4.23.07

It’s so easy to adapt.

Really, in the tiniest twitch of history’s eye, I went from a nomad’s life to a semi-unemployed white middle class dude in the suburbs of america.  Most of 2006 I was walking 26 miles a day through the cities and farmlands of South America’s northern countries.  Most nightsI camped.  I nearly always cooked my breakfast’s and lunches on a little camp stove.  I went to bed with the moonrise and woke up to the sunrise.  I showered every 6 days or so.  I had 1 pair of pants, 1 pair of shorts, a couple shirts, socks…and that was about it.  I had 2 books most times.  I spent almost every single daylight hour outside, underneath sun, cloud, haze, fog.  I ”brewed” my coffee in my cooking pot.  I ate dirt and I liked it…

and then suddenly I’m home in Oregon.  I’m in starbucks buying criminally overpriced coffee beverages.  I’m driving a mid-90′s honda accord, feeding the beast at 3.12 a gallon.  I have several changes of clothing (still much less than my friends).  I shower every day (to the relief of all).  I eat HUGE meals from international menus.  Yet I don’t walk but maybe 2 miles a day.  I beer with friends.  I go to vegas.  I catch the “cheap” matinee at 7 bucks a showing.  I buy cookies at cafes, ice cream at the market, shots at the bar, magazines on the racks, and raman at the school cafeteria.  I’m subbing high school Spanish, and English, and Ecology, Biology,  Earth Science, Special Ed,  Math, History, Chemistry and Marketing.  I’m announcing track meets, and basketball games.  I tutor a very bright, interesting kid who has lived only the color gray.  I tutor another nice kid who’s feet pad on a whiter-than-white carpet, fir trees out his living room window pointing the way to heaven.  And another kid in a house with cat-bird-seat valley-views, his world every day a bit busier as the machine takes hold.  I teach an after school class to 6 elementary schoolkids…like herding cats on cocaine.  Freeze-frame any moment in that raucous hour and you might hear and see:

• a tiny blond human with a lisp rolling, crawling and contorting across the floor chasing after a coin yelling “Where’s my dimey!?!?”
• Another diminuative human with his head under the library bookshelf, sneezing and giggling.
• Yet another  laughing manaically, marching with her  fist upheld, screaming “I’m an angry villager!!!”
• And another with her nose in a picture book
• And another bouncing around in his own personal 8 year old mosh pit yelling “I farted!  I farted!”
• and another super-stuttering and hand-jerk gesturing his way through a painful, 30 second long ”hola, me llamo pablo“

(and yet, amazingly, they’ve learned stuff)

 And until I’m home at night, in that slurry state between awake and asleep, I realize that my whole purpose for being home, really, is to save money so I can finish my trip.  And I tell myself to resist the siren call of starbucks and to just say no to booze, and only watch movies at my sister’s place, and to stop driving, start biking, and to cook my own food, and to tutor more, sub more, make more focus more, write more, self-promote more, sponsor-seek more, work out more, run more…

and then I wake up all fuddle-headed, slog down to my car, order my doubletallextrahotcaramelmacchiatowithlegs, teach, tutor, herd cats, eat at some joint, head home, crash without writing, and repeat ad nauseum…

 I’m a nomad in limbo.