52 Projects

Take a picture of your significant other while he/she’s sleeping.

Then, ask her what her earliest dream memory is, or what recurring dream she has had throughout her life, or the kind of dream that she doesn’t want to wake up from, and craft a poem out of it.

Once you’ve got the photo and the poem written, frame the photo and the poem, or make a little booklet out of them. Put your creation under her pillow, so she finds it right as she’s going to bed.

The Original 52 Projects

Shotgun a beer with your old drinking buddies. Get a 12-pack, of the cheap shit you used to drink back in the day. Then, mail a can to each of your old drinking buddies, as they no doubt live all over the country. In each of the packages, include a note explaining that everyone needs to shotgun their beer at the same time on a specific date. Nothing like the old days, of course, but it will definitely stir up the ol’ memories, no matter how hazy those memories might be.

——————-

And, man, those were the days. You’d make the call to your connection, maybe someone’s older sister’s ex-boyfriend, or possibly some guy named Hank who lived in the run down apartment complex on the other side of town who’d buy your booze for the price of six-pack (“We want 15 12-packs of Schaefer and 12 two-liters of Tropical California Cooler”). The exchange would be made, maybe in the back of a supermarket, and the alcohol would make it back to the party house and immediately be passed around. To commemorate the start of the party, your best buddies would gather around, use a key or a pocket knife to poke a hole in the side of their beer cans, hoist up the beers, pop the lids, and effectively shotgun the brewskis. The long gulp, then an even longer belch, all in unison. Someone would turn up the song on the stereo, maybe David Bowie’s “Changes,” “Strangers When We Meet” by the Smithereens, or “Add It Up” by the Violent Femmes, the next round of Schaefer’s (“The beer to have when you’re having more than one”) would already be in hand, and the party would commence.

The Original 52 Projects

Write the story of why you moved to the city in which you currently live.

——————-

About a year after moving to New York, I read a story entitled “Goodbye to All That” by Joan Didion. It struck a chord with me. I asked my wife to read it, and kept bothering her about it until she finally did. I made copies of the story and gave them out to friends. Didion’s story is all about moving to, living in and then leaving New York, about her experiences in the city, and how those growing experiences eventually lead her to depart. Trying to unravel the mystery of exactly when she decides it’s time to move on is the point of the story. The way she writes, it’s like she’s telling the story in a depressed whisper, but she knows how to rhythmically throw in that deceptively simple, yet perfect sentence which seems to summarize exactly, and I mean exactly, what is going on — not just with her, but with your feelings as well.

More than anything, though, I just like the idea of this story, of putting down on paper why you moved to the city in which you currently live. Why you left where you used to live, what you like about your new home, what that first night was like, the feeling you had the moment you stepped off the plane or drove across the bridge… It will all end up finding its way into the story. You build your life, and a lot of what you build it with has to do with where you’re living. The reasons why you move to a new city can reveal the undercurrents of how you are trying to shape and direct the course of your life.

The next time you or somebody else breaks a glass in your home, instead of throwing out the smashed pieces, collect the remnants, carefully clean them, and then place them in a jar. Then, label the jar with the time and date that the glass broke, what you (or whoever) had been drinking, who was in your home, the occasion (possibly a birthday party, maybe just “hanging out,” most likely “drinking a glass of water — I was thirsty”), exactly how the glass broke, and of course, the name of the person who broke it. Then, put the sealed and labeled jar on a shelf.

A glass that breaks during a party is the best kind to save. After all, it isn’t really a party until something gets broken.

Make a poster. It can be sized however you want, but 8.5 X 11 is easiest to copy and post. In terms of what should be on your poster, that’s wide open. The poster can be political, it can promote something you need to get the word out about, it can feature your art, or it can just be something that looks cool and is totally nonsensical. Anything.

Once your poster is done, post it all over. You can post it all over a room, an office, a building, a school, a campus, a town, a city, a state, a nation, the world.

——————-

During student council elections in my senior year at high school, someone postered the school with scandalous posters. These suckers weren’t just put up with tape and tacks. These posters were sealed on with glue. And they were everywhere.

The posters — all featuring various people running for office — contained crudely drawn characters doing crude things, and the comments were even harsher. So of course everyone thought they were the funniest thing ever.

“Don’t vote for Mike, he sucks dick.”

Or

“Don’t vote for Susan, she’s a brown noser.”

And all the pictures — a notch above stick figure drawings — were literal depictions of the comments.

The striking thing was how these posters took aim at all the popular kids, the ones who always seem to get all the glory, and get good grades as well — you know, the kids who end up on student council. Everything always seems to go right for these popular kids – they’ve got the best clothes, they’re good at sports, they have shiny new cars, they run with the best looking crowd, and they always have the best looking girlfriends or boyfriends.

The people running for office that actually deserved to win but probably wouldn’t were not featured in any of the posters.

So these posters were an attack on the high school hierarchy. And there was indeed some subtle ground-leveling that took place on that day.

“Did you see the one with the …?”

“These things are everywhere!”

“Oh man, this is great!”

And of course, the main focus: “Who do you think did it?”

Usually in situations like this, the person who does the job ends up telling people, or maybe just one person. Then that person tells someone, and that person tells someone, and before you know it, the kid who did the job is sitting in the principal’s office waiting for his parents to come pick him up. Busted.

But the person who postered the school must never have told anyone. No one was ever caught, and we never did find out who put up those posters.

Call a friend, just to shoot the breeze and catch up. Record the conversation. Make sure to tell your friend what you are doing, but be kind of vague about why you are doing it. Say it’s a personal audio journal that you’re working on, then quickly change the subject. (If your friend is likely to end up in court or face an independent prosecutor, pick a different friend to record. If something incriminating is said, destroy the tape.)

After the conversation is over, label the tape, with a first name and date. Then, put the tape in a secure place where it won’t be lost forever, but won’t be found for years.

When you come across the tape in a few years, during a move or something like that, give the tape to your friend. Once he hears it, he’ll say something like, “I can’t believe I sound like that on tape,” or “I hate the way I sound on tape.” But he’ll really be shocked at the things he was saying, all those years ago.

You never know when it might all end. That thing about just walking across the street and getting hit by a bus — It really could happen.

——————-

When I was in college, my girlfriend at the time, H.., told me that she was once digging around in her parent’s desk drawers, and she came across a letter that was addressed to her, so she opened it. It was a letter from her mother, and it was indeed for H., but it wasn’t supposed to be given to H. unless her mother had died. H. realized that after reading just the first sentence, but she kept reading. Of course.

I, of course, asked H. what the letter said. She told me. I wouldn’t even think of divulging the contents. That letter was for H., and H. only. I admit I felt a little strange asking, and then having her tell me what was in the letter, but it’s the kind of thing you open up about with a significant other in the middle of the night. I can say that when I asked H. how she responded to reading the letter, she said, simply: “I just started bawling.”

——————-

A letter like that, it’s one of those things that’s hard just to think about, let alone actually writing up and then sealing in an envelope. Making a will is easy. But a letter, to be delivered in the event of your death, to the most important person in your life?

Still, if you sit down, with a pen in hand and paper in front of you, you can do it. So get your affairs in order.

Make some art, maybe a photograph or a painting or a drawing. Put the art in a nice frame, one that isn’t brand new. Then, hang your framed art in a place you aren’t suppose to, but where people will assume it is supposed to be, like the lobby of your apartment building, in the hallway at your office, on the smallest wall in a motel room, in the quiet corner of a library, outside the downstair’s restroom at a restaurant or bar, the back room of a club, in the bathroom of a museum.

Think of your favorite book. Then, go to the library and seek out the other books by the author of your favorite book.

If F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is your favorite book, check out Tender Is the Night. Maybe you loved John Irving’s The World According To Garp, but have you read The Water-Method Man? Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, of course, but what about Travels With Charley or The Moon Is Down? Read Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God? Well how about Dust Tracks on a Road, Jonah’s Gourd Vine, or Tell My Horse. Intrigued by Po Bronson’s Nudist on the Late Shift? Check out his first book, Bombardiers. Maybe you’ve only read Janette Turner Hospital’s Oyster, but she’s got a shelf of books… Borderline, The Tiger in the Tiger Pit, Charades, Isobars, Dislocations…