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.