"Why you build a wall? It's not functional... Why you build a wall?"
Roland speaks as though he's seen a ghost. Its probably been, what, twenty years since the five year old Roland left eastern Berlin with his ailing father and terrified mother. He claims not to remember much, but goes on to say that he remembers because his parents have always talked about it. So perhaps its the ghosts of his parents past sees as he recounts.
Honestly, I don't even know how this conversation started. Roland and his girlfreind Daniela, who have been traveling South and Central America after getting laid off five months ago, showed up to the hostel to buy some ingredients to "make party." Our sincere but mostly superficial conversation had moved from music to travel to employment. Others had joined and left. But now, after last call for the hostel bar and as the other guests are off brainstorming the next place to party, with little warning our conversation turns to escaping communist regimes.
His dad had worked in the mines, and had "worked so hard his heart broke." His country didn't have th e technology to see his heart, and so they didn't know what was wrong. Apparently there was an appeal
process people with illnesses could make to leave the country, and while some people waited twenty years to be given permission Roland's family was lucky.
"After six months, they tell us, "Just go.""
In western Germany they had the medical technology to diagnose the broken muscle in the back of Roland's dad's heart, and treat him best they could. As history would have it, the wall came down four months after Roland's family left.
Roland is leaned against the bamboo laundry drying rack in the middle of the hostel courtyard. He had been clumsily plucking chords on the guitar, but now the intrament hangs loosely in his hands, as even his gruff German rock fails to express his frustrations. His eyes have a distracted glaze, yet are strangely intense, and he scratches a goatish beard. His timeline puts him at twenty five. The creases that strain at his eyes make you guess thirty.
"Communism promises equality. The same for everyone. But it's not... functional." He finishes the phase in Spanish with an tired and ironic smile. He tilts the guitar at Kristen.
"Some of us have beautiful voices and can play the guitar. Some of us work with wood. We can't be equal. We all need different things. We have to go our own way. Communism... its not functional. Even though we got away, it broke my dad's heart. Now he have to take twenty pills a day. Twenty. And they help, but they make him gain weight. More and more weight. There are lots of ways to say it, but I just ask this: Why you build a wall?"
His voice has lost none of the confusion, but now if full of frustration, too, with tones of bitterness and anger. "Why you build a wall in the middle of the land? To keep people from leaving. To keep them from going there own way. We can't make its so everyone is equal, but we can make no borders, take down the walls, and let people go their own way."
Its late, and while there are plenty of reasons to be tired, but Roland looks particularly exhausted. In a look that I still cannot find adequate words to express, he asks his ringing question thats says more than most answers.
"Why you build a wall?"
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Friday, May 15, 2009
Not self help
This is not a self help book.
I'll admit there are some similarities. You might find a flow chart here or a seven step process there. You will probably read some poetry too mediocre to get published as poetry, and instead included here because it makes my point.
But this book differs from self help books in very important ways. First, it was not written by an educated man who is telling you that all he had to do to succeed was to have a good attitude. Thanks for that tip. I had no idea that all well off people needed to do to have success was to get their heads out of their asses. Maybe if the book included a copy of their diploma it would actually make me more effective.
There is no attractive picture on the flap of this book. While I suspect my fiancee actually finds me attractive, my looks have not been known to stop traffic or cure cancer patients. I do not have a finely chiseled chin, my smile does not gleam, and my hair does not do that wavy professional thing. Rather my teeth are a bit worse for wear after a childhood of stunts and my hair looks like an electrical burn victim.
Finally, and most importantly, this book is not trying to convince you that while you may have a problem you have the capacity solve your problem if only you listened to me.
It is for this reason that this is not a self help book.
Rather, this is an other help book.
Even as I write, I am trying to convince you that other people have a problem, lots of problems, actually, and that you are the one capable of solving them. This is not an equation for how to make your life better, but the lives of the people around you better.
The pages leading up to this one are stories of my life, an ongoing account of how I got to these ideas and how they changed me. But to be perfectly honest, I am basically done talking about me. From this point on, there will be a new subject.
You.
It is your life, your choices, and your actions that are now the defining drive behind this writing. See, the idea is pretty basic. I can't save the world alone. I could try my ass off, but even with the most brilliant of plans I am doomed to failure. But that is where you come in. Where WE come in. Solving world problems seems a bit out of reach for a single person. Even a few people. But what if the world tried to solve the world's problems? Seems like there would be just enough help to get it done.
My reason for writing this book: to get you to help me save the world. To that end, we need to change up the style of writing. Before, I was telling stories, stories you constructed imaginatively in order to visualize what had happened. But now your imagination needs to serve a different purpose. You need to imaginatively construct visions of what can happen.
This process involves telling you about problems in the world. It goes on to reflect on how to evaluate and solve them. And I'll be perfectly honest, I rely on some of the very same techniques used by the endless wading pool that is self help literature. Flow charts. Step by step processes. Crappy poetry. I'll never suggest that this book is better written.
But I do contend that this book has a better aim. I am not here to increase your satisfaction by making you be a better you. No, my goal, and I can only hope our goal, is to make a better world.
What could be more satisfying than that?
I'll admit there are some similarities. You might find a flow chart here or a seven step process there. You will probably read some poetry too mediocre to get published as poetry, and instead included here because it makes my point.
But this book differs from self help books in very important ways. First, it was not written by an educated man who is telling you that all he had to do to succeed was to have a good attitude. Thanks for that tip. I had no idea that all well off people needed to do to have success was to get their heads out of their asses. Maybe if the book included a copy of their diploma it would actually make me more effective.
There is no attractive picture on the flap of this book. While I suspect my fiancee actually finds me attractive, my looks have not been known to stop traffic or cure cancer patients. I do not have a finely chiseled chin, my smile does not gleam, and my hair does not do that wavy professional thing. Rather my teeth are a bit worse for wear after a childhood of stunts and my hair looks like an electrical burn victim.
Finally, and most importantly, this book is not trying to convince you that while you may have a problem you have the capacity solve your problem if only you listened to me.
It is for this reason that this is not a self help book.
Rather, this is an other help book.
Even as I write, I am trying to convince you that other people have a problem, lots of problems, actually, and that you are the one capable of solving them. This is not an equation for how to make your life better, but the lives of the people around you better.
The pages leading up to this one are stories of my life, an ongoing account of how I got to these ideas and how they changed me. But to be perfectly honest, I am basically done talking about me. From this point on, there will be a new subject.
You.
It is your life, your choices, and your actions that are now the defining drive behind this writing. See, the idea is pretty basic. I can't save the world alone. I could try my ass off, but even with the most brilliant of plans I am doomed to failure. But that is where you come in. Where WE come in. Solving world problems seems a bit out of reach for a single person. Even a few people. But what if the world tried to solve the world's problems? Seems like there would be just enough help to get it done.
My reason for writing this book: to get you to help me save the world. To that end, we need to change up the style of writing. Before, I was telling stories, stories you constructed imaginatively in order to visualize what had happened. But now your imagination needs to serve a different purpose. You need to imaginatively construct visions of what can happen.
This process involves telling you about problems in the world. It goes on to reflect on how to evaluate and solve them. And I'll be perfectly honest, I rely on some of the very same techniques used by the endless wading pool that is self help literature. Flow charts. Step by step processes. Crappy poetry. I'll never suggest that this book is better written.
But I do contend that this book has a better aim. I am not here to increase your satisfaction by making you be a better you. No, my goal, and I can only hope our goal, is to make a better world.
What could be more satisfying than that?
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Darkness and Fear
Last night I learned the power of darkness and fear. My walk out to the canyon had been nothing out of the ordinary, save for the dying batteries in my headlamp. I suppose after months of use, the three triple A's had finally met their end. Time to pay my electric bill. :)
While it had been a bit surreal setting up camp with so little light, I managed, and once in bed I promptly fell asleep.
In the middle of the night I was awoken by a creature walking across my chest. I startle, it scurries off me, and I fumble for my headlamp. Its pale light does little to illuminate the tent, and I am mostly still asleep, with only fear quickening my otherwise groggy awareness. At the very end of the tent I see the shadowy yet familiar silhouette of a field mouse.
For some reason, it's innocuous form fails to calm me. Having been startled out of my sleep has me in a weird mental place, and the poor lighting makes my tiny tent seem even smaller. The game begins, as I try to get the mouse out of the tent, and he runs like hell because he thinks I am trying to kill him. But I am at a disadvantage. I can't see what his happening, and I'm only half awake and slow. The mouse, on the other hand, is all over. He darts under blankets and around pillows. He even climbs the insect netting up the side of the tent, and at one point scampered up my sweatshirted arm and across my back. His frenzied evasion (and crawling on me) does not improved my addled state.
I am now desperate. My light is dimming by the second as the batteries struggle their last moments of light. The mouse has evaded me. I can't see him. I don't think he has gone, so I move the blankest slowly in the ever fading glow of the headlamp. I move cautiously if clumsily around the tent, trying to find the intruder.
After looking everywhere else, I pull back the camping mattress that in effect covers the entire floor of my one person tent. There, beneath my pad, in a curled and shivering fetal position, lies the dying mouse. In the mayhem, he had apparently sought cover under my mattress, only to be crushed by me in my frantic attempt to oust him from my home. One of his front paws is clasped tightly. The other paw shudders outstretched, almost as if to reach for something in his last moments.
I am flooded with despair. Not knowing what else to do, I pick up his broken body and put it outside the tent in the bush. Sleep came quickly, but not before a shadow passed over my spirit.
I awoke in the morning haunted by the nights experience. The death of my little friend had sunken in during my sleep, and as I hiked out of the canyon a sense of futility started to settle. I had moved into the wild to simplify my life. Intending to consume fewer resources, intending to take less for granted, and intending to ease my strain on the environment. But despite my best intentions, last night I had smashed an innocent creature under my weight.
In the darkness of the fading light and the haze of my goggy fear, I had caused a meaningless death. As the day warms I take off my jacket, and I relive in my mind the scramble with the field mouse.
Darkness and fear.
And suddenly, and in shocking completeness, it comes to me. Of course coexistence starts with desire. A desire to do good. An intention. But even my good intentions can fail to do good if I act in darkness and out of fear. If I want to do great good, or even, the greatest good, I must do more than want good things to happen. I must also seek to illuminate the issue. To see what is happening, so that I know what actually is and where the problems really lie. I must create light.
Similarly, when trying to do this greatest good I must act with faith, and not out of fear. While I had not desired to be violent, I harmed another because I was fearful. Because I did not have peace.
Desire, then is the beginning. The want to do good. But I also need knowledge, the ability to see what is so as to do great good. And finally, I need strength of character. I am perhaps unfinished and unready to perform what will be needed from me. For that I must strengthen my resolve. Wanting good, knowing how to do it, and having composure in the face of hardship. With those three things, I could see neigh impossible goods come to pass, solutions to complex problems and bring resolution in frantic times.
With these, I could do the greatest good.
While it had been a bit surreal setting up camp with so little light, I managed, and once in bed I promptly fell asleep.
In the middle of the night I was awoken by a creature walking across my chest. I startle, it scurries off me, and I fumble for my headlamp. Its pale light does little to illuminate the tent, and I am mostly still asleep, with only fear quickening my otherwise groggy awareness. At the very end of the tent I see the shadowy yet familiar silhouette of a field mouse.
For some reason, it's innocuous form fails to calm me. Having been startled out of my sleep has me in a weird mental place, and the poor lighting makes my tiny tent seem even smaller. The game begins, as I try to get the mouse out of the tent, and he runs like hell because he thinks I am trying to kill him. But I am at a disadvantage. I can't see what his happening, and I'm only half awake and slow. The mouse, on the other hand, is all over. He darts under blankets and around pillows. He even climbs the insect netting up the side of the tent, and at one point scampered up my sweatshirted arm and across my back. His frenzied evasion (and crawling on me) does not improved my addled state.
I am now desperate. My light is dimming by the second as the batteries struggle their last moments of light. The mouse has evaded me. I can't see him. I don't think he has gone, so I move the blankest slowly in the ever fading glow of the headlamp. I move cautiously if clumsily around the tent, trying to find the intruder.
After looking everywhere else, I pull back the camping mattress that in effect covers the entire floor of my one person tent. There, beneath my pad, in a curled and shivering fetal position, lies the dying mouse. In the mayhem, he had apparently sought cover under my mattress, only to be crushed by me in my frantic attempt to oust him from my home. One of his front paws is clasped tightly. The other paw shudders outstretched, almost as if to reach for something in his last moments.
I am flooded with despair. Not knowing what else to do, I pick up his broken body and put it outside the tent in the bush. Sleep came quickly, but not before a shadow passed over my spirit.
I awoke in the morning haunted by the nights experience. The death of my little friend had sunken in during my sleep, and as I hiked out of the canyon a sense of futility started to settle. I had moved into the wild to simplify my life. Intending to consume fewer resources, intending to take less for granted, and intending to ease my strain on the environment. But despite my best intentions, last night I had smashed an innocent creature under my weight.
In the darkness of the fading light and the haze of my goggy fear, I had caused a meaningless death. As the day warms I take off my jacket, and I relive in my mind the scramble with the field mouse.
Darkness and fear.
And suddenly, and in shocking completeness, it comes to me. Of course coexistence starts with desire. A desire to do good. An intention. But even my good intentions can fail to do good if I act in darkness and out of fear. If I want to do great good, or even, the greatest good, I must do more than want good things to happen. I must also seek to illuminate the issue. To see what is happening, so that I know what actually is and where the problems really lie. I must create light.
Similarly, when trying to do this greatest good I must act with faith, and not out of fear. While I had not desired to be violent, I harmed another because I was fearful. Because I did not have peace.
Desire, then is the beginning. The want to do good. But I also need knowledge, the ability to see what is so as to do great good. And finally, I need strength of character. I am perhaps unfinished and unready to perform what will be needed from me. For that I must strengthen my resolve. Wanting good, knowing how to do it, and having composure in the face of hardship. With those three things, I could see neigh impossible goods come to pass, solutions to complex problems and bring resolution in frantic times.
With these, I could do the greatest good.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Monsters
When you are in the outdoors during the day is sounds so magical. The buzz of insects and the rustle of critters makes the whole area come alive.
Nighttime is a different story. While I imagine the actually noises aren't terribly different at night, the way they sound is quite a bit more terrifying.
On one of my first nights out, I discovered, auditorially, the resident monster. Now, its hard to judge the size of something moving through dried leaves. Every creature makes a loud rustle. Each night, I would set up my tent in relative silence, but as soon as I was safely in my tent, the monster would come out.
It would rustle from its home to investigate this tent intruder, crunching leaves as it passed. It took particular interest in my stash box, moving around it and... making a sound I can only describe as snorting, around its base.
Was it some sort of pig? A boar? Perhaps it was a possum or a skunk. Whatever it was, I was somewhat terrified to startle it (particularly if it was a boar or skunk), but I was also curious about what it really was. While there are countless sounds in the night, this one was the most constant, the most curious, and the closest to home.
So I started leaving the bottom of my tent door unzipped, so that when I heard the beast I could fling back the rain fly and shine my headlamp in the direction of the noise. But try as I might, it eluded my surprise peekings. It must be really fast or really stealthy.
This wonder went on for two months, when one night, in what ended up being simultaneously far more terrifying and far less terrifying than I would have imagined. I had been having some trouble falling asleep, and I was laying, staring in the very dull light up at the roof of my tent, when quite suddenly something leapt into my tent.
I jolted into a sitting position, and quickly grasped for my headlamp (though somewhat afraid because whatever it was had gone toward that side of the tent. I manage to find the lamp after a few tenative grabs, and as I click it on I revealed my intruder.
A field mouse.
Of course this creature is stairing at me with horror. He has just jumped into what he considered a shealter, only to find it inhabited by a creature hundreds of times his size. I, not interested in shairng my home with a mouse, tried to shoo him out with my shoe. This does not go well, as he is fast and the lip of the tent is about as tall as him. So he runs from me in every direction, even a few times getting behind me (which freaks me out in my one person tent). I consider just grabbing him and throwing him out, but I don't really want to get bitten and diseased by some mouse. So I continue with the shoe.
Unfortunatly, one of my gentle shoe guidings ends up being more like a kick, and this sends the mouse into a panic. He dives at me, or rather, toward me, and starts burrowing between my sleeping mat and the tent floor, scrambling desperatly for whatever cover he can manage. It is at that moment when I hear it.
The sound. That... snort like sound. It is his little paws as they scrape along plastic. In a rush, I realize that he, the little feild mouse, is my monster. The noise that eluded my identification, rusting the tarp and at the base of the plastic box, not the snuffling of some giant beast, but the scamperings and attempted climbings of a tiny one.
I am now his monster. As he is hidden and finally still, I slowly reach to the tent door, open it completely, and pull in the rain fly so that a clear exit is now in sight. I then pull back the mattress and with my teeth against my lip I make a soft "ffft" sound. The mouse runs toward the exit, stoping at the lip of the tent door.
"Fffft," I say again, and he leaps out of the tent into the night.
I'm struck by the fact that it was the door I left open so I could find out what the creature's idenity was the door it leapt in through.
I'm struck by the fact that forcing the mouse out was far less effective than showing him the way out.
Most of all, I'm struck by the fact that it was my ignorance of reality that caused me to fear that monster mouse.
Nighttime is a different story. While I imagine the actually noises aren't terribly different at night, the way they sound is quite a bit more terrifying.
On one of my first nights out, I discovered, auditorially, the resident monster. Now, its hard to judge the size of something moving through dried leaves. Every creature makes a loud rustle. Each night, I would set up my tent in relative silence, but as soon as I was safely in my tent, the monster would come out.
It would rustle from its home to investigate this tent intruder, crunching leaves as it passed. It took particular interest in my stash box, moving around it and... making a sound I can only describe as snorting, around its base.
Was it some sort of pig? A boar? Perhaps it was a possum or a skunk. Whatever it was, I was somewhat terrified to startle it (particularly if it was a boar or skunk), but I was also curious about what it really was. While there are countless sounds in the night, this one was the most constant, the most curious, and the closest to home.
So I started leaving the bottom of my tent door unzipped, so that when I heard the beast I could fling back the rain fly and shine my headlamp in the direction of the noise. But try as I might, it eluded my surprise peekings. It must be really fast or really stealthy.
This wonder went on for two months, when one night, in what ended up being simultaneously far more terrifying and far less terrifying than I would have imagined. I had been having some trouble falling asleep, and I was laying, staring in the very dull light up at the roof of my tent, when quite suddenly something leapt into my tent.
I jolted into a sitting position, and quickly grasped for my headlamp (though somewhat afraid because whatever it was had gone toward that side of the tent. I manage to find the lamp after a few tenative grabs, and as I click it on I revealed my intruder.
A field mouse.
Of course this creature is stairing at me with horror. He has just jumped into what he considered a shealter, only to find it inhabited by a creature hundreds of times his size. I, not interested in shairng my home with a mouse, tried to shoo him out with my shoe. This does not go well, as he is fast and the lip of the tent is about as tall as him. So he runs from me in every direction, even a few times getting behind me (which freaks me out in my one person tent). I consider just grabbing him and throwing him out, but I don't really want to get bitten and diseased by some mouse. So I continue with the shoe.
Unfortunatly, one of my gentle shoe guidings ends up being more like a kick, and this sends the mouse into a panic. He dives at me, or rather, toward me, and starts burrowing between my sleeping mat and the tent floor, scrambling desperatly for whatever cover he can manage. It is at that moment when I hear it.
The sound. That... snort like sound. It is his little paws as they scrape along plastic. In a rush, I realize that he, the little feild mouse, is my monster. The noise that eluded my identification, rusting the tarp and at the base of the plastic box, not the snuffling of some giant beast, but the scamperings and attempted climbings of a tiny one.
I am now his monster. As he is hidden and finally still, I slowly reach to the tent door, open it completely, and pull in the rain fly so that a clear exit is now in sight. I then pull back the mattress and with my teeth against my lip I make a soft "ffft" sound. The mouse runs toward the exit, stoping at the lip of the tent door.
"Fffft," I say again, and he leaps out of the tent into the night.
I'm struck by the fact that it was the door I left open so I could find out what the creature's idenity was the door it leapt in through.
I'm struck by the fact that forcing the mouse out was far less effective than showing him the way out.
Most of all, I'm struck by the fact that it was my ignorance of reality that caused me to fear that monster mouse.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Means and Ends
In discussions of moral philosophy, the notion of means manage to work their way into many discussions.
A hot debate, for instance, is whether or not the ends justify the means. (They don't, by the way.) Another example is that it is wrong to consider another person as a mere means to your own ends, and rather should be treated as an end unto themselves.
I'm going to raise the bar. While pursuing the greatest good, there is no action that is merely a means to another end.
This may at first sound quite queer. Of course there are means. A means is no more than a method, a path way, a step (or many steps) between intention and completion. Without means at all... why then, how could be act strategically at all?
It is not my intention to be rid of step by step processes or rational action. Far from it. One of the ways all good will come to pass is by very strategic action on our part and it will be part of a very long process. Rather, I encourage you to not see any of your actions as simply a means. Each action, in that it is an expression of a moment of now (which is the present culmination of being) is in itself an end. At every moment, even if that action is also in service of another end, is an end unto itself.
I encourage you to see your actions in this way by adopting behavioral ends, which is to say, to see your behavior as something that is a thing of value, and that a particular action is worth striving for.
Lets take a practical scenario. Sure, you drive your car to work... so that you can get to work. But the driving of your car should also be an expression of what you want the world to be. This means that you use your car to communicate respect to the people around you, that you would drive a car (and in such a way) to reduce your environmental impact, and that should driving the car become something other than what you wanted your behavioral end to be... you would stop and seek another means that would better manifest your goodness.
No action is below having significance, and no moment here on earth need be wasted solely for the sake of another.
A hot debate, for instance, is whether or not the ends justify the means. (They don't, by the way.) Another example is that it is wrong to consider another person as a mere means to your own ends, and rather should be treated as an end unto themselves.
I'm going to raise the bar. While pursuing the greatest good, there is no action that is merely a means to another end.
This may at first sound quite queer. Of course there are means. A means is no more than a method, a path way, a step (or many steps) between intention and completion. Without means at all... why then, how could be act strategically at all?
It is not my intention to be rid of step by step processes or rational action. Far from it. One of the ways all good will come to pass is by very strategic action on our part and it will be part of a very long process. Rather, I encourage you to not see any of your actions as simply a means. Each action, in that it is an expression of a moment of now (which is the present culmination of being) is in itself an end. At every moment, even if that action is also in service of another end, is an end unto itself.
I encourage you to see your actions in this way by adopting behavioral ends, which is to say, to see your behavior as something that is a thing of value, and that a particular action is worth striving for.
Lets take a practical scenario. Sure, you drive your car to work... so that you can get to work. But the driving of your car should also be an expression of what you want the world to be. This means that you use your car to communicate respect to the people around you, that you would drive a car (and in such a way) to reduce your environmental impact, and that should driving the car become something other than what you wanted your behavioral end to be... you would stop and seek another means that would better manifest your goodness.
No action is below having significance, and no moment here on earth need be wasted solely for the sake of another.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Waking Up
Gotta tell you, it's a lot harder to get up with little sleep when I'm out in the wild. I'm not sure why.
Wait, I fucking know why. Its because there's some much damn work involved. Sure, getting up takes some work even when you have a house, but the tasks that await you tend to be refreshing (like showering and eating).
But out there, getting up entails packing dismantling my tent, packing my stuff away, and hiking out of the canyon. Doing all that seems really appealing on four hours of sleep.
Wait, I fucking know why. Its because there's some much damn work involved. Sure, getting up takes some work even when you have a house, but the tasks that await you tend to be refreshing (like showering and eating).
But out there, getting up entails packing dismantling my tent, packing my stuff away, and hiking out of the canyon. Doing all that seems really appealing on four hours of sleep.
Introduction
I am homeless.
Hopefully I won’t be by the time you are reading this. If by chance this work goes to press (a process not known for its alacrity), something will have gone terribly amiss if I am still out a place.
Its not that I’m poor. In fact, I have two very nice jobs (one of them even gives me health insurance). Rather, I chose to be homeless… to live for a time below my means. I had a perfectly fine apartment, and while it was by far the most I had ever spent on housing, between my two nice jobs I made all the money work. In this, I was not driven by my bank account.
No, my decision to eschew the trappings of civilization was motivated by a different sort of accounting. Part of my aim by writing for you now is to make sense of how that intentional vagrancy came to pass. I imagine that trying to explain it to you will help me understand better as well.
The second purpose of this writing is as an articulation of my thinking while I am homeless. While all experience educates, I can confidently say that becoming homeless has been one my life’s most vivid teachers. These nights in the darkness of the wild have illuminated life as I knew it.
I suppose that’s the other important bit. My homeless condition is lived out in a somewhat unconventional setting. Do not picture my possessions stored in a hijacked grocery cart, or my bed in a cranny beneath an overpass. Imagine instead my car packed with essentials, and my nightly refuge as a tent tucked away in the wilderness.
I consider my naturalistic homelessness only somewhat unconventional because there is actually some precedence for such a lifestyle. While it isn’t the vision of modern vagrancy (many homeless are also in poverty, and they rely on the chaff and charity of the more fortunate to survive), humanity has a long history of nature-seeking asceticism.
Thoreau had a little cabin near Walden Pond.
Siddhartha had a bowl for rice and a Boddhi tree.
I have a one-man tent I pitch nightly in a little canyon on the northern tip of the Los Angeles basin, and for my part I am both participant in and observe the goings on of that sprawling mass of humanity. Each night after I hike down into the canyon proper, past the ranger station and picnic benches, and I enter the wild by crossing the stream that runs out of the mountains by hopping from rock to rock.
And each night, when I have safely crossed to the other side, I turn back and regard the world I have left. I’m close enough that I can still see the persistent glow of the city, but far enough that above it all I can still see the movement of the stars.
Hopefully I won’t be by the time you are reading this. If by chance this work goes to press (a process not known for its alacrity), something will have gone terribly amiss if I am still out a place.
Its not that I’m poor. In fact, I have two very nice jobs (one of them even gives me health insurance). Rather, I chose to be homeless… to live for a time below my means. I had a perfectly fine apartment, and while it was by far the most I had ever spent on housing, between my two nice jobs I made all the money work. In this, I was not driven by my bank account.
No, my decision to eschew the trappings of civilization was motivated by a different sort of accounting. Part of my aim by writing for you now is to make sense of how that intentional vagrancy came to pass. I imagine that trying to explain it to you will help me understand better as well.
The second purpose of this writing is as an articulation of my thinking while I am homeless. While all experience educates, I can confidently say that becoming homeless has been one my life’s most vivid teachers. These nights in the darkness of the wild have illuminated life as I knew it.
I suppose that’s the other important bit. My homeless condition is lived out in a somewhat unconventional setting. Do not picture my possessions stored in a hijacked grocery cart, or my bed in a cranny beneath an overpass. Imagine instead my car packed with essentials, and my nightly refuge as a tent tucked away in the wilderness.
I consider my naturalistic homelessness only somewhat unconventional because there is actually some precedence for such a lifestyle. While it isn’t the vision of modern vagrancy (many homeless are also in poverty, and they rely on the chaff and charity of the more fortunate to survive), humanity has a long history of nature-seeking asceticism.
Thoreau had a little cabin near Walden Pond.
Siddhartha had a bowl for rice and a Boddhi tree.
I have a one-man tent I pitch nightly in a little canyon on the northern tip of the Los Angeles basin, and for my part I am both participant in and observe the goings on of that sprawling mass of humanity. Each night after I hike down into the canyon proper, past the ranger station and picnic benches, and I enter the wild by crossing the stream that runs out of the mountains by hopping from rock to rock.
And each night, when I have safely crossed to the other side, I turn back and regard the world I have left. I’m close enough that I can still see the persistent glow of the city, but far enough that above it all I can still see the movement of the stars.
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