Pilgrimage from Mickey Sanchez on Vimeo.

Thanks

Thanks anyone who's looked at this blog. You can follow new stuff@

mickeysanchez.com

or a new blog:

calmislands.blogspot.com

~ mickey

Success

I completed the walk. I began at exactly 9:21 P.M. on Saturday November 28th and touched my stoop at 67E 2nd Street at exactly 8:57 P.M. on Sunday November 29th, a total of 23 hours and 36 minutes. Steve Marion walked with me through the night until 6 A.M. I did not stop for more than 10 minutes at any time until I sat down for a meal after crossing the George Washington Bridge. At a Chinese/Cuban Restaurant on 170th Street and Broadway I had boneless fried chicken, french fries, and a banana milkshake.

The trip began with great optimism. Morale was very high, and I thank Steve for assisting me with what could have been the most frightening and lonely part of the journey. Though Steve left, the rising sun gave me the motivation to go on. I used the route planned for us by Google walking directions, with very little alteration until I got into the city:

(here is the link to the exact directions):

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=4+Jessica+Ln,+Succasunna,+NJ+07876&daddr=67+E+2nd+St,+New+York,+NY+10003&geocode=Ffd0bwIdmaSM-ynfpkJzZp7DiTHM52VI48wSMg%3BFb9mbQIdfQOX-ym9RquGhFnCiTFfS8jDeZlONA&hl=en&mra=ls&dirflg=w&sll=40.803415,-74.262085&sspn=0.484416,1.352692&ie=UTF8&ll=40.810691,-74.304657&spn=0.484363,1.352692&z=10

Fatigue, in my legs and feet, began about 4 hours into the trip. Google walking directions estimates a time of 17 hours and 37 minutes, which assumes a pace of approximately 3 mph. However, Google does not take into account a variety of factors like fatigue, rest time, and elevation change. These things added a total of 6 hours to my time! I estimate I began the walk at a speed of around 4 mph and finished at less than 1 mph.

Some Highlights (Click on the pictures to enlarge them):



Above is the turn from Rt. 46 to Piaget Avenue. Getting here was very exciting for several reasons. First, it was the first new street after walking all night on the same road. Secondly, it meant I was nearing the 30 mile mark. It was also the point that I entered into neighborhoods, which made it much more difficult to find places to go to the bathroom.



This is a picture of a huge cemetery on Outwater Lane, direction #14. It took me so long, perhaps around 30 minutes, to walk past the whole thing. I'll use this paragraph to mention that I drank about 20 Gatorades, and around 5-6 cups of coffee during the entire walk.




This is direction 24, "Court Street." This was one of the first water features I had encountered in several hours and it really boosted my morale. It came right after some really cool court buildings and was in a very industrial area with a Hess oil refinery. I sat down in the back of an abandoned warehouse to have a snack and was amazed to see this strange submarine docked across the river! The light was very beautiful the moment I arrived at this bridge. I was eating a bagel with cream cheese while I walked on this road.




Above is the Google image of direction 32 - "Turn Right At Bruce Reynolds Blvd." Approaching the George Washington Bridge means going over a large elevation change. This means that Bridge is hidden to you until the very last moment. At this direction, I literally turned a corner and the bridge was right in front of me. I couldn't stop smiling all the way across.

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What kept me going most, throughout this walk, was the fact that I had framed it as a pilgrimage. I was repeatedly surprised by the power of this word, and the effect it had on my motivation. What is the true power of gratitude? As I tired, the distance became an obligation. It was something I felt I could possess and throw in my back pocket. Because walking makes a distance tangible, and staying up through the duration allowed a continuous stream of consciousness, unbroken from beginning to end.

Thank you New York City.

Pilgrimage

Tomorrow, Saturday November 28^th I will walk approximately 50 miles from Succasunna, NJ (zip code 07876) to my apartment in Manhattan at 67 East 2^nd Street. I will begin around 10 P.M. and will continue without sleeping until I reach my destination. I estimate this walk to last between 15 and 20 hours.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I am taking this pilgrimage, first and foremost, to reestablish my gratitude for being able to live in New York City. I am inspired by the extreme forms of Himalayan pilgrimage where the pilgrims do not just walk great distances to reach a holy site, but offer their thanks by moving forward in a continuous series of prostrations. My walk is similar because I am erecting an arbitrary obstacle to reach my destination. I would usually drive or take the train. As a performance, this piece is informed by artists like Tehching Hsieh (see Outdoor Piece) and Marina Abramovic and Ulay (see their Great Wall Walk), whose works of endurance and extended duration comment on the nature of time and attention. Through this lens I ask: what is the relationship between “lost” time and artistic sacrifice? In other words, can we turn anything we want into art/performance if we give it a certain type of attention? This walk also lies within the lineage of endurance athletes like Dean Karnazes and Reinhold Messner, though no doubt in a tamer situation. Its tameness (in relation to these other acts) brings up another question: how does extremity affect an act’s importance or relevance? Does it matter that I, myself, have never walked such a distance?

I see this walk, and its accompanying video piece, as part of a larger intervention towards an understanding of lived experience. That is, performing or living a piece might not add to existing stores of human knowledge, but it does add to the stores of human experience. Or perhaps what I mean to say is that human performances are investigations into the limits of the body and mind that cannot be accomplished without a performer willing to sacrifice their time. In contradiction to the scientific question, “What would happen if…?” is the performative question, “What would it be like?” The problem with documenting this type of investigation is of course the question of how to share experienced action with others. What are the possibilities? My attempt constitutes an effort to transfer my experience through narrated film, text (blog writing), and oral history.

But what are the textual and filmic vocabularies for lived experience? Can I possibly represent these memories, dreamlike and incomplete? When someone describes their dream, do you listen? Do you interpret? When I write you a letter telling you about my life, what do you see in you “mind’s eye”? Do you experience my life through your own eyes or by comparison? In other words, do you understand the love I feel for others by comparing to the love you have felt? Do you fill in my emotions with your own?

Do you feel as though the vocabularies of psychology, biology, performance, philosophy, or religion accurately describe your lived experience?

The real “documentation” of this work is the remark. It is when you off-handedly mention my act to a friend or relative. It is the few words you include when you introduce me to an acquaintance. It is your certainty that it has-been-done, and that I am the one who has done it. This is the real work, because a remark is all that is needed to awaken in the listener a series of endless associations. These associations contain my piece because lived experience is nothing but a mixture of contiguity and disconnected bits of anything at all that lives within the memory.

You can contact me at 973 479 8917 during this piece to check my location.

I just figured out how to write blog posts in Microsoft Word!

Dissapointment

Dean Karnazes was not at the expo.

3 Miles, Halloween, and the New York City Marathon

Halloween is my favorite time in New York City (this is a picture of my costume) but before I get into that...

A week ago I ran 3 miles (approximately - I ran 12 laps on a 400 meter track. One mile = 1609.344 meters, 3 miles = 4828.032, 12 laps = 4800 meters) in under 20 minutes. This has been a long standing goal for me. It means I needed to keep a average speed of 9 mph or above for the length of the run (.2 mph faster than my goal 8.8 mph for the half marathon). This felt so good - I can't say my EXACT time because I was wearing an analog watch, but it was somewhere between 19 and 20 minutes.

Other than this, training for the half is going o.k. I sort of hurt my left leg in a basketball game on Wednesday, but it feels much better today. Tomorrow I plan on going on my long run, ten miles, hopefully it will be nice out.

In other news, this weekend is not only Halloween, but the New York City marathon! And even better than that is the New York City Marathon Health and Fitness Expo: http://www.ingnycmarathon.org/expo.htm - Dean Karnazes is going to be there (see previous post.) Although I have lived in the city the last three years I have never watched the marathon or gone to the expo. I've never been interested before.

Why is Halloween the best time of year? Because of the Halloween parade on 6th Avenue, because everyone is in a wild and crazy mood, and that's it. Those two things are what makes it so good.


Preview: I will soon be doing a performance where I walk 50 miles from Succasunna, NJ, my hometown, into Manhattan, and then to Fort Tilden Beach in Far Rockaway. More to come on this soon.