The purpose of
this blog is to question and explain one way in which I romanticize something
unconventional. I believe a fair number
of us can relate to this notion, and I would like to hear people share how or
how they do not relate.
Here is mine:
The sweet
sidewalk ahead of my path calls out to my existence in an almost frightening
ringing. I reach out my hands, pampered
with lotions, manicures, anti-bacterial soap, and clean water, in the 21st
century, to those of my ancestral nomads.
I envy their simplicity and their assumed ignorance of such complex
topics as the meaning of life. I am able
to flex my back ankle, extend my leg, and plant heel to toe further than my
poor outstretched arms reach. In this
simple motion that the machine of my body is able to carry out with ease, I
feel connected to my roots. I repeat
this complex act multiple times somewhat unconsciously to get to a
destination. Ah, but in this particular
age, I am able to do so not with the purpose of the end, but with the exciting
benefit of the means. As a participator
in the modern age, I am among millions who enact this motion not to find more
food, more shelter, or to find safety from something that lays behind me; but
for pleasure. We walk around for
pleasure. I can hear the sarcastic
laughs of those 10,000 years before me when I state this notion of present
life. This natural motion that is
necessary for ordinary means of mobilizing oneself in daily circumstances provides
an outlet, or a sanctuary to find some kind of clarity of thought. Each person identifies more with one way or
another of finding this noise-cancelation process; whether it is a coffee shop,
a quiet sitting on one’s 20th story balcony, or a lay down on a
hammock of strings near the ocean side.
My particular way of finding clarity is through this simple, mechanical,
and ancient mode of transportation. This
is exactly why, I theorize, I find the idea of homelessness in today’s society
a romantic lifestyle. Ah, I have reached
the point.
I cannot speak
for everyone’s experience, but I often find myself upset when I see a fellow
man hitch-hiking, usually alongside some highway. I am upset at the notion of a being so
similar to myself to be out of money, a home, food, and the usual comforts of
living in the present age. I am also
upset at the natural inclination to slow my car to a halt right before that
person and to help them out. Perhaps it
is a brainwashed type notion that I am afraid of the dangers that this person
who clearly does not fit inside of
society like the rest of us wants and needs direct intervention from someone as
innocent as me. Perhaps it is that I am
so desensitized to the sight of this slightly ragged clothed and worn down
looking stranger hitchhiking down the road that I don’t even think one option
of my free will at that point would be to slow.
Perhaps it is my sheer instinct of survival to not even take a second
thought to put myself in such a rare percentage of danger. Whatever it is, it is harsh and ironic that
I, myself, nurture such thoughts as to purposefully put myself in that same
situation. My god, why would a person
have such a nasty idea? As I have explained
before, it is simply for the purpose of being able to walk; and not just walk,
but walk for a great distance with no other material concerns.
The act of walking is a simple and very
important explanation for my naïve idealizations, but there is also a concept
to explain. This concept is always on
the tip of my understanding, and yet so far from truly being reached: freedom. I have the privilege of being able to choose
where I want to be in the day, what to eat, and what to say, so I am relatively
free. Yet, sometimes I long to break the
cycle of going to point A, B, or C week after week; I load the groceries and unload
the trash, I am herded off to school and back, and so forth. The homeless are not free from worrying about
their basic needs, but they are free to not think about all of their other
needs. I long to have the freedom to not
call any place home, not label any object as my own. Do you understand yet? There might be something deeply rooted in my
brain that craves that instinctual survival because humans evolved that way,
and if there was anything we did well, it was survive. Over endless years, we came from harvesting
and collecting food ourselves in small traveling groups to forming systems, stabilizing,
agriculture, culture, governing, introducing currency, income, taxes, laws, and
crimes. There is something appealing
about breaking from all of that responsibility, and just going back to the
basics. No, not the efficiency apartment
basics, but the true basics. I
know. This is why they had experimental
communes, and brainwashing, and mass suicides, but, if that had not gone awry I
would have made the same mistake. I dream of true self-sufficiency, of simplicity,
of valid freedom, and of clarity.
Alas, I am a
creature of comfort, and of fear. So, I will
not simply walk off the map. Sadly, I
will not strap on my best pair of shoes and pack off to the west. I will not let myself go. I won’t even break my responsibilities. So, I must find a way to incorporate such
freedoms, romantics, and simplicity into my modernized life. Is it normal to feel I am an anachronism for
the savannah grasslands era? Dear, is anything
normal?
