by Sunwalker
Thanks so much for this site AJ/Skald!! I'm glued to all these addictive blog entries from you and Alan Watts and Hakim and all the others, a person could stuff a book with it all, there's so much good expression and info here. Been searching for a decent hobotramp oriented site and it's been slim pickings, but yours hits the spot! It's a bit of a downer to hear you're caving in to the lure of a fulltime job, maybe there's still a chance for you to pass on it and keep your freedom, or at least keep it to less than a few months.
I'm an unemployed (FREE, dammit!) young man up here in frozen Alberta, almost 30 years young, having mercifully quit my mind-crushing 3 year slaveterm last year as a 'debt collector'. (Even worse than the previous serfterms) I'm mystified as to how I survived even six months of that collections shit, working with all these stuffed shirts and crazy wenches who've become less than human. Some of them are closer to sanity than others - they're the ones who complain the most and the loudest, as opposed to the hordes of zombified ass-kissers. But some of the old goats have hung around for more than 10 bloody years and not only are they not human anymore, they've become cackling old machine-like things. Ugh...I looked at these wretched entities and saw my arid soul-sucking future looming like a desiccated, abandoned airport runway to nowhere.
Damn, I'm glad I had the guts to get the f*ck out of there! The thing is, I can't bring myself to demean my dignity and self-respect by taking orders from a boss or endure more monotonous tedious drudgery ever again. The thought of work makes my innards sag like the carcass of a beached whale and makes my mind erect a big warning sign: "Forbid hope all ye who enter here" and then of course thoughts switch to wild plans of taking to the trail up into the hills and leaving this maniacal work-consume deathrace behind pronto.
Hell, for years I've wanted to take off on a bike and just become a tramp on wheels, but only now do I have the guts and will to actually get off my a$$ and go for it. My days of running on the hamstermill with all the other drones chasing those pieces of meat on a stick called 'retirement' and 'wealth' are over. And my days of participating in this ever-growing machine that is so busy converting the living to the dead (in the words of Derrick Jensen) are history. If enough of us toiling minions lay down our pens, shovels, hammers, and keyboards and simply quit slaving for the profit of rich masters, the machine could grind to a merciful halt thereby ending the insanity!
Now I'm becoming lured by the idea of even going so far as ditching the damn bike and being an outlaw wandering hobopoet on foot; living out of my pack, sleeping under tarps, in hospital waiting rooms, airports, under bridges, beneath the stars... Permanently meandering around the Americas north and maybe even south over hill, dale, road and rail, north in the summer and far south in the winter - the ultimate in freedom. The ultimate in slowing down and being able to exist more in rhythm with living beings and cycles and truly experience them instead of putzing around past everything on some metal contraption. Sure I'd sacrifice a few miles per hour but I couldn't give a flying hoot. Tough to stop and sniff the flowers when you have to get off a damn machine every time... All the bikes I own usually end up being stolen soon enough anyhow!
The catch, (other than the obvious myriad risks like sunburn, storms, cold, blisters, fire ants, ticks, muggers etc) being that we're stuck in this damned 'civilization', is of course $$$. I'd end up starting out this spring with only a few thousand, but I know I could stretch it. I can rig my own shelter each night (so f*ck motel rooms except maybe once a month), plus there's free water to be had in faucets and mountain streams everywhere, bathing in lakes, rivers, free showers etc, and for food there's a little foraging for pine nuts, berries etc, the good old dumpster dive, foodbanks/FNB, plus the odd dollop of discreet on-the-house grocery bulkfood sampling (as long as I don't mind hopscotching over and around the lines of the "law" and keep out of sight of it's glassy lidless porcine eyes.)
But I haven't come across too many ultralongdistance walking hobopoets/tramps on this site or any other. There was that 'Alexander Supertramp' who made a decent go of it for quite a while except he mostly hitched around, but he f*cked up by striking off into the Alaska muskeg without enough respect for the land. I just found out about this Japanese poet named Nanao Sakaki who fared much better; he actually walked across N. America back and forth - without any $$$! Thank You
P.S. I love the books of Derrick Jensen - especially The Culture of Make Believe and A Language Older Than Words. He's kind of an "anarchoprimitivist/anti-civilization" author (although I hate to put him in a pigeon hole) You might want to take a look, as his ideas would seem to fit well with these hobopoet thoughts! There's also John Zerzan's works - lots more no- holds-barred critiques of this loonybin civilization and Daniel Qiunn's Ishmael, which is for somewhat less 'radical' folks.
--Sunwalker
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