Diary of an Unemployed Wanderer, Part 8

September 30, 2012

I’m squatting in an abandoned building.

I’m stealing internet from the apartment complex next door.

I’m squandering what little power there is in this building for a blog post that probably isn’t being read by anybody.

…that’s a lot of ‘s’ words.  S has this sort of sound that just sounds sinister.  We use the s sound all the time.  And most of the time it gives a sort of evil…sly connotation.  Smack, slither, smoke, it just rolls off the tongue in a sort of onomatopoetic manner.  And now I’m thinking about onomatopoeia.

I’m an English teacher, and I’m in the middle of nowhere, southern style.  My books, god my books, are probably being ignored in some evidence locker.  If there are people interested in finding me since I fled town…well, I’d like to thank you if you’re reading this blog.  You’re quite likely the only people doing so.  All I’m doing right now is writing words.

Writing words.  Again, the sound of ‘w’.  We never think about the sound of our words.  They were invented, something we so commonly forget.  But down the line somebody saw a man scratching out lines in the sand and called it writing, because it sounded correct.  And it did, it does.  As human beings have evolved…not just by millennia, but by years, days, even hours…we have made decisions that create new words, eliminate others.  These are ideas in action, and I am missing it all because I am not in the classroom.

Damn it all, I’m not in the classroom.  I don’t deserve to be, no one deserves to be in the classroom.  I don’t know of anyone that deserves to walk into a room and declare themselves to be an authority on anything other than what they did within the last five minutes.  But teachers are able to circumvent this, and start thinking about not being authority figures, and instead be facilitators of learning.  I wish I was a facilitator of learning.  Right now I’m just a facilitator of internet comments and the story of “guess which homeless guy I met today”.

Teaching is a full-time job, and one of the most rewarding out there.  For those of you who are still reading this, I apologize for disgracing the profession.  Hopefully you can make it better.

Thanks for listening.

Diary of an Unemployed Wanderer, Part 7

September 24, 2012

A day late and a dollar short.

That’s not completely true.  I’ve got dollars, tons of them actually.  I’m more a day late and…well, a house short.  Yesterday kind of sucked.

Couldn’t fly because of rain.  I need to invest in some rainwear, and then just pack myself down in clothing to prevent a chill.  Of course, that would go into my food fund, and that’s already starting to show a ‘healthy’ dip.  One benefit of having an actual house…having an actual stove.  I just spent tonight just trying to get a fire going, the natural way.  Sticks, stones and prayers, that’s all the natural way is.  Stole some gasoline and a match, kicked the natural way’s ass all the way up the column of flame that shot out.

Don’t get me wrong, I love nature.  If I didn’t, wandering around would be terrible.  But I like the trees, and the nice chill that comes in at dark.  I’m so glad when I cut out that I decided to grab all my warm clothes and some undershirts more for just…well, because.  And it’s getting colder, I can definitely feel it.  I now know why birds fly south for the winter.  I knew it was so they don’t freeze their tail-feathers off, but not having the guarantee of a bed, you understand it a lot more.  Especially after last night.

Last night was cold.  And wet.  And thunderstorm-y.  type of thunderstorm where I found myself a cave in the Appalachians a few hundred yards up a sheer cliff face and just hid there.  I wasn’t getting out, and I had no intent to try my luck against fate.  I just sat there and relaxed.  While freezing.  Relaxing and freezing really don’t go hand in hand.

 Storm broke at about ten this morning, and I had had enough.  Packed my wet clothes, pointed my way south and just kept going till I found heat and people.  God do I love heat and people.  Right now I’m at a truck stop (with an internet café…please don’t ask, I’m not entirely sure myself).  I can tell you right now, have fun with nature.  Be out there in the woods, and just let go of restraint.  But hang onto your cell phone and your car keys.

As for me, while last night sucked, I’m betting this week will turn around.  I honestly do think…

A biker gang walked in.  Wonder if I could beat them in a race?

Does Decorum Mean Anything Anymore?

Attack ads.  Smear campaigns.  Snide remarks.  They are so much fun.

Admit it, you love when someone makes the one up remark.  I’m not afraid to say that I love it.  It’s the witty comeback, the retort that comes in at a second’s notice that puts your opponent on his respective ass.  When you are in a conflict, sometimes the best way to play defense, is to play offense.  And that’s how politics are played.

But does a conflict have to be cheap?  I’m from Massachusetts, and was watching the senatorial debate last night.  I am a full blue-blooded liberal and didn’t expect to be swayed away from Elizabeth Warren’s campaign ideas, but I wanted to see a healthy debate.  I wanted to see the good retorts, the fantastic stats that would be used against one another to help prove the points.  I wanted some animation.  What I found was depressing.

Senator Scott Brown had the beginning remarks, and a question: what does he think about his opponent’s character?  Senator Brown first thanked the station and the debate for allowing this opportunity, and then proceeded to demand that Elizabeth Warren release her personnel files on herself.  Apparently, Elizabeth Warren has been marking herself down as a Native American, and been taking advantage of affirmative action in order to get better jobs.  And, in the Senator’s words, “As I can see, you are not a person of color.”

I had my retorts.  I was screaming my retorts, I was absolutely furious.  We’ll give you her personnel files when you give us Romney’s tax returns!  I wanted to shout that to the highest heavens (instead I posted it on the internet).  But no, Elizabeth Warren didn’t use a snappy comeback, nothing to turn the comment on its head.  She calmly replied that her mother was part Cherokee, and it is a heritage she is proud of.  She will not be releasing the files, for the privacy of other individuals that are a part of her life that wish to maintain their privacy.

I thought this was weak at first.  I’m just sitting there watch this woman get called out again and again, four separate instances where Senator Brown demanded to see her files, and just calmly reply no.  And I realized I’m a part of the problem.  I love the drama, I love the fast and loose politics seen on the talk shows.  I wanted that debate to be two degrees removed from a rendition of Fight Club.  What I got instead was a debate.  Candidates who were not going for glamour, but substance.  Repeating themselves not just to have themselves be heard, but to make sure the message was out there.

Do we want decorum in our debates again?  It’s not exciting, it’s not edgy, but it’s policy.  It gets things done and decorum is above all else respectful.  It is going up to your hated enemy across the aisle and saying I hate you and everything you stand for, but we have a country to build so let’s get to work.  Isn’t that how we want our government to be run?

Diary of an Unemployed Wanderer, Part 6

September 16, 2012

I don’t know where I am.

I guess that happens when I’ve been wandering for a week.  And yes, I mean wandering.  No car, no phone, nothing to give an indication besides license plates that I keep passing.  I think I’ve been heading west since I’m always facing the sun at sunset, but other than that, everything I know from wilderness survival could be read in Hatchet.  I am well and truly lost.

It’s actually kind of reassuring, satisfying even.  I’m alone, completely, and yet I’m not too worried about what’s going to happen.  I’ve been passing through a couple orchards, working for a meal here and there…and yes, lifting a few apples when I could get away with it.  I’ve slept in barns, in trees, I’ve even slept in a shelter when the night dropped below freezing.  I’ve changed clothes twice this week, and my showering has been a stream last Thursday.  I should be miserable, but I’m not.  I guess I’m a bit insane, just enjoying the solitude.

I met a farmer this past week, just off the highway.  I hadn’t seen anyone yet that day (been testing out flying, and the trees are the best way to avoid people), so I landed in her wheat field.  Yes, farmers can be women too.  She glanced at me as I walked up to her, and I could tell that she wasn’t expecting to meet anyone today either.

“You lost?”

“Yeah.”

She threw a pair of gloves to me, pointed out a weed and told me to get to work.  I’ve never weeded before, and she smacked me a few times before I started getting the difference between a weed and wheat.  It was dark before we headed into her house…house.  It was a kitchen, a bedroom and an outhouse.  Houses these days have less lawn than brick.  Hers didn’t qualify.

We had dinner together.  She made the bread herself.  Who does that?

Right now I’m typing this out on her laptop computer (no bathroom, but wifi…America).  There’s a bundle of blankets on an air mattress, and I’m getting a pillow that’s probably older than me.  Last month I was set for making fifty thousand this year.  I had my own car, my own house, and now I have two changes of clothes.  So why am I happier now then I was back then?

I’ve lost everything, and that is truly liberating.  I don’t need to worry about what my reputation is.  I don’t have one anymore.  I don’t have a job, so no need to get up in the morning.  And above all that, I’ve got nothing to tie me down.  If anyone ever finds out about my flying, I’m gone.  I’ll be across state lines before the cops or men in black can ever find me.  I’m well and truly free.

Yay.

You get what you need?

            Every single person will fail.

Spectacularly.  Unequivocally, in a manner that will redefine the word failure.  That is one of mankind’s greatest achievements.  No matter what, our failures will be our own.

I’ve just graduated college.  I’m looking out onto the world with the hopes of continuing my writing in a manner of ways.  Hopefully professionally, and even more hopefully widely read/experienced/enjoyed.  And of course I’m hoping to lead a full life.  I want to backpack through the Appalachian trail, maybe even on horseback.  I want to see my Steelers win a seventh Super Bowl (hopefully in person on the fifty yard-line, but I’ll settle for an endzone seat).  Heck, I maybe even want to get married and have kids.

But weirdly enough, I also want to experience the sorrows of this world just as much.  I want to get my heart broken, if only to know that it was given to someone else.  I want to feel the loss that others feel, so I can be there for them.  And most importantly, I do in fact want to fail.  As myself, on my own terms, I want to fail.

I want my writing to be labeled in as many four-letter words as are onomatopoetically possible.  I want my first five chances at a relationship spin widely out of control to the point where both of us are running out the door.  I even want to get pelted with rotten fruit once or twice (hasn’t been rotten yet, but I’m working on it).

The reason I want these things is so I can grow.  I am looking out on a blank slate that is my future, and I know that only I can truly and irrevocably screw it up.  But it is also only me that can make it a life for the ages.  Maybe my writing isn’t as widely reviewed as I want it to be, but it could start having an effect on people’s lives.  Thirty years after I’m dead, maybe someone will pull up this site and think ‘who is this guy, and why does he sound like my life?’  that would probably be the coolest thing ever, and I’d roll over in my grave and shout ‘repeat that again, I wasn’t paying attention.’

Live, laugh, love.  For me, writing is a part of that, and failure is all four.  Experience the highs of this life, people, and laugh at your woes.  If nothing else, they are truly yours.  If only because no one else wants them.

Stay strange, folks

“You can’t always get what you want…but if you try sometimes, you find, you get what you need.”

-          Mick Jagger, modern day philosopher

Diary of an Unemployed Wanderer, part 5

September 9, 2012

I’m not in jail.

I’m not at home, but I’m not in jail.  It’s a weird series of emotions that I’m in right now.  On the one hand, I’m torn from…everything.  I am gone from my house, the people I knew, the food that I felt so familiar with.  In that sense I’m bereft.  But at the same time, I’m actually accepting some of it.  I’m not in jail awaiting a trial I know I’d surely lose.  I’m not being hounded by a mob of reporters anymore, with my face plastered on the six o’clock news.  Best of all, I’m alive.  And I wasn’t so sure of that last week.

I did try to rob that bank.  I thought I had it all planned out.  During the day, it’s amazing how many people go up on a roof to smoke.  They don’t look around the roof, they don’t try to spot anything unusual, just need a dose of nicotine, and then it’s a piece of gum and leave.  I just had to make sure the door didn’t close, and put some tape on the lock.  Went back, all dressed in black, and ready to make some money.  Or steal it, I don’t know what the phrase is…

Anyway, I’m getting ready, all set up to walk in, when I hear this screeching noise.  It’s tires, and I turn around to see this minivan start screaming down the street.  I know, my first thought was that I finally saw a minivan go over 55, but it’s…it’s…it wasn’t right.  The van was fishtailing, driving all over the place, and oh, my, God…someone’s driving a minivan wasted.  Again, another first for me.

I step to the edge of the roof, hoping to get a good look, and I see this father just slamming down a bottle of liquor.  I mean, all windows are down, I’m pretty sure if I were on the street I could smell the Russian oozing out of him.  And that’s fine by me.  you know, whatever man, you want to get drunk and drive, just don’t do it around my house.  Or what used to be my house.  I’ll read about you in the arrest reports later.

He starts going past me as I’m turning and all of a sudden I hear another scream.  Another quick look, and he’s got, you know, a child in there.  Backseat, and the only smart thing this bastard has done was put his little toddler in a kid seat and strapped her in.  and he’s getting faster.

I’m not a superhero, so get that out of your mind.  I’m not planning on donning tights and a cape and zooming around the night sky stopping robberies.  That’s a great way for me to get shot.  And I was about to commit a robbery so I could, you know, sympathize.  But there’s some innate human-ness…thing, that won’t just let a child get hurt.  There’s something about the scream of a child that turns a bastard into a saint.  I jump off the roof and I’m soaring after that minivan.  Slide up alongside the car, undo the child safety belt, and grab her right out of the car.  The guy was so drunk he didn’t even see me.

I walked her over to the nearest police station, and gave the plates.  Best thing I did was tell them if he got shot, he was probably so drunk he’d laugh.  I hope he finds some nice people in prison.

And then I robbed the bank.  Took about fifty thousand dollars, and just left.  I have a couple days’ worth of clothes and the money in a duffel bag.  I’m at an internet café, and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

Do those actions cancel each other out?  I mean, it’s a big bank, they have insurance, they’ll be covered, right?  On the other hand, what did that little kid have?  The hope that plastic would hold up to a crash at sixty miles an hour plus.  I think the balance there is a little in my favor.

I’m going to walk around for awhile.  Maybe find the odd job, maybe just try and get my head straight on what happened last month.  All I know is, I’m different.  And that’s okay.

Cooperation isn't Surrender

“I have learned two things from politics…nobody is right all the time, and a broken clock is right twice a day.”  Bill Clinton at the Democratic National Convention spelled out the foundation for politics, and the reason it is so fractured right now.  As the Presidential Election comes closer and closer, I am struck more and more by the politics of hate.

I go on tirades, and I say terrible things.  I look at political pundits who I believe in my heart are lying through their teeth, and the first words out of my mouth are “You’re not allowed to do that.”  but again and again I find ladies and gentlemen from either parties say things that are untrue, can easily be checked, and yet continue to hold the lie up as if it were truth.

Right now there is an ad from the Romney campaign condemning President Obama’s Welfare plans, saying that the President is trying to get rid of the work requirement.  When the ad was proven to be false by independent organizations, the campaign was asked to remove the ad.  From one of the political movers in the Romney campaign, “We’re not going to have our campaign defined by fact-checkers.”  Defined by fact-checkers?  They are proven to be lying on national television.

This comes once again to the theory of cooperation.  The filibuster has been used in the 110^th senate more than any congress in history, because legislation is not the most important goal for politics right now.  It is deciding whether or not President Obama will be a one-term president.

I love President Obama, and I think he has done a fantastic job.  Please disagree with me, and I will happily debate the issues with you (it may get heated, but all’s fun in politics and good humor).  But the goal of any party cannot be the destruction of another’s candidacy.  It is to uphold the values of your constituency, to promote the progression of America, and defend the ideals you hold within your heart.

Cooperation has been taught to every individual in this country since the second grade.  Ever since your teacher plucked the fingerpaints out of your hands as you squabbled with your classmate, the first words out of her mouth were “Share”.  We all have ideas about this country, how to better it, how to protect it, how to make this country a beacon for the world stage.  But most importantly, we all live in this country.  Let us all share it, not scream out when our turn has been taken away.

“Our best thoughts come from others”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Diary of an Unemployed Wanderer, Part 4

September 2, 2012

I’ve got to make this quick…

You wouldn’t believe how easy breaking into a bank is.  I’m doing it tonight, and everything is planned out perfectly.  I think.

I know what you’re thinking, and I wish there were any other way.  I spent the past week begging for jobs, begging for unemployment, even begging on the street.  By the way, quick note, I should apologize to any and all beggars I have snubbed.  Except for the ones I knew were going to do drugs.  That sounds like a good promise.  Anyways, last week kind of really sucked.  I was kicked twice while begging, and thrown out of an interview while the receptionist screamed pervert at me.

I’m almost out of cash, and I’ve already gotten out of my apartment.  This is from an internet café.  I don’t even know why I’m keeping up this stupid journal.  What has it gotten me?  Absolutely nothing.  But I’m here, and I’m writing, and I’m confessing to a crime in the middle of an internet café…I need to turn my life around.

I’ll start with cash.  To any cops, this WILL NOT BE A BANK ROBBERY!  I DO NOT CONDONE THIEVERY ON ANY LEVEL, IT IS WRONG AND EVIL AND…not nice.  This is so full of b.s. I don’t even believe it.  And I’m writing it.

Whatever, the point is, tonight is the night.  You’d be amazed as to how many security systems don’t take flying as a security risk.  Actually, that kind of makes sense, but that means kudos to me for being the first to test it out.  I’m just going in and out.  Nothing bad is going to happen.

Trust me.