[This whole thing is going to be a nasty train of thought style write up.]

[In this Write up]

Tasks:

Merci by Ty Ødin

Urban Altar

The Treasure Hunters by Ty Ødin, Wild Bear, Clownface.

Players:
Shane Miro

Wildbear


Mikey Wiesepape

Nonplayers:


Ryan Kridler


Andrew Brumgard


[Suggested Music]










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I just started and I'm already feeling it; adrenaline. It's 8:28 on Wednesday night and I'm definitely going to do this. No planning time, no prep. I will follow my trajectory.

Part 0 ("In which Ty Ødin states his Trajectory of Desire" ); I run how I want. I do what I want. I am a time trans-versing chrononautic psychogeographical abomination. I throw my mind through quantum lives and across groups. I want to tear this game apart. I want to love so passionately I throw trains off the rails and send planes fleeing from the skies. I want to live.

Part 1 ("In which Ty Ødin cheats" ); I began as any gentleman would; by cheating to gain this level 7 task at level 6.



Part 2 ("In which Ty Ødin says goodbye to Houston and leaves an eye behind" ); Urban Altar. I have had the first paragraph of this write up sitting around for weeks, waiting for me to say goodbye to the city. I better get on it.

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Fair warning: this task is kind of about me cutting out my right eye.


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Throughout my life I have known Houston

I have never lived too far to visit and spent weeks at a time lost amongst the curiosities and dead trains of the Children's Museum.



After ascending from infancy into adolescence I was taken by the artistic wonders that the city held for me. Both legal and illegal art inspired me and threw me at a hurtling speed through boyhood and towards the player you know.



From the red tag on the street near KBR Tower on 601 Jefferson that simply read "She was yours" to the grand murals splayed from wall to wall near Tranquility Park, Houston oozes soul. It seeps from each building and memories flutter to life like ghosts in each reflection and broken window. Houston is the kind of city that poets write about during their stint as realists.

The cultural slam as you hit 1960 for 20 minutes and go from farm to market is brutal and can catch many off guard.

(Vulgar and fast.)


If you ever asked me if I would leave the poetic slam of Houston, the rush of jumping in Tranquility park and Swinging at Te house of Tea I would smirk and ask what could please me more than living on the streets that raised me. What could be worth leaving the multi-colored racial slurr when gangsters meet cowboys and even the bad guys are nice enough to cry at funerals, respect their parents, and no one that lies can stay for long. What could be better?
And before you write this off as a completion that I only wrote for wait, there's more. I promise it gets physical but first I need to set the tone.

Houston is not a city without crime. It's the largest center for sex trafficking in North America. 5th Ward is known nation wide for it's bad habits; gang banging and violence.


When Latin kings and Bloods and Crips collide there's usually blood spilled, but in Houston lines run deep and gang violence has devolved from violent bursts of Chicago style drive-bys to a slow turf war built more on politics and drugs than guns. It's a way to find brothers and stay alive, but I digress, Houston is a dirty city. It is not utopia.



It is a city as damaged and real as its people. Every crack and and crevice and break holds life though and every piece of broken glass has a story that runs back to immigrants and beyond, back to Spain and Germany and France and all those other places you don't hear about when you think of immigrants. China town feels like Asia and is self contained enough to pull of the illusion. The shockwaves of east meets west meets South tears through your senses like the smell of smoke from an oil fire and lingers as an almost presence the whole time you reside around the city, like a memory you almost have but realize you're just internalizing a dream someone brought with them on a ship from somewhere, their life and family clutched in their shaking hands.

I get all dreamy as I write about the city but I can't stay here forever. I have to say it before I can get into the meat of this praxis. Houston; I'm leaving.

I'm escaping your real world. I'm dropping your sixteen dimensional display of dreams and hopes and breath and movement.

But before I go I must celebrate you for what you are, Houston. A place where Swing dancing and nondenominational Christianity take turns renting out the attic of a coffee shop to compete with local bands for air time.


A place where skaters and freerunners both escape the police just one block from city hall in the shadow of the courthouse.


A place that still has a rodeo and cowboys hats in such a dignified day and age.


The nightlife is vibrant, from ghastly clubs filled with sweating teens to illegal raves held in an abandoned grain silo. If you have an addiction Houston is the city for you.



But Honestly, none of you are here to hear me croon about my favorite city. You're all still reading to know more about that eye cutting business, eh? If you want me to continue on message me and I will be more than glad to gush all over my favorite place in the world, but now on to the task.

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Houston, I'm leaving you.

But before I go I want to pay homage to you in every way I can. The spirit of the city, that living, growing, moving being that breathes in every tunnel and room, is what I'll try to take a part of with the promise that one day I'll be back with tales from cities that are dead or, at least, living in different ways. I'll bring word of Portland and Seattle, of Paris and Luxembourg. I'll put you to bed with stories of my adventures in San Francisco and Britain, but first I have to leave.

I began my school-night adventure by snatching up Shane Miro and speeding off towards Houston with candles, incense, fedora and old spice in tow. We spoke of memories of Houston, visiting int he future and his youth on the West side of the city. With some delay we found our way to the city and were immediately drawn to our first stop; Minute Made Park.



The shrine we set up here was composed of a candle, a stick of incense and a dead credit card recovered from the city streets months ago. As we drove past later int he night we could see our shrine glowing where we left it, and hoped others would see it, too.

We left expediently and got beautifully lost in the twisting streets of the city.

Soon enough we found ourselves in Tranquility park, the home of Houston Parkour and the coolest place to trespass ever. The shrine we let in the temple of motion and life was a candle, incense and change collected from the streets.



With police warnings and lights chasing us we fled to the Houston tunnels and emerged streets away from our crime scene, returning to the car and speeding into the night.



Our final shrine was left at La Luz Del Mundo, a massive church that was built during my childhood and has grown in grandeur as I have in spiritual strength.



A candle and my lucky charm were left on the [locked] gates to the church. Maybe someone needs my luck and their faith. I hope it serves them well.

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Houston has shaped how I see the world. It has changed the way I live and see, and it is only appropriate that I leave something bigger than candles and luck here. I left my right eye, or the memory of it, at least. You wouln't see it until I see my city again; my lens for the world, my window to the soul.



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Part 3 ("In which Ty Ødin studies[!] and prepares for the next day" ); Done with my send off I returned home and prepared for a Physics test. I have never in my life studied for a test. Discouraged by my lagging grades I had begun to lose sight of my goal and care less about school. I cannot afford to stay in Texas, so I have to do everything I can in order to get out, even if that means learning everything about wavelengths. My dreams are to big for this state.
Also; I looked at flower prices.
Also; I'm going to live tomorrow like I'm the kind of person I want to be. I took a trip to Houston on a school night for adventure and separation with a friend because I could. Because I wanted to go. Tomorrow I will be impulsive and resourceful and caring and a great romantic and a great friend and a great role model and I'm not going to fix the abysmal grammar in this sentence because tomorrow is my birthday. Probably.

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Part 4 ("In which Ty Ødin commits acts of trespassing, vandalism, murder and revenge" ); I killed my part of the C.L.O.W.N.S. today. I took time to attempt to remove our tags and removed all physical signs left over from their era of domination in my life.


My friends I dragged into the game dragged me through the worst weeks of my life and I'm sick of pretending to be associated with the C.L.O.W.N.S. I left the team today and, with the help of Shane and Brumgard, covered all the tags left on the country club by the C.L.O.W.N.S. and I during "The Treasure Hunters".

The graffiti remover failed and the red spray paint was our last bastion of artistic supply.



Part 5 ("In which Ty Ødin redoes a task" ); I have always been uneasy with my completion of Merci. It was sub par; an early point grab by a player blind to the depth of the game. I fixed it with a flag today. A flag hung from the club to thank it for bearing the assaults of my development and my many moods.



Part 6 ("In which Ty Ødin makes a permanent decision" ); After meeting up with Wiesepape I headed to a place I have pondered for months with dread and a slight longing; the Adorn tattoo shop. I love my family and decided months ago to get them committed to my skin permanently.

At my high school, Quest, family is a group of students you belong to all four years of your educational career. The Family meets for an hour every day and we do things like debate, play odd games and share our burdens with a group of peers. Family is sometimes the last refuge for students in a world where expectation are high and stress lies in wait with one wrong word to a parent or one poor decision.



The Taz family has done nothing but support and nurture me as I grew and I try to return that sentiment to the underclassmen in the family. I consider each Taz a brother or sister so getting a Taz tattoo should have been a no-brainer, but I was worried about permanently marking myself. The risk of infection, pain, and regret had kept me from going all the way and getting the tattoo and I decided it was time to jump head first into the artists chair before I could stop myself.



The tattoo came out great and was relatively painless. The shop was clean and very cool and the staff were open and friendly. I chatted with my artist about the game and my family while Wildbear took pictures from a near by chair.




I love the tattoo and have not doubted my decision for a second.

Part 7 ("In which Ty Ødin is Sucker Punched" ); It had been far to long since I had some good, stupid fun with my friends. I remedied the situation by taking a large group of said friends to the Midnight premier of Sucker Punch.



We toured the empty mall, laughed as loud as we could and discovered we were thoroughly unprepared for the movie. Best pre-move quotes; "Fine, choke on popcorn kernels you bitch" and "If it has legs and is flammable it is not blocking a fire escape".



The drive home was filled with wild music, empty streets, and ludicrous speeds. I got home around 2, cleaned my tattoo and got to sleep around 4:30, savoring the hour and a half of sleep I was about to receive.

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Part 8 ("In which Ty Ødin almost talks to Jack White" ); At Quest seniors graduate by exhibition. This means that instead of having regular assignments the last semester of senior year we have one gigantic, nasty assignment involving a large research paper, several speeches, and a social action plan to a address a societal issue and solve it in an effective and sustainable way. My group for this project chose the topic of teenage sexuality in America and has been busy avoiding the search for a solution. Today that changed.



After a profuse amount of sleeping I awoke with an epiphany; teenagers do not care about speeches. Teenagers do not want to sit through a lecture on the stats behind abortion, pregnancy and STI rates. We need to make teenagers care, and what better way to do that than through music.

In the course of one school day we laid the groundwork for a massive benefit concert to support Planned Parenthood involving local groups, guest speakers, and endorsements from big bands.

We sent emails to dozens of main stream groups in order to garner support and soon were giddy with the possibilities.



One of the only bands who did not have an e-mail address with which to contact them was The Raconteurs. (Side note: I love Jack White and everything he touches is made of victory and gold.) Riding on my wave of momentum and ambition I had built up in the past 30 hours I snatched my phone and punched in the numbers given for The Raconteurs manager. In seconds the magic of the digital age sent my voice through the air and I was speaking with the representative of one of my favorite bands about my groups concert idea. She interrupted my mid sentence and said words that made my heart stop. "Here's Jack now, I'll ask him". I sat anxiously as she but me on hold. She answered soon after and said unfortunately Jack was busy until May and wouldn't have time to make even a short endorsement video.

Regardless of the failure, I was ecstatic when she wished my group a heartfelt "good luck". I realized that the people I look up to and myself are only separated by one phone call, and that if I could come so close to my childhood idol anything was possible.

Part 9 ( "In which Ty Ødin finishes two ARG's" ); I have been writing and preparing for "Outbreak: Houston" for two months and finally finished all the physical and metaphysical aspects. With over 30 players and all of April stretching before me, I could not be more excited.

I also finished writing my second ARG, "Hunters of the Paleo-Aristocracy". I can't wait to run it with you all!

Part 10 ( "In which Ty Ødin hand delivers flowers across the gulf of space and finishes this task" ); This completion lacks romance, eh?

I would have made a big show of getting the girl in a dramatic and no doubt St. George-esque way, but I already have her. The best I can do is promise to hand deliver flowers to her, something that is normally not difficult but under the present circumstances is a task that will take a year to achieve. I swear I will, though, and until then there is always the medium of a flower- delivering middleman to get the job done.



My life is rapidly changing and advancing exponentially as each day passes. I have grown in the last 48 hours immensity and will continue to do so well after this Praxis is submitted, task or no task.

Inevitably I will succeed. I just have to keep moving.