taylor

QUIXOTIC: the word of the day. It means to set out to do something seemingly pointless, like Don Quixote. I've never heard it pronounced in everyday speech, but I'm quessing it would go something like this, key-ho-tic. This is the example of something quixotic that I came up with this morning.

"I set out on a quixotic journey to find the flattest, barest piece of land still covered with snow. Why? To tramp it, of course. A snow angel to the thousandth degree. I wanted what humans had always wanted, a mark upon the world. I had tried smearing pigment around, on different sorts of flat things, but no one noticed. It was nothing new, people everywhere from the caves of Lascaux to Van Gogh had tried to leave a mark in this way. Painting had become a thirty year old wooden school desk, so full of graffiti, others marks on the world, there was no where left to carve your name.

There were other ways to go. I could have built something large and geometric out of stone, a wall, a henge, perhaps a pyramid. Then people would probably put "the great" in front of whatever I had built. However, these are less feats of expression than feats of persuasion and I am not good at convincing people to do things. I can't convince people help me leave my mark on the world, just because I'm a nice guy. I can't convince people to buy things for more than they're actually worth. So, I don't really have any money either. I guess I only have what humans have always had, an irrational desire and the ability to walk upright.

There were all sorts of complications and plot twists along the way but I did find a place to do this at, acquired snowshoes and all sorts of other things you're wondering if I was going to remember to get. Yes, I did get them. And then, I tramped in letters 50 miles tall a message to the world. It took three or four days for each downstroke and forty-four days total. What was my message to the world? - my name, I wanted to say what everyone wants to say, "Taylor was here."