The Anti-Plan

robert langellier

If i haven't told you yet, this is what i'm planning to do this summer. This is how much you will see of me. These are the directions i'll be moving myself:

i don't actually know— and i like it a lot that way. i know that my room is clean and impeccable and i like being inside it. i know that i have a firepit in the backyard. i know that i have books about drugs and the cosmos and nursing homes and Monterey Bay, California. i know that i have some string instruments, some more broken than others, and a piano, only a little broken. one of those string instruments is a violin, which isn't mastered quite yet. one is a banjo, which has a considerable length to go to mastery. i know that i have a very long story to sift through, edit, and fix to make pretty. i'm particularly excited about that. i know that i have a language, French, to learn how to listen to and interpret, which is difficult because theyslureverysoundandsoitsoundslikethistoforeignears. i know that i have a very important piece to work on regarding age. i'm both very excited and dispirited by that. i also know that i have to stay awake for as long as i can at some point, for the pressing purposes of science and jokes.

All of these are great things, but they don't tie me. Things i don't have are classes or a job with a fixed schedule or anything else which does tie a certain person to a certain place. and so— i may end up anywhere, anyplace, anytime, whimsically, hopefully. i'd like to move around a lot. although— i know that plans don't often go the way they are planned, and disappointment is an inherent quality present at the end of every plan. i'm sure i'll spend more time here than i want. i'll probably play some Mario Party at Conor's. and i'll probably enjoy that a little bit.

And i know that i have free rent in Springfield. i know that i have leases in Columbia for most of the summer, and friends who live in Columbia during the rest of the summer. i know that i have a job in Columbia that can be picked up and left off in 24 hours' notice. i know that i have a pair of jobs in Springfield that aren't fully lined up yet, but assumedly can be picked up and left off in 24 hours' notice, or else i will leave them.

i know there are some certain people in Columbia i am very excited to see, and i know there are people in Springfield i am also excited to see, and there are also a couple of really stellar people in Champaign. i know there are music festivals to attend, some hitchhiking to do, some pretty exciting nursing homes to poke my head into. i have a friend who will be living in Tucson who would like to see me, or to see me in Cheyenne. i have a friend and his father in Ludington, Michigan who are prepared to imbibe me with the cuisine and adventure of an outdoorsman's summer paradise.

In short, i am very open ended right now, in most all respects. i don't even know who i'll be close with next year, because even that is in rapid flux, but that's alright, because if i dive in and come out with no friends, i have books about drugs and the cosmos and nursing homes and Monterey, CA. i don't think i've ever dangled in wind currents more loosely than i am now, i'm going with the flow so hard. i don't know where i'll be in three weeks, and that's pretty exciting to me. i don't know if this qualifies as an extremely ambitious season or an extraordinarily unambitious and noncommittal one. But my summers lately have been magical in varying ways, so i'd like to think this one will find a way to be so, too.