Friday, May 22, 2009

Ten Hours

I forgot to post them, but on my drive up to Portland I decided to take a picture from where I was every hour and e-mail them to my boyfriend at work until I got there. Not as cheesy as youtube videos of kitten playing keyboards... but close. In any case what started out as being a kind of cutesy gesture after about the 4th hour began to dwindle into this mindless, disciplinary routine which actually started to warp my perception of time. Hang in there with me for a second- this is cool....

I've made this drive from the Bay Area to Portland many a time. Each time I'll recognize certain gas stations, freeway merges, places where my ears pop, rest stops, silos, roadside porn emporiums... and associate them with a point of time in my trip. So, for example I see Mount Shasta and I know automatically that I'm going to need to stop for gas soon, or I drive by the trailer painted with what looks like a punctured forearm violently spraying blood everywhere with the caption: "HE BLED FOR YOUR SINS", and I know I am roughly 4 hours into my drive.
It goes like this the whole way... its very long and very linear. What happened THIS time was that by adding an hourly element to my drive (taking a photograph from where I was) it sort of cut the single "10-hour linear drive" into smaller, more digestible segments.
At about quarter-to every hour I would automatically start searching around for a nice composition that I could catch with my camera phone without starting a pile-up. I'll admit I got a little lazy toward the end, but this nice new time-compartmentalizing technique definitely helped me not lose my mind in the car by myself all day...

anyway if it wasn't philosophically enlightening at least it was an adorable endeavor.
Heres the photos:

8:00 am- Oakland, CA
9:00 am- Cordelia, CA
10:00 am- Williams, CA
11:00 am- Red Bluff, CA
12:00 pm- Castella, CA
1:00 pm- Siskyou Summit, OR
2:00 pm- Merlin, OR
3:00 pm- Winchester, OR
4:00 pm- Saginaw, OR
5:00 pm- Salem, OR
6:00 pm- Portland, OR


off to Geneva, Switzerland in about 2 hours! maybe my cyclical-time exercise works on 12 hours flights too....?
a tout alors!

1 comment:

jes`si`ca. said...

this is awesome! i'm gonna be doing a 10 hr to vegas tomorrow starting off my trip to new york! i shall try your time warping witchery!