Intention as a road trip, is it about the destination or the trip?

Intentions get dropped, picked up again, lost, found, thrown out and re-discovered. Intention is easily distracted, gets high off itself, wakes up sober and wanders off again, sporadically falling into a pace that rises and falls like a tide, steady in its cycles, chaotic in mood, disintegrates, re-born and onward it goes.

Imagine intention as a path through a landscape. Begin with great expectations that lead to dramatic take offs tempered by false starts, cautious step by step carefully constructed beginnings, grand proclamations in moments of strength, raging resentments put into curses, desire longingly planning a course… Along the way there may be mirages of success, intersections of indecision and possibilities, the obstacles of realities, horizons of just a little bit further off. The path of intention is rarely predictable except in its uncertainty.

Enter into forests of projections with dense medicinal magical growth and all the wild beasts an imagination can improvise, nightmares, daydreams and erotic fantasies, along with meadows of present delights with wildflowers, butterflies and song birds, unpossessable moments of joy. Above the tree line high peaks of insight with fresh air, panoramic views (beware of lightening in the summer afternoons and avalanches in the winter and spring), sheer cliffs of self-doubt, narrow ledges of icy pretentious, footholds of words from those who have been there before. Cairins of hope, opportunities for self-reflection in puddles and lakes, waterfalls of break throughs moving things ahead with great force into pools that can be swum in, “See what I have done!” 

Back below the high mountain tops plateaus of realizations, insights past their peek effects asking “what now?”, fogs of the lonely illusions of disconnection amplified by exhaustion, hunger and lack of a warm touch followed by dawns of inspirations. Countless miles on hot vast plains filled with endless tasks requiring days of investment (maybe years). Behold scenic overlooks of hindsight precariously perched just above the Swamps of Regret stuck in a low isolated perspective wallowing in endless whirlpools of bottomless ruminations, the seductive quicksand of self-pity, tar pits of self-judgement, swarms of mosquitos, each bite says “you are no good.” The antidote to regret is to use it to fuel future intentions.

Along the way gardens, villages and cities of cultivations where the deeds of others shine bright, landslides of debt, seasons of wealth, graveyards of leftovers from the buried histories of complications under trees feeding the roots of integration. Beyond it all oceans of the collective unconscious filled with cross currents of motivations hijacking each other’s energies, resistances and old world archetypes, sand made of everything worn down over time.

Intention is an action towards something, a decision, a choice. Having an intention is an experiment in reality testing. Consider the proverb “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” The common prevailing interpretation is that intentions are no good unless they are acted upon. Or is the road to heaven paved with bad intentions not acted on? What may sprout from good intent may result in unintended consequences.

​Having the intention to go somewhere requires a journey to fulfill itself. Intention as a a road trip, is it about the destination or the trip? The word is a noun that sets off a series of events, like a motor boat across a lake. It is always easier to plan a better road trip in hindsight, then it's possible to know where to sleep & eat and which roadside attractions are worth the effort. There is a notorious Chinese proverb, “Good luck, bad luck, who knows?”, about the farmer’s son who breaks his leg. Each new event that comes afterwards shifts the perspective of wether it was lucky or unluckily incident. Hindsight constantly readjusts it’s view of the past through the lens of current events. Intention is a reaction taking note, gathering force and moving on. 

Medically intention refers to the process of healing a  wound. There is the first intention in which there the  two sides of a wound start coming together, right up next to each other. Second intention is when those edges begin to weave together merging into a more secure connection that bridges the gap. First intention is a step toward union and second intention is the integrating process that secures the relationship and heals the wound. Intention is the catalyst of many adventures, the seed to a process of negotiating the gap between our desires and the realities of the the world we live in.

“An adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered, an inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.” -  C.K. Chesterton

​Intimacy is a curious thing. We yearn for it, often when we get it we push it away only to yearn for it again. Other times we get it and it slips away from us leaving us alone and feeling abandoned.  In Close-Up toothpaste commercials of the 80’s lovers run into each other’s arms kissing passionately, fall into the ocean, bodies pressed together with theme music. A Chantal Ackerman film shows lovers in the night run out of the darkness into each other’s arms with a ferocious desire and then break apart and run away from each other back into the darkness with a equal intensity. The sound track contains only the sound of their movements, feet over grass, brushing past bushes, bodies colliding. The rhythmic motion of towards and away can lead to climax, frustration and annihilation or all three.
 
Intimacy is often a desired place to reach, a feeling to cultivate or avoid.  It suggests closeness and a knowing. The closeness could be physical or it might be close as in similar. The sharing of a particular point of view or feeling for something can often generate closeness, an intimacy of likeness; sport fans come to mind or Phish fans. One can become intimate with a landscape; there is a knowing that happens overtime as you spend time with something, learning its range of climates, topography and tools to cope with it. And the wilderness, like relationships, is never quite the experience we thought it would be.
 
There is immediate intimacy, attraction that feels like a magnet when eyes lock across a crowded room, love at first sight. There is a kind of intimacy that slowly develops overtime, like the movies where the protagonists start off hating each (hate is a form of intimacy) and because of circumstances in which they must join together to survive end up falling in love. Yet is love always intimate? Sometimes we love the idea we have of someone more than we know the person we have projected those ideals onto.
 
In a dance performance one dancer speaks to another as if they were lovers. As one speaks the other moves sometimes appearing to pay attention other times distracted by their own movements. The theme of connection and disconnection feels choppy, misaligned and grows more separate over time. It has none of the slow-mo sensation of Close-Up toothpaste commercials. There is no theme music only the interior dialogue of one partner and then the next switching roles between the speaker and the dancer. Yet they stay together, playing their parts till the disconnection becomes what holds them together, a pattern between two that contains a relationship. Bad breath may be tolerated here.