Chapter 8

Around the time that he left his house, there was a period in which he had acquired an old run down car from a dying man who only wanted a bottle of whiskey a Jack London novel. The car ran for about two weeks before it died, but it brought him about half way across the country, also serving as a shelter and place to sleep. There was a night that he was huddled in the backseat trying to fall asleep, parked off a road in a small town near the border of New Mexico. It was raining pretty heavily, and an uncharacteristic chill was in the air. Around three in the morning he finally fell asleep from pure exhaustion, and had a vivid dream that he remembered even as he continued to drive the next morning. It was unusual how much he remembered from the dream, even the beginning and end was clear to him, but he could not figure out exactly what the events meant. As he fell asleep he began to dream of being stranded on an endless body of dark, murky water, floating on a makeshift raft that was being held together by the sleeves and legs of pants and shirts he had worn as a child. He remembered all the pieces of clothing, and as the raft began to slowly sink he kept trying to grab the clothes and save them, but he just couldn't hold a grip on anything but the sides of the raft as it sank. He remembered feeling an urgency and regret, as if he should have tried to save himself earlier, before the raft began to sink. He struggled to keep his head above the water, because he knew if his eyes went below the surface, it would be too dark to find the surface again. And as the raft sunk, he began to drift towards an emerging piece of land, a beach that seemed to come out of thin air to save him from downing in the dark water. As he frantically tried to grab his clothes form the raft to save, he was faced with abandoning the sinking raft and swimming to the land, or emerging himself into the water. As soon as he let go of the raft and began to swim towards the island, the raft sunk and his clothes began to drift all around him, like ghosts in the water, following him and watching his every move. It was nighttime, and as he swam the beach began to drift away from him, leaving his exhausted body floating helplessly. He woke up at that moment, to the sounds of passing cars in the rain, which was still falling. As he sat up the dream came rushing back to him, and he thought for a very long time what it could have meant, and why he woke up when he did. As he sat in the car, the rain began to leak through some rusted cracks and holes in the roof and doors. The sky was cloudy and dark, and in the shadows on the trees he was parked beneath, the raindrops looked black as they dripped down the walls and seats, puddling up on the floor mats around his feet.

Chapter 7

There were times when he couldn't remember his life as a mundane human, and his farthest memory was that of leaving his house and beginning again. And then there were times when all he could think about was what led him to this point, and what had caused him to be where he was. Where he was actually felt like a place that he had painted in his mind, a Utopian existence hidden beneath sky and tucked behind mountains and desert. He had spent little time traveling around the east, and instead focused entirely on trying to uncover some hidden beauty, some place that had yet to be discovered and destroyed by modern influence and society. And in the middle of an inevitable nowhere, he found it. There was a gathering of people that took up residence in Southern California, just enough away from the confusion and impatience of the city, but not far enough into the desert that survival would be a task. He had read about the community before, and had thought about these people often, in passing fancies of cross country road trips, or dreams of a more adventurous life. It felt strange to approach them for the first time, a sort of converted drifter, one that wasn't born into a life of adventure or ultimate freedom, but searched for it. These were people that either were born with nothing, or quickly found out that there was nothing for them in their present lives. A lot of outsiders would see them as failures, a group of people too pitiful for their own good, but he liked to think of these people as the idols of his generation. They took control of what they were given, instead of letting people tell them where to go, and what to do. So in a way, he admired them, while at the same time using their settlement as a further motivation to strive for ultimate happiness before settling for the first signs of it. But for the time being, he spent time there, occasionally visiting the city or spending time alone in the mountains, but often returning to a community of comfort and also for the time being, happiness.

Chapter 6

He began to see signs of himself growing, changing, not only physically, but in his mind too. It scared him a little, but at the same time he saw it as something good, a way to prove that he was really doing something special with himself. He didn’t want people to see him as a naïve traveler, looking for some greater truth that in time he would find didn’t exist. He was not unlike that traveler however, but he felt as if he knew somewhere, what he was searching for did exist. A greater truth is hidden in all of us, but there is also one to be found that applies to all living things, one of happiness and truth, of adventure and love. It was this particular truth he was looking for, or so he liked to believe. Truthfully, he had begun his adventure solely as a last effort to save his own soul, from the imminent destruction it surely faced from being forced to live by such boundaries and rules. There was nothing where he came from, nothing worth living towards, nothing worth remembering. And so he began his adventure as nothing more than a finale to his life of security and comfort, one that may on the surface provide these things, but was secretly containing him, carefully stripping him of his natural senses of love, adventure, and freedom. There were certainly times before he left his house and life in which he was truly happy, times in which he saw real beauty, felt real love, and experienced real adventure. There were these times, not frequently but occasionally, and he enjoyed them. He believed that such times were his reason to live, his reason to always keep a firm hand on both reality’s shoulder, while being gently pulled towards a life of adventure and risk.

Chapters 4&5

The thought of love was frequent for him, he argued over himself its existence, its power, and its involvement in his own life. He had loved, he thought, but perhaps his idea of love had been warped by the push and pull of time. He had been told that love did not exist out of first encounters, rather it must be built carefully, around a stable relationship. He had always questioned this, not aloud but to himself, in the protection of his own head. He questioned whether or not the love he felt for people was real, because it had been quickly assembled at first glances, conversations, or acts of kindness. He had love for many things, some inanimate, some he had never met or seen or spoken to. He didn’t believe that it mattered however, that he felt this love for people or things that he had never even seen in front of his eyes. He had love for people he had only seen or heard in the news, in newspapers, or on the radio. He loved, because it gave him hope. And he allowed himself to hope because it gave him life.

Many weeks ago, when he his travels had begun, he had met someone who also seemed to be trying to escape from their past, or trying to step into their future. It was a young woman, crying, parked on the side of a deserted highway. She was resting her body on the hood of her car, tears dripping onto its faded paint, staring questioningly at the setting sun. As he walked towards the back of the car, he stopped walking for a moment. She had not heard or seen him yet, and as far as he could see, there was nothing. The road they were on stretched wearily until it disappeared into the mountains that were slowly swallowing the sun. He stared at her for some time, almost mesmerized by the beauty of this image, this woman, who was surely looking for something better, and had surely found it at the precise moment he stumbled upon her. She was captivated by the sun, and he became captivated by her. As he approached her he awkwardly shuffled his feet as to announce his presence to her. She was not alarmed however, as many would be, but slowly turned her head to look at him. She had soft brown hair, but it looked as if many hands had been run through it, leaving the past of a woman that would be hard to break into. Her blue eyes were turned red from her tears, and the combination brought out a purple light in them, enough to hold his gaze for longer than he planned to. When she spoke, he listened to her carefully, because he wanted to know everything she had to say, he wanted to understand her, and he wanted her to know that he would give her everything he had, if only she would have the need for him. She told him her story, where she had come from, where she was going. They sat in the road, backs against her faded car, late into the night. Not a single car passed them, and he liked the feeling of being alone with her. No one knew where they were, no one knew they were together, except for the two of them. They talked and laughed, as if they had been friends their entire lives, and in the morning she quietly got into her car and drove away, not the way she was going, but the way that she had came. He left her too, but continued to travel the way he was going when he found her. It was if nothing had happened, except he knew that he loved her.

Chapter 3

There were of course many places he had wished to go throughout his life, places he had read about or seen on television, or in a magazine. Places that seemed appealing to him, or at least the lifestyle they offered. He had spent many nights wondering if these places were actually as good as he imagines them, or if he had dreamed up places that would fulfill all his dreams, just to keep himself happy for awhile. He had an interesting thought though, as he walked, that anything he had ever imagined must exist somewhere, either in the world he lived upon, or in a dimension he had not. Nothing could just be fathomed out of thin air, everything ever imagined or conceived already must exist somewhere, because no one could just construct these things from their own minds, sub consciously he believed, they already knew about them. It was an interesting thought to him, that the places he had dreamed of, the places whose very existence he relied on, actually existed somewhere to him, and maybe he had been there, in a past life, or a future one. And so the though of time also came back to him then, as he wondered about his own past or future adventures, and the one he was on right then and there. It didn’t bother him however, because he had the time to think of these things, to spend hours, days even, wondering about these places, even searching for them, and there was no time clock to follow him, no boss to remind him to return to work, no alarm clock to command his days. He was in a different world now, and it surprised him of how much the same society could change, only because he had opened his mind and allowed it to see.

Chapter 2

He walked out of the front door, down to the sidewalk, and stopped at the street. He looked left, then back at the house. The door was left slightly open, as if it wanted him to return. He would not though, maybe ever. One final glance, and he turned to the right, facing West, and began to walk. His mind was without a worry, without a fear, and without a regret. He had feared before, had hated, had been lonely; but now it was a personal realization, one of excitement and assurance. He still remained quite alone, without a being to talk to, to call a friend, without family to call his own. However, he began to feel, as he walked towards the split in the road, that the world was no longer one in which concrete relations were a necessity to him. He would undoubtedly meet people, and he knew many of them would be kind to him, and in return he would pursue their friendship. But now, instead of expectations to be made, and time to haste his efforts, he would slowly befriend the people he felt comfortable with. And there would be no one peering over his shoulder whispering, “Hurry, go present yourself, and make a friendship. You mustn’t be alone..” No longer would he bear with the present standards to avoid isolation, to fear being alone, and be punished for expressing his own mind. He understood that he could not live his life alone, that going outside of his way to remain unheard, unseen, and unknown was not the answer to a life of loneliness. His feelings were simply mixed together, and he did not understand what exactly he was to do with himself at that time. He had spent many years alone in the busiest and connected society man has known. And yet, he remained lonely, in his house, with nothing to claim his life for. So he left his house and life of comfort and security and walked away from his lonely and time driven existence, into a life of free will and independence. And at the end of the street in which he had lived on, he turned once again and continued his walk. He may have turned left or right, north or south, but he had already made his biggest decision, which was to begin walking at all.

Chapter 1

It was exactly noon as the front door of his house opened into a cloudy summer afternoon. The sun was hidden behind its clouds, but its glow was still visible, hovering directly over the house. There was no sunrise this morning, it seemed as if one moment it was night, and the next, day. The hours had been passing this was for quite some time now, slipping past him as if they were trying not to be seen. They had become successful in their efforts lately, and multiplying into days, sometimes years. He had noticed their devious act from the beginning, taking note of how time had become mischievous, no longer acting “on our side”. Time had become the enemy, and as his life went on, time began to hurt him. He could no longer act, no longer work, no longer communicate, no longer travel, no longer live. And this troubled him. He remembered the last time that he had regarded time as nothing more than hands on a clock, or numbers on his watch. That was when he was young, and only had worries for what he was to eat that night, or who he would spend his days playing with. Now time fought against his every will to move forward, to a more fulfilling life, or a life at all. He had finally realized that time moved at an alarming rate, and years were no longer a measure of a “a while” or a “long time”. A year was a period for him in which he could reflect on all the things he should have done. All the places he could have traveled, all the experiences he could have lived. This was sadly not the case though, because he spent his time in this house, leaving to work, or at least take himself to that place where he was supposed to be performing labor. Or buy necessities, which were not necessary at all anymore. This cycle went on for a number of years, but then again, it could have only been a few days. Time is tricky to the mind, we often are left confused at the concept of time, and then waste more of it, only trying to figure out what we were originally baffled by. And so he understood, on the cloudy summer day, that his life must be brought to a close, not by death, but by the birthing of a new life, one not controlled by time.