Saturday, June 29, 2019

Dwell on this

I was web searching various offbeat Los Angeles museums. One museum has an exhibit dedicated to the development of trailer parks. The writeup of the exhibit includes the following:
As noted by J.B. Jackson in his The Movable Dwelling and How it Came to America
The verb to dwell has a distinct meaning. At one time it meant to hesitate, to linger to delay, as when we say, “He is dwelling too long on this insignificant matter.” To dwell, like the verb to abide (from which we derive abode) simply means to pause, to stay put for a length of time; it implies that we will eventually move on.
I’m a van dweller. Jackson’s definition fits me quite fine. I’m here, I’m pausing a while, then I’ll dwell somewhere else. Which is just a shorter version of the cycle of life.

4 comments:

  1. LA for me too right now. The roads and boondocks are fat with vacationers now. Plenty of time for favorable weather north with the later fall and winter, as it's been coming latter for the last 20 years.

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    1. True, but with this brush with mortality, any time not on the road feels like a chunk of my life lost.

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  2. Al-permit me a personal question; knowing what you know now would you choose a van dweller lifestyle sooner than you did? All things being equal and a one time use of a magic wand.

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    1. The finances of it happened to work out the way they did, with the housing market having recovered enough for me to make enough profit on my house to live for a couple of years before I was eligible for Social Security. If I had known much earlier I wanted to be a nomad, I suppose I could've handled my money differently and escaped sooner.

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