The History of the World According to...
The History of the World According to Marco
Who is Marco? I don't know. He is a secondary character you catch glimpses of in High Fidelity. Marco Polo was an explorer. And the game Marco Polo is played in a pool with someone wandering around, eyes closed, yelling, "Marco," and all players, not tagged, responding, "Polo."
However, the History of the World According to Marco is merely a non-sequitur that came to mind as I was plugging in the address for the website. I looked and noticed that I haven't updated in a few days and that I probably needed to think about doing an update, and so, here is my poor attempt at actually doing an update.
Yesterday in Honors 200: Wilderness Writing, we were set to do a "Rush Write". A rush write is someone giving a topic and then you taking five minutes and writing about that subject without really thinking about it. Reminds me, a lot, of "Finding Forrester," where William Forrester (played by Sean Connery) says, "Don't think, write," and then he sits down at his typewriter and starts to pound away at the keys producing, in a very short time, one page that he pulls and hands to Jamal.
That's really what it comes down to. Not thinking about what you want to write; rather, just writing what you're thinking about.
In the case of yesterday, the topic was, "Will you find love in a snow cave?"
NOTE: We, as a class, are going snow caving this weekend and will be building and then sleeping in our snow caves. I have to admit that I am a little... err... frightened at the prospect as the two professors like to talk about the mishaps they get into. That, and I haven't been feeling well and don?t really know whether or not I want to go out and do something like that.
However, with that introduction, this is what I came up with (nothing edited):
Love in a snow cave?No. Though some people want to say, "Yes," chances are that love will not be found in a snow cave. One of the reasons for this is because I am not looking for love in cold places. Cold places are not very conducive to the way in which I think. They are cold. They are not comfortable. They are cold. In case you missed it, cold places are cold.
With that said, snow caves, are designed as temporary shelter. One might think that the notion of finding "love" within a temporary shelter would lead to temporary love. True, ever person is different and as such, finding love in a temporary shelter can lead to a more substantial and permanent love, but the idea, the feeling, the notion that you have "found" something in a temporary place puts the stigmatism of brevity to that very thing.
Will it end tomorrow? Or when the snow melts? Or maybe when we leave the cave and find sunshine and shelter in a place far more conducive to life and the long term preservation thereof.
Love in a teepee is far more practical. Sure, it too can be considered a temporary shelter, but a teepee can be taken with you, set up somewhere else, and lived in. Teepee?s were designed to be lived in. They were designed as nomadic homes. Like a Winnebago or a trailer home. They are places, though small, where love can be found, where it can grow, and when it is time to move on, where it can be moved with the individual to a new location. Love in a Winnebago is far more realistic and practical than love in a snow cave.
In a Winnebago you don't have to worry about rain, the sun, warm weather, or other natural disasters for the snow cave. You don't have to worry about the reality that the snow cave is going to disappear. Instead, you worry about simple things like running out of gas or not having sufficient quantities of natural gas to fuel the stove.
The outcome isn't really all that important. So what? It's a writing exercise and I don't have to show up to class. I've just organized my schedule to accommodate that class and haven't decided on how better to fill my time rather than going. So, I sit and listen to conversations and then plug in topics and see what quick (and dirty) supporting information I can find on the web. That's a far more enjoyable exercise to me. But then, as I've admitted before, I am a little weird.
Regardless, the whole of the experience is such that I am in the class for the outings, camping, etc., and not to learn to write... which is what the class is designed for. Years ago I took the necessary requirements for writing in the college environment, and passed with more than flying colors. Now, I sit and participate, I surf the web, when appropriate I flirt, and I make fun of people who think they are old and going to die alone when in reality they are young and don't know what it means to be old and die alone. (I'm not saying that I know it any better.)
Which then leads me back to "High Fidelity". A movie about love, loss, and love, again. Rob, the protagonist (which, we learned in lit 251 the other week, is the central character in the story and not necessarily a hero) starts the story listening to music and having his live-in girlfriend packing her things and walking out on him. This leads the viewer (or reader, depending on how you came across the story, it?s both a book and a movie) to be introduced to Rob's "Top Five" lists. Top five musicians. Top five records. Top five breakups. That's where he starts, the all-time top five breakups. And he lists them, in order.
Then you get to Charlie. Charlie is a girl he dated in college and when they broke up, she was with Marco and Rob was on his own. He flunked out of college. Started his own record store, and, at 26, decided he was going to be alone for the rest of his life. Obviously, with this, he?s not tried finding love in a snow cave. Not that I would want to try and find love in a snow cave, I'm just saying. Love ≠ snow cave. Keep that in mind.
It's worth noting that you find what you are looking for when you are looking for it. Which, through a poorly logical movement, I can't possibly be looking for love because I am not finding it. But that's me and that leads into a whole different dimension of conversation that I won't bother with. The point, in case, is that you find what you are looking for when you are looking for it. For Rob, it was in the arms of a woman who, like him, was 26 and out of love. For the person who identified the topique de conversation yesterday it was finding something that is complete nonsense as boys and girls on BYU approved outings do not share sleeping spaces.
Anyway, The History of the World According to Marco. A new element to my website. Let's see how this one goes.