Walden

Or...Romantic Whimsy

I don't know why it has taken me so long to make this update, and this announcement, but here we go.

As of Wednesday, April the 29th, 2015, at 7:00 o'clock PM, I have moved out of my house, and I officially live in my RV.



The initial work, Phase 1 if you will, is all but complete (aside from the water, which I'm sure that I'll be talking about soon), and I'm standing firmly at the bottom of a brand new learning curve. Already I've found myself facing issues and problems that I had not anticipated, and I have no choice now but to face them head on as they arise, fail, then try again, and possibly succeed.

The RV is, for this weekend at least, parked in my parents' driveway, far out in the country of Eastern Kentucky. Maybe it's the surroundings, or maybe it was always there and I hadn't seen it, but the romance of this adventure has hit me in full now, and every time I turn my mind to it, I smile and remember a quote from one of my favorite authors, in one of my favorite books.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only

 the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when

 I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life,

 living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.

 I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and

 Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave

 close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms."

Henry David Thoreau

Walden

Walden is a book, portraying an ideal, that I've carried with me for the vast majority of my adult life, and over the last few days, my new living situation has brought back the feeling I had when I first read those words, in one of my four copies of the book. I'm rereading it now, and realizing a lot about what has driven me towards and shaped me for this life style. The wanderlust, the readiness, the adaptability, the lust for adventure. I'm up to the challenge, and part of me always has been. I'm more sure about that now than I ever have been.

Instead of simply resting on my laurels and enjoying this triumph, the work goes on, literally and figuratively. The weekend I'll be spending on the road (sadly not in the RV) with the Tinderbox Circus Sideshow, and working my day job as a body piercer, and at the start of next week, I'll be back to working on the variety of problems still present (fucking water). In the meantime, I'll leave you with another quote from my long time idol, Mr. Thoreau.

"If I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon

 possessed me that I behaved so well?"

-Z