January 09
In the second week of February, I’ll be leaving town to spend a month at a remote cabin in the north woods of Minnesota, a place with no running water, miles from the nearest person, on a huge frozen lake where winter temperatures routinely hover below 20 degrees below zero. I’m going with my dog, but I’ll otherwise be alone in the woods, 30 minutes by car from a grocery store or hospital, an hour from the closest town of any size. I’m crazy in doing so.
I’m letting you Newspeak-oids know sooner rather than later because I don’t want rumors getting started that I’m in any way abandoning this or you. As internet access allows, I’ll be blogging here, and at the blog set up specifically for the trip, as often as I can. Rest assured that the site’s not going anywhere.
So here’s an excerpt from the blog entry explaining things:
So, I talked to some friends tonight who saw the link to this blog and were like, “Whaaaaa? You’re leaving us and the Springs and Newspeak and your wife and you’re never coming back and oh my god what the hell?” All I can say is chill. Here’s what’s going on:
I had a rough fall and winter, as most of you did. Money was—and still is—tight, I was forced to scrap the most visible end of my livelihood, my city was crumbling around me and it suddenly occurred to me that all of the work I’d put into giving our town a truly alternative media voice was going to come to an ignominious end. This was not a particularly encouraging revelation, as you can imagine.
So I decided to take some time away and try to hammer out a book while I was at it. The cabin on Winnibigoshish holds great memories for me, and it’s deserted in the winter, so it was a natural selection for this little experiment.
My ultimate goal is to devote a month to creativity, to allow myself the time to write while devoid of distraction. Yes, it’s an escape of sorts, but going to the cabin—which, it’s just occurred to me, I should probably give a better name than “the cabin”—is more about constructing an environment where what I put in has a direct and proportional relationship with what comes out. If I don’t collect snow to boil for drinking water, I die of thirst. If I fail to chop wood, I freeze to death. Every action, my theory goes, should have a reaction. It’s Newtonian, a manufactured simplification of the way I live. And that, given the year I’ve had, sounds ideal. But it doesn’t mean I’m fleeing from my responsibilities or my marriage or my community.
This sabbatical also doesn’t translate to Newspeak going anywhere. I’ll have internet access—although to what extent, I don’t know yet—and I’ll be blogging and overseeing the site while at the cabin, as much as I can. I’m still doing Newspeak. I will still be doing Newspeak when I get back. I’ll hopefully still be doing Newspeak years from now. It’s not something I’m about to abandon, because what it stands for and who it belongs to mean too much to me. So put that thought right out of your heads.
The story, in a nutshell, is this: I’m going to the middle of nowhere for a month to write and be alone. It will be cold and foreign and inhospitable and profoundly different. I will be occasionally miserable and often lonely, but I will take long walks through the snow and string together sentences and take pictures to share with all of you. And something good will, I hope, be the result.
So. We cool?
Posted by: Aaron Retka in Heterosexual Hall of Fame, Hi, I'm a Moron! | Permalink
Comments
9 Responses to “The plan.”
Leave a Reply
Oo be careful! Hope your month away is very fruitful and fun. Will be looking forward to hearing your updates.
Sounds interesting! For me, being trapped in my own head, alone, for a month would be hell on earth. But have fun with that!
Seriously, extreme circumstances can produce the best words.
Aaron … that sounds awesome. I hope you have a great experience. I’ve never said this to anyone before, but … you might want to bring a gun. Charlie
Best wishes… as someone who grew up on woodstove-only heat, here’s hoping you have one kick-ass woodstove if temps are really going to be -20 consistently.
Otherwise, you’re going to freeze to death.
If you don’t, I look forward to seeing the fruits of your sabbatical’s labors!
I just hope the Big Guy doesn’t throw him in the chipper.
Having spent some time surviving trips to the north woods of Minnesota, listening to the booming of ice cracking on the lake in Dylan’s Duluth and learning that freezing nostril hairs are nothing to worry about, I know that there is a curious beauty there that can truly be inspiring. The good news is that you won’t have to fend off giant blood-sucking mosquitoes this time of year and most of the bears will be sleeping. Safe harbor, Aaron. Stay away from lumberjacks and minors. Uh, miners.
I think it takes a lot of guts to do what you are doing.
I wish you the best of luck, and a better future for all of us.
(And if things do get better, you will always have a free place to stay and visit here in Chicago. Preferably when it’s not 20 below here).
Were anyone else taking this journey, I’d say they were crazy. But you, my friend, have more creativity and imagination in your pinky fingernail than I’ve got in my entire being. I have no doubt you can find success.
Don’t forget to pack lots of croutons. They fuel your creative spurts.
[...] As I have been chronicling over at my other blog, I’m now again set to leave for my book-writing sabbatical to the frozen north (more about that here). [...]