bigups to Adam Roy for winning the ‘one-sentence travel writing contest.’
his sentence can be read here.
notes on contest:
1. there were nearly two dozen entries from people in the US, UK, India, Mexico, Malaysia, and Australia.
2. most of the sentences made me feel as if i knew the narrator somehow–or at least could envision him or her there, but adam’s sentence made me feel like i was experiencing that juxtaposition that happens sometimes when you’re traveling, when situations come up that take you out of being there only ‘in yr own head’ — and you’re forced to bear witness to other people’s lives and stories–and something about it becomes sad and life-affirming and a stoke all at the same time.
3. as promised, as a prize, i made a mixtape based on my interpretation of the winning sentence.
4. i’ve decided to share it with everyone who entered (will be emailing you with it later today).
5. i feel like this first contest was successful in that it got ppl writing in ways they may not have otherwise. several ppl expressed gratitude in having an opportunity to write in this format.
6. therefore i’ve decided to run another contest next week. it will be a different challenge. i’ll announce it on monday.
7. here is the mix i created for this story:
mix:
Bunny Ain’t No Kind of Rider – Of Montreal
Caracol – Tremor
These Years – Lotus Plaza (words by Adam Roy, read by David Miller)
Toxica – Babasonicos
Spring Hall Convert – Deerhunter
Infinita Tristeza – Manu Chao
“Pedrona” excerpt from ZZK mixed tape Vol 7. – King Coya
We Were Born the Mutants Again With Leafling – Of Montreal
I know I will escape – Atlas Sound
[Editor's note: this story is the winner of the "one sentence travel writing contest."]
I’m packing up the last of my clothes to leave Buenos Aires when Marcia calls me into the hallway, she’s opened one of the photo albums on the bookshelf and now she’s showing me Marcelo’s old snapshots, here’s a picture of Marcelo at 22, fresh out of law school and sans the laugh lines that crisscross his face, and here’s Marcelo’s señora, not the mother of his children, about two girlfriends after that one, and three or so before Valeria, here are the children, the daughter who lives in the suburbs with her husband, and the other daughter who lives a neighborhood away but doesn’t speak with Marcelo anymore, and the dead son we don’t talk about, the one who OD’d and collapsed in a supermarket ten-odd years ago, who was born around the same time I was, and I think back to one day early in spring, to Marcelo sitting in the backyard in his shorts, eating breakfast and telling me that he was thinking of moving because of the hijodeputa developers and the condo they had put up next door; houses have lifespans, he tells me, just like people: a couple more moves and he’ll be an old man, and won’t want to move any more.
Adam Roy has been writing professionally since the age of 17. When he’s not traveling or writing about travel, he leads a secret double life at Tufts University in Massachusetts, where he is pursuing a degree in Latin American Studies. He maintains the blog Ill-advised Adventures.
1. Took this photo at the feria¹ yesterday. It felt like the first time I saw ppl interacting in a certain way which made me think “I can ‘capture’ this photographically.” I’ve always been embarrassed pointing a camera lens at ppl [or having one pointed at me.] But these kids, the way the two dudes were wanking on the guitar and the girl pretended to be checking her text msgs or maybe she was checking them for real but everything about the way she was sitting was like “dios mio chicos, prestame atencion” or something that I could pick up 40 yards away but which the two kids didn’t seem to register or maybe they did but just felt like ignoring her.
2. I felt like I’d photographed something that told a story, but then when I saw it on the computer I realized I’d focused on the grass instead of the kids, which is actually a revealing mistake–I’ve always been distracted by and on some level more interested in vegetation / landforms / terrain than ppl.
3. I’m writing this while listening to Skeletal Lighting by Of Montreal which makes me think–along with what I just wrote about vegetation–back to a house party in Athens, Georgia where of Montreal played in the basement. It was Halloween and Michael Stipe was dressed as a blue gorilla. Filly² and I had eaten mushrooms before we went and there was this weird scene in the kitchen when Stipe pulled out a tray of cupcakes that had blue icing that matched the blue of his gorilla suit. He offered cupcakes to me and this girl who was dressed as a basketball goal. Later I went outside and looked at trees and Filly told these girls who stood nearby smoking “my man Dave here can name every tree on this street.”
4. Predictably, this is the part where I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d stayed in Athens and not, instead, followed this other trajectory which progressed into this latest form where, apparently, I’m attempting to photograph kids in a plaza in Patagonia.
5. Either way, Of Montreal is kind of hard to write to.
6. We have no washing machine. This morning I spent an hour handwashing clothes. The air is cold and there’s snow on the ridgelines. Not good washing [I started writing "writing"] conditions.
7. Later Layla was saying something that I couldn’t understand in this super excited voice. I followed her into the living room. A hummingbird was trapped in the living room, bumping along the ceiling. We opened all the windows and I talked to it in a friendly voice–”here you go, here you go” — while thinking “why do we change our voices when we talk to animals?”
8. I went back out to hang clothes on the clothesline and thought about how far this hummingbird has migrated³ to end up today in our living room, and how it seems kind of strange for people to call themselves “travelers.”
_______________
¹ in El Bolsón, PatagoniaArgentina.
² friend from Savannah, Georgia who I played alot of music with
³ Hummingbirds migrate thousands of miles from the Northern to Southern Hemispheres
kerouac
i’ve been thinking about running some sort of contest here as contests tend to make people stoked.
i don’t know if this is something that will have a single winner–maybe everyone who “enters” will win. not sure yet.
as far as prizes: i don’t think there will be money in this. not in this first one. maybe if a lot of people enter this and it turns into something we could run again, maybe then we could have prizes.
[update 4/26--i've decided to create a mixtape as the prize for the winner(s). mixtape will be inspried by winning entry, and may have (perhaps) a recording of the winning writing remixed into the tape.]
the winning work will be also published here, with the winner’s (s’) byline(s).
this will be the first time ever that someone else will be credited with authoring a post at operating on stoke.
potentially, i might write an essay or a bit of literary criticism about why i chose the winner(s).
this is more about buena onda than anything else.
so here it is:
- starts tonight (Sunday, April 25) and ends noon EST on Thursday April 29
- you can enter as many times as you want: email your entry to david@matadornetwork.com with ‘one sentence writing contest’ in the subject line
- one sentence, but can be as many words as you want
- the sentence should try to convey a particular feeling–ideally with some kind of stoke (or perhaps chance for redemption of stoke?) in it–about traveling (or a moment in your travels, or the beginning or ending of a trip) and your sense of ‘being on the earth’
i got the idea for this from the last sentence of on the road:
So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.
- if you have any questions, please leave them in the comments section below
- make kerouac proud – ‘dumbsaint of the mind’
thanks for entering.
Yesterday I went up to La Confluencia with Los Jordan. On the way there we stopped at 9 hectares to help unload some wood.
There were a bunch of paisanos there building a barn. They seemed stoked. I joked about them having plans for the structure, and one of them, Custodio, pulled a folded-up, scribbled sheet of paper out of his pocket. It had the overall structure size (9m x 6m), the roof height and angle, and placement of posts. That’s all they needed.
local paisano at 9 hectares
The mountain roads in Patagonia destroy pretty much every vehicle. The only one that seems to survive is known down here as the “Canadiense.” These were built in Canada (note steering wheel on right side) and were imported by Argentina after WWII. Most of them run on Chevy or Ford inline 6 motors with super low gearing. This truck was over 40 years old. The driver was stoked.
We unloaded a bunch of cottonwood boards for the roof and floors. It was a totally random crew. The paisanos, the Jordans, a WWOOFer volunteer, some women from Buenos Aires down there looking around to potentially buy land, and a woman visiting from South Africa [not everyone pictured here.]. I’m always stoked at how these random little groups form when you’re traveling.
On the way up to Warton, Shea got on his bike and grabbed on to the tailgate of Mark’s truck. I rode in the back and tried to take pics but was getting bounced around. Shea stopped at the top of the road leading down to La Confluencia. It’s like a gulley with these steep walls. Shea was a former pro downhill racer and he was getting huge wall-rides and airs on the way down. It would’ve made for a sick photo shoot. Afterwards he said it was “dumb shit to be doing without a helmet.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon looking at kayaking videos and talking about stuff we could explore next season.