How one deals with the gravity of life’s situations can say a lot about the character of that person. This one has been struggling with all that has been happening over the past several months. Sometimes, the struggle has been to stay optimistic while, at other times, the struggle has been my own apathy. I want to be pissed-off, angry…I want to be upset, to cry…I want to feel my dignity again. The trouble is that I have not been able to feel anything with any sort of intensity. Nothing so intense, anyway as to give me a signal that I’m alive. It’s as if I am a spectator of my own life. Pathetic!
By all accounts the summer has been fun. Hanging out with friends, going to baseball games, the beach, the drive-in, wine tasting…all suitable distractions to the inevitable fact that I am out of work, have no health insurance and am almost out of money. My nights have been filled with “working” dreams and my days have been filled with “what if” dreams. I relish going back to work and feeling as though I have something to contribute to the world but the longer that takes the more plausible the life of an outlaw is becoming. I just keep moving forward one day at a time from one distraction to another.
As summer begins to wane, circumstances have dictated time away from my temporary shelter, forcing me to consider options. At first I was a little unsettled to have to pick up from a situation that can best be described as a state of limbo but then considered that this could be a great personal opportunity for me. Besides being weighted down by my own problems, I seemed to also be embracing everything else that was happening in the world…the BP oil spill, an incredible economic crisis, masses of people losing their jobs and their homes, asshole politicians playing their usual games, fear mongers spreading their lies. After celebrating the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina by replaying the insanity of events that took place over and over on cable programming, I was beginning to really feel the culture of misery that has overtaken this country. No wonder why people go out and just start shooting the place up.
Having not fully developed my own plan of outlaw heraldry and not really feeling the whole gun thing (I still think guns are for pussies), I decided to go west. Why…because that was the opposite direction of the familiar. It was the direction of my own American exile. I would head off into the countryside, avoiding the interstates and really try to see what really makes America great…the land contained within it borders. My goal will not only be distraction but a journey of my own feelings and emotions to see if I can find some vibrancy and return to my former intensity.
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