Monday, January 10, 2011

It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again.

—John Steinbeck,

The Log from the Sea of Cortez

11:00 AM Stillwater Cove Park, Sonoma County, CA

Andrew Anderson

1

Tristan Kadish

7

Andrew Shaw-Kitch

4

Andrew: “Bocce Thought Number 7.”

Tristan: “7?”

Andrew: “Bocce thought number…number—what are we on? 6? Point Arena, California.  Monday January 10th.”

Tristan: “OK.  I don’t know about those dates, but I think I believe you.”

Andrew: “Day old bread. I’m pretty sure, I’m pretty sure that’s good on the record.”

Andrew: “Check for—yeah, day old bread.  It’s either—Sunday, Tuesday, you’re gonna get fresh bread; Monday, Wednesday, day old bread”

Tristan: “Wait a second that’s not what we were going to say at all.”

Andrew: “OK. Check for bocce.”

All: “Check for bocce.”

Tristan: “Check for bocce.”

Andrew: “Check.”

Tristan: “Concept being, you never know what might turn up.”

Andrew: “If you need to take a, take a bathroom break in the wilderness…”

Andrew: “Don’t be afraid to stop.”

Andrew: “It’s not an inconvenience—it’s an opportunity.  Check for bocce.”

Tristan: “Make life into an opportunity, not into an inconvience.”

Andrew: “Kinda like, ‘stop and smell the roses.’ Or stop and check for bocce.”

Tristan: “Check for bocce.”

Andrew: “And concerning big concepts in life. Some might say that you have one idea just grows bigger and bigger like a snowball, we say, these ideas, they bocce ball.  There are a whole bunch of different ones and they congregate.”

Tristan: “They slide.  Sometimes the bocce ball goes where you want it to go and sometimes it slides out of control.”

Andrew: “Every time it does resemble a tiny universe.”

Awaking in Sonoma County, Tristan, Andrew and Andrew play a game at their campsite.  

*        *        *

2:50 PM Greenwood State Beach, Elk, CA

Andrew Anderson

6

Tristan Kadish

5

Andrew Shaw-Kitch

7

We stopped at a store in Stanley.  I bought a candy bar and asked how the trout fishing was in Cuba.  The woman at the store said, "You're better off dead, you Commie bastard." I got a receipt for the candy bar to be used for income tax purposes.

The old ten-cent deduction.

I didn't learn anything about fishing in that store.  The people were awfully nervous, especially a young man who was folding overalls.  He had about a hundred pairs left to fold and he was really nervous.

—Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

*      *      *

4:00 PM Greenwood State Beach

Andrew Anderson

15

Tristan Kadish

11

Andrew Shaw-Kitch

13

Further up the one, later in the day, three games were played in Elk, the last on a court made of driftwood on the beach.  A game was played late at night on the courts of a church in celebration of the arrival in Arcata.

Two thoughts were recorded in Point Arena after stopping for coffee and food at the Point Arena General Store:
1. In deciding we would leave town without playing a game of bocce on the slopes of a nearby park or finding a bathroom for Andrew, it was realized that any future stop would serve a dual purpose, that of the practical intent and the more theoretical search for an ideal bocce setting.  The motto "check for bocce" is agreed upon and is understood to mean that the theoretical was to forever accompany the practical, the immediate was always a gateway to a greater potential.
2. That thoughts do not "snowball," in that the addition of further thinking to initial stages does not create an expanding mass, picking up more and adding to the cohesive whole as the sphere continues its journey; instead, thoughts "bocce ball"—a principle idea is thrown out there and subsequent corollaries aim to get as close as possible and end up imperfectly clustering around it, a sort of nonteleological thinking.
These tenants were discovered and agreed upon early enough that they found their way into the core approach to the rest of the journey, leading one to understand them in a variety of contexts.

To "check for bocce" was not simply an added vigilance to seek out flat patches to serve as potential courts; it was to include a heightened awareness of all that could benefit the trip as a whole—the narrative of bocce on the scale and execution of a single round, but also the narrative of the greater purpose for which we were aiming: life as bocce, as constant motion with a reasoned control, as a shared event with friends, life as a communal commitment to order and ceremony, life as pure physics, placing our selves symbolically into analogous balls, our spherical avatars.  We would stop for coffee, but we would also ask if the area could claim any courts; we would stop at a yard sale to find a pot to use while camping, but we would also find important texts to help us understand our journey; it was never simply necessity, and it was never entirely diversion; like the game itself every moment contained the duality of being a necessarily serious commitment to a short-term task at hand and simultaneously a playful appreciation of the greater history that surrounds any single moment.

The second thought, about the composition of a larger idea, lends naturally to the way the first thought creates these ideas: if the context of one's life is always potentially constructive to its essence, then the way things end up—the cluster of thoughts, moments, symbols, books—is the starting point of understanding.  We do not end up with a teleological mass to content our need for conclusion.  We have a scattered collection inviting interpretation, measurement and argument.  Everything—the three of us, the things we encounter, the things we cast out into the world, the ideas we have, and the universe itself—bocce balls. 

*      *      *

1:00 AM Church Bocce Courts, Arcata, CA

Andrew Anderson & Chloe

6

Andrew Shaw-Kitch & Tristan Kadish

15