reprage

Endurance journeys are what I love most about the Tom Sachs community. People embark upon these long-running projects, not for work, school, or any of that ‘business.’ We start these pilgrimages for fun, to see if we can. They’re similar to the Buddhist quest for Nirvana. An escape from the hamster wheel of life, but they’re also an excuse to materialize our imaginations. They’re expeditions that create new landmarks - new features for our community to explore.

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Damn it. I’m still stuck. I’ve exhausted all my energy inching toward a landmark - 52 posts in a year - but now that I’m here? I don’t know what to say.

I thought an endurance post would help describe the view. You know, set the scene for a conclusion dripping with revelation and wisdom - something that would inspire others to embark upon an odyssey of their own.

The problem with an endurance journey is that it’s more about seeing if you can, not what’s ‘there.’

But I do know that nothing gets wasted. Ever. That’s the idea chiseled into the first commandment of thermodynamics: Energy can never be created or destroyed. This law also applies to the energy that we expend on our journeys. It’ll always be a transformative experience for us, irrespective of how society grades our landmarks.

I guess that’s what I love about an endurance journey; it’s never about ‘why.’ We get enough of that in our hamster wheel lives.

A photo of the cover of a notebook containing 60 space suit studies by Samuel De Goede.
An endless column of planet photos by Aaron Hankins
A photo an origami paper crane by Andrzej Szwabe
A photo the world's fastest green ute by Steve Menendez
A photo of a sunday clothing repair by Gabby Sto Domingo.
A photo of a wall drawing by Anders Delbom.

Photos:

Originally written for the Sachsian Syndicate.

Previously: TGIM 51 - Tom’s work is in the permanent collections of the world’s largest and most prestigious art museums. Very powerful tastemakers have decided that flaws are beautiful…

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