Postscript to a preview

So that little two-parter… if you read all the way to the end, I appreciate it.

I wrote it the way I did as a bit of a preview. Not the story itself per se or even the writing. It previews my having stories to tell at all again.

I started this late-life writing thing three and a half years ago. I spent the first year writing about people, places, and experiences. That changed and then stopped altogether. I haven’t had stories to tell because I haven’t been living them. I haven’t had people to talk about because I haven’t been meeting any – or even seeing the ones I know. And lastly, I haven’t had places to talk about because I have been scarcely leaving my apartment.

That last bit is about to change rather dramatically. Two weeks from now, I’m leaving my apartment and not coming back to it. I’m not fleeing to Iceland. I’m just giving up my place. Mostly, what I’m doing is coming out from under my bed, leaving the house, and getting back to living… and for a while, the ‘living’ part will be more important than having a bed.

A year from now, I will be living somewhere in Maryland. That is the plan, at least. Where in Maryland and when exactly I “move there” are both TBD. It may well not be until next year. I kinda hope it isn’t. Between leaving my current place and settling into a next one, I’m just going to do some living. There will be ample time for us to talk about: 1) what that looks like; and 2) how I can make it work, but the shortest possible answer to #2 is “by living as cheaply as possible” – and my doing exactly that is good, healthy, and necessary.

As I tried my best to explain in a couple earlier posts, I’ve been trapped in a ‘double-bind’ this year. I’ve been under absolutely asphyxiating financial pressure. I’ve basically had a gun to my head. In order to escape it, I need to write. However, in order to write, I need to not have a gun to my head. You see the problem there. It’s circular. I need to not have the problem to do what’s required to not have the problem.

With that being the case, the very best I can do to break the impasse is by starting with cutting what I need to live on to as close to nothing as possible. The smaller the burden, the smaller the gun. The smaller the gun, the greater my ability to write. Follow that logical path and I can lower the tide and raise the boat enough in combination to finally get my voice back to stay. And wouldn’t that be nice.

I just have to take my life to near zero first.

Fortunately, I have something going for me there: I need almost nothing and couldn’t give a remote shit about having anything more – and I’m certainly not the only writer who has felt that way.

One of my favorite American authors, Cormac McCarthy, spent a whole stretch of his life living out of cheap motels owning little more than a typewriter and a light bulb. The rooms were often too dark to see the typewriter, so he traveled with a light bulb to see the keys… and that was all he needed. He then lived in a barn with no running water and a pond for a bathtub for years. Even after he had success, he lived low in El Paso shooting pool at a local place as if he was local and not a guy who won a Pulitzer.

That to me is both the dream and the model.

There is not a fiber of my being that aspires to, or even wants, to achieve a level of comfort that distances me from the lived experiences of most people. To me, that would not only be unfulfilling, it would be ruinous.

I *like* the fact that sitting at a diner counter recently, I flashed to having a deep contempt for the owner after hearing her scold a server harshly while I could see the subtle fear on the server’s face because *she needs that job*.

That server happens to have a sick relative and an adult child at home who is sharing her car because they can’t afford to get theirs fixed. On breaks, she goes out back and crouches down in a squat with a cigarette in one hand and her phone in the other just to escape for a few minutes. She is under enormous strain. She is just trying to survive.

I like that I know all of that backstory from seeing this person and caring that I did. I like that I have empathy and compassion for them. All of that goes away if the cost of my breakfast becomes so distant a nothing, I can no longer even access what it is like to be that person. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life struggling. I just don’t need particularly much to feel like I’m not.

What I care about most is being among the living in contact with my own humanity and theirs. Over the past month, I have been returning to that. I went away with another human for the first time in two years, and traveled to see people for the first time in a year. I got out of my place and got back into *being me*… and when I am that person, y’all, stories occur.

I mean, stories OCCUR.

In the past month alone, I’ve ended up in Ohio alley looking for the world’s biggest drumsticks; gotten briefly mixed up with a motorcycle gang; tromped through ‘Picklesburgh’; met a half-dozen random people; and come away with a whole bunch of stories that range from comical to moving. [The motorcycle gang story is hilarious. You’ll be hearing it.]

And all of those actual experiences cost me a couple hundred bucks total.

The most expensive part of putting myself in position to have them: gas and tolls.

I’ll eat the PB&J. I’ll crash on a sofa or in a tent or in my car if I have to. I’ll travel with a duffel and my laptop. I just don’t want to miss out on any more of… me.

Long story, long: the times, they is a changin’. Your boy ain’t outta the wind, but I’m out from under the bed. I have to live stories to tell them. Hope y’all don’t mind if I get back to living, and hope you’ll come for the ride.