En Route to Venice via ATL written somewhere over Halifax, Nova Scotia

A photograph of none other than a map (the only image I took the first day).

I'm excited! I haven't felt the sheer pleasure of going somewhere in a long time. I haven't been to Europe since The Netherlands in 2004 where this was a prominent feature of the trip. I am long overdue in returning. I've been thinking a lot about Dorothea Lange's The Road West [see the post below]. I'm traveling "back East," to the old country, etc. but it's that road that is calling me always. I have to find out what is at the end of it. It usually ends in an ocean but there's another to follow and another and another. Lange's road is basking in shiny light. There are no mirages (but there could be) so nothing yet is deceiving. It also symbolizes a hard journey. Am I walking? Am I driving? One thing I know for sure is that I'm going at it alone.

After the earthworks road trip, I committed to going to the Venice Biennale in 2011. It is something I've always wanted to do and at the time, it made sense to go in two years. I started saving my money, obtained a summer stipend, and suddenly, the plan became real. My goal is to complete the final chapter for the book I will self-publish this fall featuring Nine Fake Cakes and Nine Bodies of Water. I come equipped with postcards and Ed Ruscha's "approval." I am going to let those cakes and the hunt for Ruscha go this time as I've been holding onto them for far too long. This isn't a giant summer project that will be completed by the end of the year. It's a concluding chapter to a couple ideas that I recently discovered were not finished. Along this Venice Beach to the Venice Biennale journey, I've also realized a series or two that are just beginning. Ongoing. No rush to complete. Yet. [Stay tuned.]

I've been stock piling New Yorkers for the plane ride and an hour ago I read this in Peter Schjeldahl's review of the Blinky Palermo retrospective at Dia Beacon: "To change your art, Beuys would instruct, change yourself." I may be looking for something like that this trip. One thing I do want to know is how to define what Ed Ruscha meant when he told me to "Rage On."