Chapter 3: The Emotional Intricacies Of Being Technically Homeless
Film: Lomography Earl Grey 100, 35mm
Distance Traveled: 6210 Miles
Having a car as your only domicile has taught me two very important things so far:
The freedom you gain from having no property except what you can fit in between 4 wheels is both incredibly intoxicating and at some points drastically suffocating.
Peeing in a jug is a skill that is learned, and should not be taken lightly. Can’t get good without spilling a few drops.
Home has started to become a very abstract concept to me. To quote both Elvis Presley and every white woman’s painted wood plank above their dining table: “Home is where the heart is”. Yeah, while that may be true, Elvis and Susan, home sometimes means what you return to every night. While the concept of home is where you feel comfortable and loved, what does that mean when you are in the middle of backwoods upstate New York completely alone cooking ramen over a camp stove watching over your shoulder for that weird reflection in your headlamp that was definitely a mountain lion stalking me for 15 minutes? Does it revert back to your parents house? As much as I love my parents, that home is no longer my home - maybe because my dad told me when I was 18 that I couldn’t come back if I failed out of college (which was obviously something said out of love to make me work harder so I didn’t have to), which has weirdly put a nonsensical timer in my head every time I come back to Houston that makes me hit the road as soon as the metaphorical clock strikes zero. Hey, it’s made me a very industrious person, so no hard feelings, Pops.
There’s been times that i’ve come to the cold realization that yes, I am technically homeless. Of course, in my head, it’s “homeless by choice, for, like, a short while, in a cool granola ‘fuck the system’ kind of way”, but that doesn’t stop my brain from comparing myself to a hobo with a goddamn bandana attached to a string holding cans of beans. It’s made me compare myself to my friends and their marriages, families, and career successes. It’s not a mental road I like traveling down, but you can’t help to sometimes drive along it. There’s a fine line between a man who hits the open road to whatever destination which may call him, and a man who is desperately trying to find meaning in the squalor of living in his car - which has been a line i’ve become quite familiar with.
After about 5 months now with no address to call my own, my brain has started to craft new inventive ways for me to accept my own versions of home. I once found home in an Oyster bar in Mobile, Alabama, after a man bought my meal and multiple beers once we found out we were from the same area in Houston (Shoutout to Jason - hope your kids are enjoying their new school) Me and the bartenders were so amazed by this dude, that we started talking, and I stayed 30 minutes after closing shooting the shit with them. Side note - when I asked the bartenders what was the coolest spot to visit in Mobile was, one of the ladies said in that wonderfully sarcastic southern tone, “The road out of here”. Can’t beat that.
I felt home laying in the back of my car in the Niagara Falls parking lot, watching a slow pitter patter of rain fall on to my car roof. Maybe it was the safety I felt being protected from the cold rain, or the peace you can only find in the sound of water hitting metal. Whatever it was, it was transcendent.
Home is an absolute human need. When deprived of it, you’ve got to find ways to fill that void, or depression is going to be waiting for you right around the corner. Even if finding home is finding a quiet picnic table to sit with your thoughts is all you have, take the time to do it.
I do wish for a place I can call home again. I do yearn for 4 walls to call my own. I daydream about going to IKEA to buy pointless Swedish shit to decorate my house with. But that’s going to have to wait. There’s more road to be conquered.
Album Recommendation of the Week
Now if you haven’t appreciated The Boss for the fantastic folk singer he is, brother, you are missing out. His album Nebraska, released before Born in the USA, is an album unlike any other. Ol’ Bruce recorded a bunch of demos that he wanted to record with his backing band. After the band tried to make the songs better by layering in other instruments, they realized one thing - “we can’t beat those fucking demos”. The only thing you’ll hear on this album is Bruce, his voice, his guitar, his harmonica, and an occasional tamborine. It’s like if Bob Dylan went to the outskirts of Atlantic City to bury a body instead of going to the Monterrey Pop Festival. And it fucking rocks.
