaining show. I have very fond memories of Pop-pop telling tales at the table of their Norfolk, VA home. Maybe over a spread of crabs on newspaper, little cups of butter alongside piles of Old Bay Seasoning. Those crabs were freshly caught from a boat Pop-pop built himself in the backyard. Great Grandpa was a boat builder, too. In Buffalo, New York, in the late 1800s. At this point it must be genetic: an ocean-loving and boat-building/dwelling/piloting mutation somewhere in the O’Brien line managed to survive and thrive. It’s lurking in my sequence somewhere, I have no doubt.

We would all launch in the boat from the end of Elwood Avenue into the little tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. We hooked raw chicken to the end of lines to lure the crabs. Hanging over the edge staring down into the murk, I would let my fingertips brush the surface of the water, waiting for a tug. In Pop-pop’s garage workshop, a row of crab shells lined the wall near the ceiling. Each crab had a year carefully painted in white on its shell – a memento mori crab timeline. I always wondered who got chosen to represent his year of death. Was it the biggest catch of the year that won the spot? That would make the most sense, though a few were so significantly and sadly smaller than the rest, I had to wonder. Can you still catch crab in my grandparents old neighborhood today? Do people still do it?

So my next adventure is in the making. This time I won’t be alone. Considering my companion is a fellow U.S. citizen in this highly litigious culture, I’ve decided to call him Jack. Now I can divulge all his secret fears and desires, annoying habits and unseemly behavioral defects without fear of legal reprisal! Any relation or similarity to any living person, real or imagined, is purely coincidental! He might as well be my imaginary friend! Only problem is, he reads this. What a weird world. Maybe I will just focus my observational powers on those less suspecting characters we meet along the way. Plants and animals for instance. Or cloud formations.

By early January, Jack will hopefully be the proud new owner of a surf hoopty. Ok, a pickup truck with a camper. And then we will be heading south and west. Plans have not yet been drawn up. Maybe they never will be. I will bring a compass – we will be ok. Skateparks are on the list of possible stops. KOA campgrounds. The Grand Canyon. Santa Fe – my Uncle Bob who is as yet unaware of our imminent arrival. Any number of hikes in the Great American Southwest. Taking a left at Albuquerque. Austin, Texas, and Meghan, Brittany and a real Jack? There is one very general plan, though: start out fast, then go slow. For this trip, the action is west of the Mississippi. And though I don’t want to take the vast expanse of continental America for granted, by any means, we must never forget the final goal: surfing up and down the west coast of southern California.

If I were to visit again, I think I would spend the money on the black water rafting tour. Spying on those tourists floating in tubes on a rushing river far below, they seemed to be experiencing a less domesticated version of the cave. Don’t get me wrong, I think the tour i went on is wonderful in its inclusiveness – handicapped and less abled individuals, including the very young and the very old, can have access to these magnificent underground limestone and water creations. I just think the fear of darkness, tight spaces, rushing water and abseiling down a deep, freaking hole into a CAVE probably adds to the wonder and enchantment of these spaces. Maybe some time in the future I will truly spelunk. In the meantime I got to see these from the safety of a manmade walkway with lots of little lights.

I know I have tons left to post about the last month of my New Zealand/Australia trip. Especially photos. But let’s jump ahead to the present. The adventure continues.

And this is what it looks like:

That is a 1972 Ford Econoline e200 Supervan Camper. She was named “Emmie” by her loving last owners who were a middle-aged lesbian couple from Oregon. Who sold her to me the day they were flying to the UK to live. They had found her in a field, salvaged and put her back together. Drove her across the country to New York City where the plan was to sell her. And they did. To me for much less than they were hoping, but I think everyone won in the end.

When my friend Brett saw it earlier this evening, he laughed out loud. For a while. I think that is the proper response. I bought it that way, and intend to remove the paw and footprints. But I have started to second guess that plan. People laugh and point and bring toddlers over to see it. This is in New York City, where it can be hard to make any impression on anyone. Not that I am trying. I really don’t want to be calling attention to myself. It’s not really the plan.

It’s a funny thing to go from not owning a car for seven years, riding a bike everywhere and doing my best to reduce my carbon footprint – to owning a early 70s smog machine that gets 12mpg at BEST.

I rationalize this way – I bought it more to be a second home than to be a vehicle. Though at the moment I am using it to pick up all the sorts of large and heavy items I have been wanting for years, but putting off getting because it was such an organizational pain in the ass to get without a car.

Once I find a place to park it and leave it, I will not be driving it anymore. Just going to visit it by train then bicycle. Somewhere not in the city. Far away and near surf….

I had a quick Korean meal in a restaurant in the airport. That’s is for my Korean experience on this particular trip. Maybe I should come back some day. But there are a lot of places higher on my list – for now, anyways.

The book is keeping me company. It’s a bit soap-opera-y – a bit like indulging in gossip. An easy read, absorbing and epic. The perfect long plane ride book. I am crossing my fingers that the flight to New York is like the flight FROM New York. I had three seats to myself! I am not that superstitious, but I might have just jinxed myself (knock on wood).

I wonder if I will suffer from culture shock returning to New York? I was thinking about jet lag as I walked over to Gate 7. I want to look into that more, it seems like an interesting phenomenon. Obviously related to circadian rhthyms and changes in sleep schedule, but I wonder what else. Our bodies clearly weren’t designed to travel such vast distances over such short time and I bet there are lots of things going on biologically when we do this. We are far more sensitive to our environment and relation to it than most people recognize, I think – I am interested in all those things we seem to know in a non per-frontal cortex kind of way.