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Inspirations

Inspirations Keep Us in the Game

August 13, 2011

Years of dreaming, scheming, and preparing for our journey are coming to a close.

Departure date now set, destination names live on the tip of our tongues.

From time to time, creative accounts of life on the road reach out and encourage us along this rugged part of the path, this portion of time spent earning, saving, choosing cheaper, working harder, cutting deeper, and risking higher stakes.

These inspirations, they are the lifeblood of wanderlust.

The taste of foods and sound of crowds and sight of foreign lands crackle to life within our imaginations…

Watch, and dream with us of the adventures to come:

EAT from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

LEARN from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

Notes on Move, Eat, Learn

3 guys, 44 days, 11 countries, 18 flights, 38 thousand miles, an exploding volcano, 2 cameras and almost a terabyte of footage… all to turn 3 ambitious linear concepts based on movement, learning and food ….into 3 beautiful and hopefully compelling short films…..

= a trip of a lifetime.

move, eat, learn

Rick Mereki : Director, producer, additional camera and editing
Tim White : DOP, producer, primary editing, sound
Andrew Lees : Actor, mover, groover

Musings

The Grotto: An Inward Journey Near PDX International Airport

August 4, 2011

I do love the Portland Airport.

It’s been a spot of promise all my life. Growing up, an hour long drive from the country led me to the city’s portal to other lands. My first commercial plane ride: Oregon to California. (Family wedding flower girl duties called.)  Then later, Oregon to France. Oregon to Italy. Oregon to New Zealand.

Little did I know, all those years of driving up I-205, that I’d eventually be living in a neighborhood just ten minutes from PDX International. Since moving to Montavilla in 2007, I’ve joked with my husband about taking me on dates to the airport, just to watch the planes come and go.

Nearby the airport stands another Portland portal: a connection to calm and quiet.

A week and a half ago, my brother left Oregon to return to his job and home in Southern California, and I met him for a farewell up near the airport. On the return drive, I stopped on whimsey at The Grotto, just off the intersection of NE Sandy and NE 82nd Avenue.

It seemed a good idea. In between the recent hustle and bustle of juggling work and trip planning and life obligations, I’d been feeling scattered, distracted, out of touch.

I’m not Catholic, but the peaceful, contemplative setting yielded just the pause I hoped for, allowing time to pray and journal and walk the grounds.

A $4.00 elevator ride reveals space of peace and solitude and calm sitting high above the 110 foot cliff at the north face of Rocky Butte.

The Elevator Shaft

The View North from the Meditation Chapel toward the Portland Airport

Details from the Peace Garden’s
Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious and Luminous Mysteries Bronze Sculpture Series

This trip planning process alternates between soaring hopes and agonizing heartache. The goodbyes, the chances traded…the pausing on other pursuits. All this balanced out by promise of adventure and trust that our steps are not aimless but ordered.

 “The Lord directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives. Though they stumble, they will never fall, for the Lord holds them by the hand.” -Psalm 37:23-24

In all, I spent nearly two hours in the Upper Gardens, passing time and sinking deep in thought.

I wandered along the marked routes, and stopped at the private paths. I wondered about the Monastery and the rhythms and calendars and seasons of an alternate way of life.

I walked the prayer labyrinth up on the top of the butte: I let myself trust the path.

In a few months more, we’ll head to the Portland Airport, tickets in hand. Between now and then, I hope to return to The Grotto as I travel the inward journey unfolding in tandem with our Trip.

Travel Plans

Trip Plans: South America Tickets Purchased

July 21, 2011

Time flies; we hope to.

Purchased our tickets for South America this morning.

Seems like just a blink since sending off the initial inquiry about ticket packages.
That was February. This is July.

Many ping-ponging emails later (including helpful hand-holding replies from our incredibly kind agent, several late night discussions, a few quiet months weathering bumps in the road, and a release of hard-earned, well-saved dollars), we punched the purchase button this morning.

Since we’re leaving the continent by ship, we chose not to include South America in our potential Round The World ticket. Too many stipulations regarding required transatlantic flights. And too many north/south miles that we’d rather use on eastern travels.

So, now we know: Farewell to Portland on January 5th, 2012.

Coffee in the concourse?

After all the sacrifice to get to that boarding gate, it’ll be time to splurge.

For now, five and a half more months of earning, saving, praying, and planning.

Travel Plans

Six Months Out: Plans for Leaving Town

July 6, 2011

July 6th, 2011.

Open before us: two guide books, a spiral bound journal and hand drawn calendar covered in scrawled notes, several browser tabs, and one all-important email: the “yes, please, let’s proceed” message to the woman helping us with our LAN South America Airpass booking.

Deep breath.

A prayer.

Click send.

Digital footfalls toward the starting line.

Choosing dates feels like a game of roulette.

“We make our plans, but He directs our steps.”

The clock ticks. If this booking proves true, we’ll be arriving in Peru six months from today.

Uncategorized

Belief & Technique for Modern Prose

May 20, 2011

Jack Kerouac, “Belief & Technique for Modern Prose”

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time

15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You’re a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

Travel Plans

Passing Time & Dreaming Dreams

March 28, 2011

Patagonia Time Lapse Video from Adam Colton on Vimeo.

If the clouds are full of rain, they will empty themselves on the earth
And whether a tree falls to the south or to the north
The tree will lie wherever it falls

He who watches the wind will not sow
And he who observes the clouds will not reap

Just as you do not know the path of the wind
Or how the bones form in the womb of a pregnant woman
So you do not know the work of God who makes everything

Sow your seed in the morning
And do not stop working until the evening
For you do not know which activity will succeed
Whether this one or that one
Or whether both will prosper equally

Light is sweet
And it is pleasant for a person to see the sun

Ecclesiastes 11:3-7

Travel Plans

Setting Sail…Fifteen Months Out from a Transatlantic Voyage

December 30, 2010

Years of scheming, and today we set the first critical date on the calendar. No, not the Depart-From-Home date. The Step-Foot-Onto-A-Ship date.

March 21, 2012.

Transatlantic crossing from Brazil to Spain.

Dark (dirt-cheap / relatively speaking) inside cabin. Wide open ocean.

We still don’t know when we’ll actually leave the state… But one way or another, we’ll be getting ourselves to S. America by the Vernal Equinox.