Home?

Home?
maybe I don't need a home.
maybe the whole world is my home.
the greener grasses of hope ought to be the impetus of movement..
the more you know your own position the less you can know your velocity.
the more you know your velocity the less you can know your position.
what the hell does that mean?
i'm uncertain, but it doesn't matter.
what matters is hope, a desire.
the buddhists have got it wrong.
desire is not the cause of all suffering it's the cause of life's migration toward something better
better?
different
something more creative.
each individual is his or her or its own God
a creator
a creator of his own life his own surroundings.
we are not slaves to our past or to our genes
or for that matter we are not slaves to the future to what we think is so liable to happen.
now is the only time we have to make things good and right for ourselves
and here is connected to everywhere and thats where i want to be...everywhere.
What will you eat where will you sleep and then there's the little matter of money?
I'll eat what I can when I feel hungry and if there is nothing available i'll go without people eat too much anyway. When I get tired i'll find a quiet place where i can sleep as far as money goes I'll sell everything I own and go from there.
Imagine no possessions?
No just the least amount necessary for one's happiness.
And if i need money beyond that, which i'm sure i probably will, i'll work at odd jobs here and there to make enough money to move on. You know like washing dishes if i have to or waiting tables or building the odd chapel for a group of nuns here and there
so thats it then you're really gonna do this?
Why not life as far as we know only comes around once and even if it comes around more than that we might as well make the most of it each time while at the same time causing the least amount of harm to all those other beings who are trying to do the same as you
the same as you...which is?
Locating their fair advantage, you know
trying to find their place their niche their happiness i suppose.
You could get awfully dirty
maybe but there's campgrounds around where i could shower every now and again
what about your clothes?
What about 'em. I don't need much. a few shirts some underwear, socks a couple pairs of pants a pair of shorts there's places i can do laundry, it'll be fine.
Why now or why at all?
I'm sick and getting sicker
from what?
Not necessarily from, although that certainly is an interesting question, but it's more of...
of the noise of the smells of man made decay
and yes it is actually making me and you and everyone physically as well as psychologically sick.
You can't go outside for more than two minutes on any given day in this city or any city for that matter and not be bombarded with car exhaust, hissing tires, roaring engines or all assortments of man's destructive machines. Bombarded with mans hatred of all things wild and untamed and his insatiable lust for control over living beings, for dominance over all other animals and plants that try to get a foothold in any available crevice he has left untouched or neglected to fill in with poison or cement. This creation man is evil and if God has any kind of conscience He must surely grieve over this piece of work called mankind. Man kind?
Hardly.
So are you travelling toward some place in particular where this pollution does not exist or just away from where it does?
Perhaps both. I'm not saying I'll wander forever but for however long i bounce i just want to bounce into a place where i'm surrounded by things, people, an environment a little less thoughtless and cruel.
But didn't you just say man is inherently evil or words to that effect?
Yea...but perhaps he doesn't have to be
so if he doesn't have to be why not change your present environment by attempting to enlighten those around you of a better way to live with one another?
I've tried but either no one listens and thinks of me as some kind of flake or I just end up yelling either to them but mostly alone out of earshot about what ignorant assholes they are. No... i'm not the world's savior or even my community's redeemer. I'm no teacher or guide or even role model for that matter.
I'm tired of trying to change my current surroundings to suit me, so i'm going...
Wait I thought you said that each individual was a creator of his own life his own surroundings?
Sure, he is, he can change those things in his environment to suit him or he can change his life by doing what I plan to do, to see if i can find some other surroundings where i can feel and be more at ease with the world
and turn your back on suffering and leave behind a mess for others to worry about?
I can't be held responsible for this shit city i was born into and i sure as fuck can't be held responsible for trying to change it
i'm not saying you alone but jesus christ if you feel so strongly that what is going on around you is wrong and harmful don't you have some kind of obligation to at least try to stop it. I mean if you saw a group of bullies beating up a child wouldn't you intervene or at least notify others so they could put an end to it?
If i saw a group of bullies beating up a child then yes certainly i would try to stop them somehow but when you have hundreds of thousands of bullies beating up your local living world one tends to become a little overwhelmed and just wants to go somewhere where he can find like minded people who see the wrongness of it...so in that respect perhaps i am getting help by joining these like minded people wherever they may be to let them know how it is in the area i came from
and together we can find ways to prevent these bullies from doing what bullies do best which is taking advantage of others for their own personal gain without regard for the others' interests.
So your leaving is strictly for altruistic rather than egoistic reasons?
I care for the happiness of myself and for other beings as well so i guess i'm an egoistic altruist.
look, the bottom line is, i've lived here all my life and now i want there, wherever there is, to be here and tomorrow to be now until the day i die and quite frankly I would rather die in the wilderness than serve my master.
your master?
my master, your master, everyone's master. the economy, ownership, culture, tradition, God, the state...shall I go on?
and being on the road will rid you of your masters clutch?
perhaps it may lessen his hold
so it's freedom your after?
more an avoidance of control or rather a hearty hiyo fuck you to all those people and things, all those mental hang ups that prevent me from doing what i ought to do with this precious gift of life.
what kind of hang ups?
I don't know, you know like go to school or get a job, a career, survival of the fittest, be greedy, or fear
fear?
yea fear
of what?
fear of death or worse of pain, of poverty, of looking weird of not being liked...I'm tired of being afraid.I mean I suppose a certain amount of fear or caution is necessary for any risky action but when it becomes crippling and prevents you from taking action then it's time to snap out of your comfortable funk, which more often than not is quite an uncomfortable funk, and become alive for Christ's sake you know. I mean Jesus all life is chance or at least taking a chance, where would we be now if Darwin never took a chance and sailed on the Beagle around the globe to solidify his theory of common descent, or if Martin Luther King never took a risk and stood up for civil rights or going back further if the first mitochondria or chloroplast never had a symbiotic relationship with some prokaryotic cell. Life involves risk and anytime fear of looking stupid prevents you from achieving your dream you have just destroyed another potential flowering of a beautiful existence.
so is this trip you're Beagle?
this trip is more than a trip and this journey is not simply an exploration, its an experience.
and the experience begins now.
well I hope you find or lose what you seek or have..or something like that.
this shell is already cracking, the skin is shedding now let's forget the way it's supposed to be and begin to learn anew...like a child enamoured by his senses and soaking up his world for the first time. Hey, why don't you come with me?
yea right.
why not
responsibilities you know.
toward who.. toward what
my job, my family, myself.
hey look man, I don't want to force you into doing anything you really don't want to do but in a couple of weeks after i sell all my shit i'm hittin the open road baby and I 'aint lookin' back and I'd like you to come with me...so, you know, just think about it okay?
ha, yea sure.
so anyway, I put an ad in this week's paper for a garage sale, actually more of an apartment sale, and put up a bunch of messages and so forth around town, so starting tomorrow all my furniture, cd's, dishes everything it's going
what about all your books?
those too, gone except for three
okay I'll bite...which three?
In defense of animals, because it's the reason I became a vegan and it holds a special place for me, Shelley's prose and rounding it out the Electric kool-aid acid test just because I'm reading that now and I want to see what happens.
ahhh the Merry Pranksters.
that's right Radar
I didn't say ahhh Bach
hee hee hee well I gotta split, so listen I shall give you a dingle tomorrow after my FINAL DAY OF WORK and we'll go out for a bite to eat, alright?
yea you bet, sounds good.
Alright talk to you later man bye bye
bye

(I overheard this conversation like I have all his conversations with himself and with others ever since he came into this world some forty odd years ago. What made this chatter unique was it was one of the few times in recent memory he actually meant what he said and collected his remaining neurons in a compact arrangement, utilizing them to their fullest capacity and logically and wholly with complete devotion to principle began an experiment in destiny, which would not alter his life in any way given he has no free will or any real choices given the laws of physics and biology, but it would reveal a dimension to his cowardly being which previously was lacking up to this point.and which he was entirely unaware of. Who am I? Who is he? Right now these questions are not as important as what will happen in the next few weeks to his and my unutterably tedious existence. This is merely the introduction to his and my real beginning. His friend was too deeply wrecked by his own incorporation to be able to muster the energy of now, to create his own life and join him so our hero, ahem, chose to go it alone and it's a good thing he did for that was all he could do. Our story picks up as he crosses the border into Montana from Alberta in a 1969 VW van at the port of Peigan. Little does he realize
he has forgotten one extremely important item back home in Edmonton which as it turned out was quite a stroke of fate because it did in fact save his life as we shall presently see)

Good afternoon sir, could I please see some identification
Certainly, I'll just give you my drivers license
(as he unzipped the side pocket of his favorite pair of cargo shorts and removed his wallet a most peculiar notion occurred to him, wouldn't it be funny, he thought, if instead of giving him my drivers license I reached into my pocket and then upon taking my hand out I gave him the finger. While he was pondering this he mistakenly gave the border guard his novelty Osama Bin Laden drivers license)
sir this is not a valid drivers license. could you please pull around to the front of the building into stall number five.
oh wait sorry uhh here is my...
(but not only did he not have his real drivers license with him [being so pumped about leaving he had both the novelty DL and the real one on the table and given the remarkable similarity between the two he grabbed the wrong one in his haste] which he doesn't realize yet, he also has in his wallet a curious little item which the authorities might find extremely interesting to say the least. He pulls into stall five and exiting the van
he opens his wallet to try to locate his actual DL when lo and behold he discovers a joke application form for an al qaeda Edmonton chapter terrorist cell which his friend planted in his wallet in his jacket on the day they went out for a bite to eat when our protagonist got up to go to the washroom)
what the fuck (he loudly whispers in pants shitting amazement)
(he quickly tries to stick the form in his pocket when off in the distance he sees a semi-trailer racing out of control on the Montana side of the border smashing two cars waiting in line to cross into Canada. The semi-trailer is carrying a highly radioactive and extremely flammable or perhaps inflammable substance. A huge explosion occurs throwing our hero a fair distance away, I would say about maybe 100 feet or so, and he lands in a field of rye which is infected with ergot. Had he had his real DL with him the border guard would have let him through and the semi-trailer would have struck his van killing him instantly. Instead our hero's life has been spared although he is now a paraplegic, and because of the ergot rye which he ingested as he was laying face down in the field, he is also viewing the world in a most fragmented form which coincidentally is also the form in which I see it. Who am I you ask again? I am your FUCKING destiny freak!