When I was a kid a news man reported on an incident involving a transient. “Mom, what’s a transient?”
“A bum,” she said with a combination of sadness and disgust.
Years later I learned transient means temporary, brief, passing. I guess that fits me. I’m here temporarily, there briefly, always passing through. As my logo says, I’m permanently impermanent.
So I understand why some folks consider us vehicle-dwelling wanderers to be bums even if we keep clean and sober and cause no trouble beyond the negative feelings our nonconformity engenders in them.
If we think about it a little, we realize we are all transient in the big scope of things. Everything is temporary. I move every few days, and they might move a handful of times in their entire life, but both are a nano-blip in cosmic time. Here today, gone almost instantly. But if we keep moving then the anxiety our presence causes will be only transient.
I told people I was retired and seeing the country.... when/if they asked.
ReplyDeleteI just tell them I live off my SSA and savings interest..
ReplyDeleteLet's face it, any culture that's grown out of the melting pot of flesh-hating Puritans, guilt-obsessed Irish-Catholics, child-hating Germans and status-conscious Daughters of the American Revolution, is not likely to embrace *anything* they can't immediately, like macaroni & cheese, relate to.
ReplyDeleteFor formal wear you need a button-down light-blue, long sleeve and khaki slacks (pleats are passé). For day-to-day, gray or khaki shorts with a gray or black t-shirt is, as you're surely aware, the dress code of the (bland-r-us) era. No one'll *ever* guess yer an open-minded individual.
I'm not sure where else there is to go, but after thoroughly exploring the NW, I'm wondering how you're faring with the prospect of another winter on Ogilby Rd.
Two Happy campers wrote glowingly of their trip to Baja last winter & they don't even speak the language.
https://twohappycampers.com/camping-in-mexico/
Keep 'em coming! Vicarious-R-Us
There are copious amounts of mellow acceptance here in the PNW. I chalk it up to the influence of hippies and pot growers and a general desire to avoid "civilization." And Mexico is definitely in my plans for this winter, perhaps even the mainland.
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