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.