get it right, get it right, get it tight

This weekend we are going to be at the Juneteenth Festival here in Memphis, a celebration of the end of slaverY. The story goes that slavery was abolished in the states around January, but many slavemasters didn't release the slaves until that June. You know how word gets around... that slavery is abolished. Well anyway black people enslaved didn't find out until that June.
Today I was talking to my mother in the wake of some things. She was saying its time to get grounded, that to fly you must have a recognition of the ground. You must get grounded. And this is true. I like to do brash and random things. I am somewhat of an adventurer. My head is generally in the clouds and that is a good place to be. Nice things happen there.
The summer after freshman year at Spelman I was hankering to get back up north, so I planned to go back up to putney, vt for my school's graduation ceremonies. i used to read alot of adventure books as a kid, fantasy and whatnot so i'm always kind of dreaming about the next adventure.. striking out without a care and without a plan and making a way.. ya know..thats the way it seems in those books you know.. so i had my little moleskin journal and i wrote up a list of items i needed to bring. and i wrote up something about adventure. like a how-to, like i was going to write a little book about adventure. Maybe if I get around to it, I'll dig up that notebook and post that on here for reference. But yeah.. it was all so big. I was a little scared. I was like this is going to be my big adventure.. I'm about to do what I've always kind of dreamed of - Today I was in Davis Kidd bookstore and I was looking at a map of Tanzania and stuff like that is so exciting to me- You know how in a book of adventure within the first couple of pages there is the map of the fantasy land or the world in which the story takes place, weird names like middle earth or arythnia or take-offs real places but with different names. I always wanted to create a world. The first short story I wrote was liek in the third grade and it was about this place called vemcola island and this girl who foun herself there. She figured out that she ame there to connect the people of vemcola island to the rest of the world. she was on an adventure.
In the back of my mind I've always wanted to be an adventurer.
But yeah.. I remember sitting on the Mississippi River greenbelt park in the mornings and afternoons on a bench dreaming about the adventure that was to come. It was so scary. I thought I was going to .. strike out. I was going to go up to graduation and the festivities thereafter which always take place is some discrete wooded area of vermont with a big ole blazin bonfire you know, and people sleep out there in tents and in sleeping bags, some people in cars, its a whole affair. pretty magical actually. but yeah.. so i had it kind of planned out.. after grad i had no idea where i would go, but i was like i'n sure someone will be going somewhere.. i'm sure i can make my way.. it was so big you know.
So I took a flight up to Boston and satyed with my cousins im Newton, who I had never visited before.. stayed in their guest room... wrote in my notebook about the developments of the developing adventure before I went to sleep.. evetually got picked up be a fellow putneyite.. made our way.. my first time there after the experience of spelman ( a whole other story). I was so ready to get back to green and barns and beautiful putney people and friends you know.. skip ahead you know.. saw some people, slept on a mountain in a tent with abram, kirstin, and morgan, left the fountainhead in her car, fixed the frohawk i had at the time, screamed some people's name's at grad, all the while knowing or realizing i had kind of movedon from the place- odd when that happens... got to the wooded bonny bonfire to .. oh state of states not have a place to sleep or a sleeping bag in which to do it.. ( the previos year my sleeping bag had been set on fire in a bizarre set of circumstances at this exact same affair ) . luckily friends look out and i stayed in a tent with some good friends.. and you know the mornign came and there i stood in the middle of a field in vermont with people steadily leaving, already gone, and me no place to go and no planned place to ger there. eventually made it to the bus station.. picked abus up to manchester to catch a flight.. ended up being full ( i flew stand-by) so i had to get a hotel room (first time staying and paying for one by myself).. solo traveling.. i thought i had failed at my great adventure ya know ( can't say how glad i was to get back to memphis) .. but i hadn't.. i hadn't failed.. though the great adventure was not how i thought it would be.. In retrospect i think of many things... one.. how interesting.. two.. there is the overwhelming memory of being about in the world without a particular plan and with only a timberland backpack full of random supplies, a pair or two of pants, one i was wearing, and other things, and only myself to lead me. but i mean.. it is good to look back upon such moments, particularlyin times such as this when i am dreaming bigscale,. but know and am finding that i must prepare myself, and must be grounded and must have some kind of framework or plan. I really must. I really thought I was going to head out into the world and make an adventure.. and it was great..and i'm glad my parents trusted me enough to let me go out and attempt such a thing.. almost like lettign your child head out into the woods..not really though..more in the dreamings of my mind than in theirs.. my mother made sure i was staying somewhere ya know..
what am i saying.. i need to do some planning.. i need to plan or have framework from which to step my feet up to fly... but i shall relish setting up that framework for myself..i shall relish that... thats what i'm doing this time around... getting it right.. get it right.. get it tight

laateerssss,

inti