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The Passage of a Few People Through a Rather Brief Moment in Time #105: Calling Occupants of Extraplanetary Craft
07.6.11
One or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their
relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain
and
the encounters they find there.
It's a bike ride.
Started by user nathansnider and user theroyalacademy.
It meets every Wednesday at 8:30pm at California Donuts #21.
We ride at 9pm.
We'll endeavor to return before the last red line trains (around midnight).
See how we move.
On the third year of this bike ride, you might expect:
- more inconvenient passageways
- more full moon picnics
- perhaps more "cover" versions of other people's rides, performed with amateurish enthusiasm
- certainly more amateurish enthusiasm
- disorientation
- reorientation
- pool halls
- bowling alleys
- dance parties
- karaoke
- imaginary histories
- scavenging for fun and sustenance
- more geocaching
- more oblique strategies
- more Oulipian constraints
- traffic median tea parties
Furthermore:
- A medium pace (maybe not for beginners; certainly not a hustle)
- We're not in a rush; we don't need to run every light.
- 35-ish miles, pretty flat.
- Victory donuts!
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This week:
Calling Occupants of Extraplanetary Craft
So the space shuttle is finally getting mothballed, with no replacement planned any time soon. What was once an icon of "the future" is soon to be a relic of the past. It's enough to make one wistful and perhaps a bit uneasy. We live in an age of so many symbols, and yet so few of them offer any direction that might lead us forward.
But then, the whole idea of space travel itself has always been a little disorienting, which probably explains its persistence in the popular imagination. It's a ready-made allegory for the modern human condition - when the traditional constraints have at last been cast aside, we are confronted with new constraints that are often far less forgiving. Our identities, so shaped by the old context and place, must find new expression, lest we end up just as cold and inhuman as the void that surrounds us.
Ah, but all this talk of space angst and identity formation seems far too heavy for this weightless endeavor (or Endeavour, perhaps?). So instead of navel gazing about our place in the world, we're going to sweeten things up a bit and celebrate the intersection of space exploration with middle-of-the-road 70s pop. Sure, we may have reached the end of an era, but we've only just begun.
The route is on the long side this evening, but quite flat. Don't count on catching any trains unless they are of the blue variety.
Talk, talk, talk...
(and join the mailing list!)
The hacienda must be built.
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