ACT V: The United States of So-Called Strangers

From Alien to Monk: A Critical Transformation 12:30 a.m. My whole life, as I've often said, I have felt like an alien. Tonight, stepping out of my room at the Cloud Motel in Sioux Falls, down from the Pilot. A reward to myself of 40 dollars for the last night out. I wondered, why am I so happy? Why do I feel like my life is so changed? 7 days, from Vancouver B.C. to the border of MN have felt like months. Then it hit me. I no longer feel like an alien. I am not an alien anymore. I am a hitch-hiker in the galaxy. See, each one of us is a world. And what we call the world is a galaxy full of light, darnkess, life, desolation, dark matter, space, and so many stranger and unbelievable creatures. These past 7 days I ahve hitch-hiked from one world to another. From one person's world to another's world. And learned a little bit about each one. And not one of them was boring or disappointing. And they all had visible signs of life. Which is to say, love. And more specifically now, hope. The new hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy. Chapter one: United States. I slept in a field behind a pipe of hay on the outskirts of Rapid City. And watched a coyote approach me 15 yards away. I slept after drinking bud light in the moonlight. With a 26 year old man under his tarp in the woods talking about the weight of the world and off the grid living. he thanked me genuinely for the beer, but I was the one to get the undeserved gift of love. I had my back turned to the highway while brushing my teeth as a woman pulled up with her 17 year old daughter. She lost everything to Katrina., upper middle class and became gypsies in the wandering circuit of America and in Wyoming fell in love with the land. Decided to move completely off the grid. Stepping out of her car she said, just remember, whatever anybody tells you, you're good enough by far. I entertained back country road with stories of the road who entertained me with so much more with knowledge of words of Montana. I've been laughed at, cursed at, kicked up dust at, ridiculed, ignored, scoffed at, bathed in generosity, compliments, listening, sharing, exchanging meals, emails, trusted and escorted to new worlds. I'e cut myself, smacked in the face by my own self scaling the wall of a car wash in search of place to sleep. I've spent every night but one under the open sky but never felt alone. I've had deer hissing warning to their young as they stood next to my body, sending something but uncertain. I've watched road kids pan handle good money. I've lost the weight of so much fear and gained a penchant for getting dirty. A love of being enveloped by dust and mist. Of walking 3-7 miles on the highways in unfamiliar country at midnight. I've been in the back of two police cars and ticketed, warned, assisted, instructed, advised. I moked one pouch of drum that I paid 24 dollars for. In Vancouver. Which will be rolled into 5 cigarettes tomorrow and gone. I've shared my blood and tears and laughter with the earth. And so many so-called strangers which are actually just strange worlds. Who doesn't want to visit strange worlds? All these existing states of living, all these states of body and mind, united by a hitch-hiker in the galaxy who threads their worlds together with one thing-the love that they offer freely. People wave to me now, repeatedly, without my gear on. Why? Two young men in a car wave driving off from the motel. Not mockingly, as I am used to with young men, but in solidarity. I'm tired but don't care at all because I have this luxury. I bathed twice in fast food restaurants bathroom sinks. The 6th night at this hostel, as I came down the road to Pilot. 11 dollars for a shower. I knew hotel was better. Cloud, for 30 more dollars I can shower, wash clothes, and write and sleep well inside before heading home. I don't mean to change anyone. To convince anyone. All I mean to do is to reflect, as best as I can or think appropriate, the value of being an anthropologist of life. Who from time to time, if not daily, sets down their preconceptions and observes non-judgmentally and open heartedly the world of other we possibly only think we know. I don't even mean to be honest, to glorify, or heroicize or make intelligible the individual's stories or personalities that I met, so much as to say see, look, look! Here's evidence of love, of home, of goldmines of amazing perspectives of life unmined or unharvested by the rest of the world. And to beg you, to beg everyone, to beg, like monks, that you give me the benefit of the doubt enough to consider without if's and or but's, that what I say just might be of value to the quality of your existence on this planet in this one lifetime you know. Because this is what the monks did; give up what they owned to humble themselves, to beg for a ride from point A to point B in a direction you are already heading. For a piece of the bread you are already eating. If you call it mooching I challenge and dare you to be non-judgmental. A challenge to the ego that maybe you are supposed to learn something from so-called moochers the way the hardships in your life teach you wisdom, even if this wisdom seems to suggest that beggars should learn the same. For those who say liberty or death or leave! To consider that there are other worlds, other people's lives that you know nothing about, because your trajectory is different. For those who yell "Get a job" or Get a car" to instead either realize you don't HAVE to give anything and therefor you have no cause to be angry or hostile, or else taht in giving you might learn detachment or possession or entitlement to that whole you gave private property as if we made our worlds. As if our hard work and self made and "earned" aspects and items came to us because we have it figured out and we're rewarded with things we have a right to hoard. When all of these things cam from elsewhere. When that hard work was our freewill and had nothing to do with the free will and happenstance occurrences of other's lives. To consider that it's not our place to judge who deserves something based on appearances. Or who might take advantage of or squander what we give as if our gifts in those instances drain life from us when really they only drain life from our ego, vanity, belief in scarcity. When we see we are okay, when we see giving something up, or being robbed even, returns us to location of being closer to innocence. To consider the wives running from husbands who would kill them. The young kids whose parent's taught them they were nothing so they travel because it makes them feel like something. You see them with begging signs and say get a job and so something useful. I did and I had nothing. Perhaps instead you could say "I am compassionate, I am strong because I raised myself from nothing and earned my keep, and therefore I do not need to pick on those I find weak or ignorant or lazy. Because even if this is the case these labels explain why they are the way they are. Maybe that kid was beaten by his father or has stomach cancer and no family. I've met them. and are young and angry at the world. Lost searching and confused. So are begging you for money, dirty and smelly because it only takes a few days to become so smelly when you are homeless, especially if you are hopping trains. Maybe the drunk bum was a little boy who got laughed at or beat up because his parents taught him to hate when he was little. And now he is broken and lost and knows only how to piss and sleep. Consider me, your dubbed yuppie kid mooching. Hitch-hiking because I love your stories. Because I am doing field-work. Because you don't have to pick me up if you don't feel like it and I'm doing no harm. And to consider those who do pick me up; we have great conversation. We have 5, 10 minutes, or 600 miles of enjoyment, however far they are driving me. However many seconds they linger in handing me a dollar which I take only so as not to insult when what I really want is a ride. And little monks. And pray for and bless every one of them. Are you so proud and anti-spiritual that you don't even find a superficial entertainment in a gypsy, another traveling being, smiling, thanking, remembering you for your small and generous donation of a dollar or stopping your car, sandwich, company, a bed, advice, etc? "in the beginning such travelers enter these liminal zones transgressively to fulfill the Alien archetype. With various responsibilities to fulfill and tasks to accomplish they will journey through the worlds until they are ready to be Ascetics..." And to travelers. Vagrants. I bet you, not as a pathetic being but as a road monk, who appreciates and values your lives, whether you care or not, out of ignorance but educated choice, I beg you to consider choice. To consider the religion of what you do. The spirituality of being off the grid. To feed back to the world disconnect but beg from, not judgement and hate but love. Gratitude. Forgiveness. Be examples, humble beacons that light a different path. Not asking for more when you have enough. To return what you get not with scorn for how they got what they gave you but with blessings over their lives like monks do, who see the evil in the world, the system, etc, but choose to take bread, money, etc. taking serious their relative detachment from the world. And blessing those whom they wish would see the world differently rather than cursing worlds you wish would change. And to consider that perhaps you don't have it figured out either. That without their donations you might never be blessed to come face to face with these people who pull over, or smile, not because they are yuppie rich bastards but because they are humans with hearts, and their instincts kicked in and they gave to you. A quarter, a dollar, ten dollars, a ride, not out of ego but sincere desire to help, to be compassionate, to come to consider that you are not entitled to what they have because of your beliefs. To consider how hostile or insulting it is to not appreciate them, each one that gives to you, but take it was if they are not valuable human beings too. I challenge you travelers, hitch-hikers, not to judge or ridicule or exclude other travelers who dare to enter into a circuit that meets your world or crosses your paths. They probably admire or aspire to experience a piece of life, even if they don't know why or seem to do so according to you "for the wrong reasons". That you embody and rather than act like fascists or elitists, replicating the very privatizing hoarding judgmental exploitative fake world you reject. Taking them on as children that you can both teach and learn from. I challenge you all to take seriously your ability to be examples to others of why you think your way is right. The root of evil isn't the paper you put value into to fuel capitalism. It isn't even greed; it's competition. When two people compete they do so in order to WIN. Competition doesn't foster growth. This is such a ridiculous notion. A family that builds fences together builds puzzles together, declares every member every child a winner. Cooperates and works as a team that is the definition of family. Teaching scarcity fighting over pride that is competition. Grabbing what you need, this fosters and perpetuates selfishness. The grapes of wrath, the families working together have proved that his is a much more effective strategy than acts as if the other people were enemies. And when the "enemies" came humbly, bravely, these two people realize the real things that matter. From Alien to Monk: A Critical Transformation 12:30 a.m. My whole life, as I've often said, I have felt like an alien. Tonight, stepping out of my room at the Cloud Motel in Sioux Falls, down from the Pilot. A reward to myself of 40 dollars for the last night out. I wondered, why am I so happy? Why do I feel like my life is so changed? 7 days, from Vancouver B.C. to the border of MN have felt like months. Then it hit me. I no longer feel like an alien. I am not an alien anymore. I am a hitch-hiker in the galaxy. See, each one of us is a world. And what we call the world is a galaxy full of light, darnkess, life, desolation, dark matter, space, and so many stranger and unbelievable creatures. These past 7 days I ahve hitch-hiked from one world to another. From one person's world to another's world. And learned a little bit about each one. And not one of them was boring or disappointing. And they all had visible signs of life. Which is to say, love. And more specifically now, hope. The new hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy. Chapter one: United States. I slept in a field behind a pipe of hay on the outskirts of Rapid City. And watched a coyote approach me 15 yards away. I slept after drinking bud light in the moonlight. With a 26 year old man under his tarp in the woods talking about the weight of the world and off the grid living. he thanked me genuinely for the beer, but I was the one to get the undeserved gift of love. I had my back turned to the highway while brushing my teeth as a woman pulled up with her 17 year old daughter. She lost everything to Katrina., upper middle class and became gypsies in the wandering circuit of America and in Wyoming fell in love with the land. Decided to move completely off the grid. Stepping out of her car she said, just remember, whatever anybody tells you, you're good enough by far. I entertained back country road with stories of the road who entertained me with so much more with knowledge of words of Montana. I've been laughed at, cursed at, kicked up dust at, ridiculed, ignored, scoffed at, bathed in generosity, compliments, listening, sharing, exchanging meals, emails, trusted and escorted to new worlds. I'e cut myself, smacked in the face by my own self scaling the wall of a car wash in search of place to sleep. I've spent every night but one under the open sky but never felt alone. I've had deer hissing warning to their young as they stood next to my body, sending something but uncertain. I've watched road kids pan handle good money. I've lost the weight of so much fear and gained a penchant for getting dirty. A love of being enveloped by dust and mist. Of walking 3-7 miles on the highways in unfamiliar country at midnight. I've been in the back of two police cars and ticketed, warned, assisted, instructed, advised. I moked one pouch of drum that I paid 24 dollars for. In Vancouver. Which will be rolled into 5 cigarettes tomorrow and gone. I've shared my blood and tears and laughter with the earth. And so many so-called strangers which are actually just strange worlds. Who doesn't want to visit strange worlds? All these existing states of living, all these states of body and mind, united by a hitch-hiker in the galaxy who threads their worlds together with one thing-the love that they offer freely. People wave to me now, repeatedly, without my gear on. Why? Two young men in a car wave driving off from the motel. Not mockingly, as I am used to with young men, but in solidarity. I'm tired but don't care at all because I have this luxury. I bathed twice in fast food restaurants bathroom sinks. The 6th night at this hostel, as I came down the road to Pilot. 11 dollars for a shower. I knew hotel was better. Cloud, for 30 more dollars I can shower, wash clothes, and write and sleep well inside before heading home. I don't mean to change anyone. To convince anyone. All I mean to do is to reflect, as best as I can or think appropriate, the value of being an anthropologist of life. Who from time to time, if not daily, sets down their preconceptions and observes non-judgmentally and open heartedly the world of other we possibly only think we know. I don't even mean to be honest, to glorify, or heroicize or make intelligible the individual's stories or personalities that I met, so much as to say see, look, look! Here's evidence of love, of home, of goldmines of amazing perspectives of life unmined or unharvested by the rest of the world. And to beg you, to beg everyone, to beg, like monks, that you give me the benefit of the doubt enough to consider without if's and or but's, that what I say just might be of value to the quality of your existence on this planet in this one lifetime you know. Because this is what the monks did; give up what they owned to humble themselves, to beg for a ride from point A to point B in a direction you are already heading. For a piece of the bread you are already eating. If you call it mooching I challenge and dare you to be non-judgmental. A challenge to the ego that maybe you are supposed to learn something from so-called moochers the way the hardships in your life teach you wisdom, even if this wisdom seems to suggest that beggars should learn the same. For those who say liberty or death or leave! To consider that there are other worlds, other people's lives that you know nothing about, because your trajectory is different. For those who yell "Get a job" or Get a car" to instead either realize you don't HAVE to give anything and therefor you have no cause to be angry or hostile, or else taht in giving you might learn detachment or possession or entitlement to that whole you gave private property as if we made our worlds. As if our hard work and self made and "earned" aspects and items came to us because we have it figured out and we're rewarded with things we have a right to hoard. When all of these things cam from elsewhere. When that hard work was our freewill and had nothing to do with the free will and happenstance occurrences of other's lives. To consider that it's not our place to judge who deserves something based on appearances. Or who might take advantage of or squander what we give as if our gifts in those instances drain life from us when really they only drain life from our ego, vanity, belief in scarcity. When we see we are okay, when we see giving something up, or being robbed even, returns us to location of being closer to innocence. To consider the wives running from husbands who would kill them. The young kids whose parent's taught them they were nothing so they travel because it makes them feel like something. You see them with begging signs and say get a job and so something useful. I did and I had nothing. Perhaps instead you could say "I am compassionate, I am strong because I raised myself from nothing and earned my keep, and therefore I do not need to pick on those I find weak or ignorant or lazy. Because even if this is the case these labels explain why they are the way they are. Maybe that kid was beaten by his father or has stomach cancer and no family. I've met them. and are young and angry at the world. Lost searching and confused. So are begging you for money, dirty and smelly because it only takes a few days to become so smelly when you are homeless, especially if you are hopping trains. Maybe the drunk bum was a little boy who got laughed at or beat up because his parents taught him to hate when he was little. And now he is broken and lost and knows only how to piss and sleep. Consider me, your dubbed yuppie kid mooching. Hitch-hiking because I love your stories. Because I am doing field-work. Because you don't have to pick me up if you don't feel like it and I'm doing no harm. And to consider those who do pick me up; we have great conversation. We have 5, 10 minutes, or 600 miles of enjoyment, however far they are driving me. However many seconds they linger in handing me a dollar which I take only so as not to insult when what I really want is a ride. And little monks. And pray for and bless every one of them. Are you so proud and anti-spiritual that you don't even find a superficial entertainment in a gypsy, another traveling being, smiling, thanking, remembering you for your small and generous donation of a dollar or stopping your car, sandwich, company, a bed, advice, etc? "in the beginning such travelers enter these liminal zones transgressively to fulfill the Alien archetype. With various responsibilities to fulfill and tasks to accomplish they will journey through the worlds until they are ready to be Ascetics..." And to travelers. Vagrants. I bet you, not as a pathetic being but as a road monk, who appreciates and values your lives, whether you care or not, out of ignorance but educated choice, I beg you to consider choice. To consider the religion of what you do. The spirituality of being off the grid. To feed back to the world disconnect but beg from, not judgement and hate but love. Gratitude. Forgiveness. Be examples, humble beacons that light a different path. Not asking for more when you have enough. To return what you get not with scorn for how they got what they gave you but with blessings over their lives like monks do, who see the evil in the world, the system, etc, but choose to take bread, money, etc. taking serious their relative detachment from the world. And blessing those whom they wish would see the world differently rather than cursing worlds you wish would change. And to consider that perhaps you don't have it figured out either. That without their donations you might never be blessed to come face to face with these people who pull over, or smile, not because they are yuppie rich bastards but because they are humans with hearts, and their instincts kicked in and they gave to you. A quarter, a dollar, ten dollars, a ride, not out of ego but sincere desire to help, to be compassionate, to come to consider that you are not entitled to what they have because of your beliefs. To consider how hostile or insulting it is to not appreciate them, each one that gives to you, but take it was if they are not valuable human beings too. I challenge you travelers, hitch-hikers, not to judge or ridicule or exclude other travelers who dare to enter into a circuit that meets your world or crosses your paths. They probably admire or aspire to experience a piece of life, even if they don't know why or seem to do so according to you "for the wrong reasons". That you embody and rather than act like fascists or elitists, replicating the very privatizing hoarding judgmental exploitative fake world you reject. Taking them on as children that you can both teach and learn from. I challenge you all to take seriously your ability to be examples to others of why you think your way is right. The root of evil isn't the paper you put value into to fuel capitalism. It isn't even greed; it's competition. When two people compete they do so in order to WIN. Competition doesn't foster growth. This is such a ridiculous notion. A family that builds fences together builds puzzles together, declares every member every child a winner. Cooperates and works as a team that is the definition of family. Teaching scarcity fighting over pride that is competition. Grabbing what you need, this fosters and perpetuates selfishness. The grapes of wrath, the families working together have proved that his is a much more effective strategy than acts as if the other people were enemies. And when the "enemies" came humbly, bravely, these two people realize the real things that matter.