Thursday, May 19, 2011

One Hundred & Twenty Nine Days


O n e   H u n d r e d  & T w e n t y - N i n e   D a y s

 It's taken me on quite a journey. The greatest lesson I've learned since January is, once again, that the journey is the destination. Two years ago a man named Jon Arensen said that to a motley group of college students that they we embarked on one of the greatest adventures of their lives. 

Two years ago I didn't know where I would go, who I would meet there and how people would change for me. I have anticipated little but expected much. My mom always says, "Life happens when you're making plans" and isn't that the truth! It's so much easier to direct an object already in motion and so, I roll along at different paces.

A professor told me, "Let's get to another point. it has to do with how easy art should be. I think it should not be easy. I think, and I know in fact, you have to have something to bite against. You need some grit, some sandpaper, something to struggle with otherwise there is no progress at all. If you're striving to make it easy, it will become easy and you will make no progress... that's what we should be engaged in."

Agh, it's so not easy. It's pushing and pushing and when I get frustrated with pushing I go back and shove more of my weight into it to start pushing again. I'm realizing that satisfaction of any measure isn't going to come from doing anything easy- it's the tough stuff long the way and the struggle itself that makes a life! 

(The following is a collection of my favourite blog posts)

Fall

Winter







Spring







As time moves along, it's taking us with it for the ride. I have no idea where I'll be in the next year beyond August. France, Spain, New Zealand, Morocco- wherever the wind and ground travel may take my brother and I. I honestly don't know what will happen to us. It's an adventure of a lifetime! Another one! Photography is pulsing in my blood now, but in what direction will I go? Who will we meet? Where will we sleep and work and what will people feed us? 

What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? -it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies. - On the Road, Jack Kerouac

This last day of classes is really a flag in a crazed, clenched hand dangling over the racetrack that flicks out of sight in a blur and you're on your own to figure life out. 


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