An Essay About Planning, and, a Plan

I'm realizing, not for the first time, that I am a terrible trip planner. It feels like this has something to do with being obnoxiously unpunctual, too impatient to stand in lines, wanting to create perfect harmony in my life here before I leave for somewhere else (HAH! Good luck, Xandra), maybe my tendency to be distracted by every lovely person who I have a conversation with. But don't worry, folks, somehow intention is strong enough to even get a ball of craziness like me rolling.

But it's interesting to think about. I've spent a good part of the last year talking with my brother, who is diagnosed with schizophrenia, but is also amazingly articulate and even logical. To him, life, it seems, just happens, and he is always swept with the strongest nearby current, and ends up briefly washed onto the shore of other people's dreams and decisions. He was catatonic for several months, and he would have starved to death had it not been for people around him deciding to feed him. I am at a different extreme, usually, in which I dream up distant goals and keep my eyes on them as I take steps forward, making sure every moment is somehow connected in that bigger picture. Since I have lots of dreams, I sway as I walk, sometimes moving towards art, sometimes to the forest, sometimes to the love of people... the last year I realized, though, that my brother's version of life is also true. I can't carry out my dreams exactly, only roughly, because life happens and pushes me in all kinds of unexpected directions. Somehow it's always right, though.

This last weekend, I performed poetry with the Eugene Slam Team at the Oregon Country Fair. Three days in campsite of spoken word artists, tramping around on miles of fairgrounds with some 45,000 Pacific Northwesterners, it has a way of changing things a little. I am at a coffee shop now, looking around between sentences and suddenly feeling overjoyed and blessed to live here. My poetry team was asked to perform at one more Oregon festival, the Tayberry Jam (Reggae on the Mountain) on the weekend of July 23-25th. Tayberry is all about sustainability, permaculture, and mother Earth, and I think it will be an excellent experience to set me off right, because my journey this summer is not just about visiting my people on the East Coast and having fun, but about exploring America and trying to understand what is happening to our Earth.

I felt so cynical this year, like the planet really was going to die, like oceans would turn black soon and skies turn yellow, and I realized that what I need is to hear solutions from normal people. I want to hear people say 'I quit drinking bottled water', or 'This last year I started biking because I don't want to be part of the problem anymore.' I am not interested in delusions, like I've heard some people talk about -- I do not think it's about being the one to start some grand revolution, or rediscovering white magic and asking fairies for help, or about turning ourselves into cyborgs that will be able to handle the changing environment-- these are things I've heard -- I think I just need to hear people talk about their personal solutions, or what inspires them. Fucking basic. I want to NOT give up on life, please, and I want some guidance, and that's all.

So here is my travel plan (which will be off by a few days here and there)

July 27-Aug 10: Biking from Eugene-San Francisco
August 12-14: Hitch rides to LA, California, to visit a certain animal lover who I am so stoked to meet
August 15-20: Get to TX, meet with my friend Blake who would like to explore with me. Explore, volunteer, talk to people.
August 20-25th: Who knows? Visit a few more friends and keep on.
August 25-September 1: Make my way to DC, revisit my childhood home, see my old friends, and talk to a few more people.

I am hoping to raise money on the way selling some poetry, but otherwise I'll be pretty dirt poor, so let's hope the Universe takes good care of me.