Bartleboothing

A while ago I found my old group emails sent from unreliable internet cafes in Cuba and Mexico during March and April 2003. It's a miracle they survived given both my personal and work laptops have died in the last 6 months, but they were still there in my yahoo sent file, rusting away. I somehow doubt my friends have saved them as great works of literature.

If I were to do such a trip again, I'd use a blog to keep the world (or at least those interested) informed of my progress. So I'm going to re-do my 2003 trip virtually; sharing it with whoever may stumble across this as I go.

The exercise is lightly inspired by the character Bartlebooth in George Perec's novel Life - A User's Manual who travels the world for 20 years, painting a picture every fortnight which is then turned into a jigsaw puzzle. Upon his return, he spends he next 20 years doing the jigsaw puzzles to re-create his trip.

I doubt I'll have the patience to do my Cuba and Mexico trip in real time - the goal is to get to know some blogger tricks; as well as maintaining a record of my trip for 'posterity' (whatever that means in the digital age). Knowing me, I'll be lucky to stretch the exercise over a week.

In my designs on posterity, I won't be mimicking Bartlebooth, whose paintings were ultimately returned to the place they were painted to be dissolved into blank sheets leaving no trace of his life's endeavour. Like so many 1s and 0s breaking up into the ether ...