“are you a “traveling kid”?”

“Define “traveling kid”, if you will.”

“Young, alcoholic and transient.”

Hmmmm… you think I’m young?

Depending on the day, alcoholic may be appropriate. Lately, not so much, thanks to the traveling. Traveling is like detoxifying from this culture while getting intimately accustomed to its variations. I feel like I know this country and this land for once. I know where our pyramids are. I know that the sides of highways feel more safe than subburbs. I know that the only time I feel my life is at stack is looking into the eyes of a police officer. I know what Southern culture means and what it feels like to be on the streets in Bristol when the sun sets. I know what the water from the top of the highest peak east of the Mississippi tastes like. I know what it feels like to be woken up in the mulch on the side of a Krogers. It feels good. Mulch is soft and relatively bugless for the east coast. It feels good to be woken up and looked at like you are absolutely nothing, a nuisance, and for once know  down to the very last blood cell that there is no truth in their disapproving stare.

I don’t think I would call myself a traveling kid. I am past the age where people have the conversation about how I seem to have an old soul( People stop saying that when you begin approaching thirty.) My hands wrinkle and I see the age in my face. I celebrate it. All the marks across my body like rings in a tree stump. Nope, not young anymore, quite proudly.

But NEVER, EVER an adult. proudly.

I don’t quite fit into the “traveling kid” cliques either, which is fine.

And since it is almost impossible to catch a buzz after drinking in the mile high city for so long, you can very rarely find me drinking these days.

but I am transient. without a single obligatory destination. it is startling to visit people in this state. a lot of people just offer us space, with no time to visit. lots and lots of space available in this country. resort homes. apartments. back yards. sides of roads. some spend time to visit and laugh.

The feeling of visiting different collectives is shifting. It is a concerning air at times. You know when you feel your  friend shifting into the world of the profit hungry? tired of the anxiety and frustrations involved with being open to relationships and all of their ups and downs? Anarchists/radicals/alternate life-stylists feel tired like this. Unamused with their fellow beings. Tired.

It is reassuring to be in a place of reinstating hope.

Both in hitch hiking and as a guest in collective living environments, one of my favorite opportunities is pleasantly suprising folks. I am thankful to have enough love and support in my life to be calm and happy. To smile at the exhuasted as big and cheesy as I can until they can not help but giggle. I am thankful to be with a friend that seconds my big cheesy smile and talks to people out of humble compassion.

There has been a number of times through the south that people have pulled over to pick us up and the first thing they say to us is, “You can’t kill me, Ok?!”

Ok.

We can not kill you. Promise.

Then they leave us smiling and saying, “Thank you for brightening my day.”

…and that feels revolutionary in this cynical world.

 

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