#I was inspired this morning and I’m on a 3 hour car ride so behold: a bookend to rise and shine sailor | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mikey-hill · 6 years

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2017

Countries: three.

States: twenty three.

Road trips: nine.

Train journeys: four. Including the Crescent (New Orleans - New York) & The Overland (Melbourne - Adelaide).

Plane flights: way too many.

Months abroad: five and a half.

Months at sea: zero.

Highest elevation reached: Beartooth Pass, Montana - 10,947ft; closely followed by San Jacinto Peak, California - 10,834ft.

Favourite movies watched: Moonlight; OJ Simpson: Made in America; Paterson; Hypernormalisation.

Favourite TV series watched: Fargo.

Favourite podcast: The Daily.

Favourite gig: Peep Tempel at Golden Plains.

Favourite books read: Moby Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them by Donovan Hohn; Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy; and All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.

Books written: zero.

Favourite quote that I read: “I’m becoming a devout driftologist. The only essential difference between rock, water, air, life, galaxies, economies, civilisations, plastics - I decide, totally sober, watching the fog make pretty shapes above the trees - is the rate of flow.” Moby Duck, Donovan Hohn

Favourite joke that I made up: What do you call a rock that likes touching baby rocks? A pebblephile.

Favourite tongue-twister that I made up: My stubbed toe just stopped stinging (based on a true story).

Haircuts: zero.

Songs I learned to play on the guitar and sing: five. Two were to try to impress others. One was to console a friend.

My Dreamslate (inspired by Eddie White, projects I’m working on/want to work on): Idle Lands: Boredmeadows; Flotsam; 1, 2, 3 Birds!; Bombing Missions; Monsterswellen; Luck Rider; and Animaphonic Orchestra: A motion in the key of E.

Total solar eclipses witnessed: one. From Torrington, Wyoming.

Mass shootings narrowly missed: one. Las Vegas, by just a couple of hours.

Quote from a piece I wrote based on the above two categories: Earlier in the American summer, you and I drove north into Wyoming to see a total solar eclipse. Those two minutes of dark totality were the eeriest, most fascinating and startling moments in my life. The rare cosmic coincidences that cause that most unnatural of natural phenomenons are staggering to think about. We were lucky and escaped the ten minutes or so of coincidental darkness that eclipsed the lives of hundreds of people; folks who, when they died, were still digesting the breakfasts we maybe ate next to them earlier that morning. The celestial bodies of life and death slid silently past each other overhead, infinitesimally close, but not quite intersecting perfectly above us.

Best purchase: A used Marlboro tent ($25USD in San Franscisco).

Email recipients I’ve disappointed: three.

Weddings: one.

Weddings of ex-girlfriends: one.

From my iPhone Notes and notebooks:

The world now lies waiting for you to lay siege. A femme fatale Khan - intelligent, kind and strong. You will found an empire. You’ve made one hell of a start with my white-flag-waving heart. For the card for Sarah’s graduation, drawing inspiration from her love of Dan Carlin).

Abruptly, it appeared. We all knew it was coming, but it was still a shock to behold. The conclusion to a four billion year old nonsensical experiment; a sudden exclamation point to finish a Proustian sentence. It was punctual too, just as the boffins had calculated. 4.13am GMT. It was almost a relief really, that it was here on time, to know that something still made sense. A writing exercise.

I want to fall in love with a girl who plays tuba. After watching a brass band at Open Studio in Northcote.

Coffee filtered through toilet paper doesn’t taste as bad as I imagined, nor as terrible as you claimed, on that bright Saturday morning on a red cliff top in Utah. A little sugar would have sufficed to cover the mild chemical taste. A dash of milk perhaps enough to elevate it to the level of the complimentary cuppa I drink now from a paper cup on a flight in another hemisphere and in a drastically different timezone. Plane scribblings.

Favourite pictures I made:

Worst picture I made:

Best moments of 2017: 21st August, the midday total solar eclipse in Wyoming; date night with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra followed by beers and pool at the diviest dive bar ever - The 12 Volt Tavern; watching Sarah Walker perform her poetry on a stage in Brunswick; watching Jenny marry her Brad; jumping up on stage with Nick Cave and Warren Ellis; driving to a pitch meeting in LA with Jamie Messenger and Dominique Holmes singing Boyfriend (Repeat) by Confidence Man; being told I was loved; homemade Sichuan; Jamie Messenger playing Piano Man on a grand piano at the Sonoma Film Festival (on the night he won’t remember, the night I won’t forget); walking Manhattan with me ol’ Ma and Pa, Sarah and Laura; that afternoon when we were tired, hot and dehydrated in Havana, Cuba and we found beer and fried chicken on the top floor of a crumbling Parisian building, the sun suddenly lost its vehemence, and your smile made it all worth it.

And of course this:

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Worst moments of 2017: so many goodbyes. Quietly bathing in a public toilet in Utah while a garden wedding takes place just outside.

Goals for 2018: Keep traveling: visit China; ride the Trans-Mongolian railway. Finish my feature film script. Start work on a new short animation. Start up the illustration project. Read more books. Climb Longs Peak in Colorado. Turn my irrational fear of overtaking in a car into a rational fear of overtaking in a car. Write and draw more. Keep better lists. Meditate. Practice and perform the guitar more. Swim. See more live music. Drink a little bit less. Be a better friend.

And get even huger:

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