Although he means to be lighthearted, Paddy thinks I'm looking a little ratty. He's concerned that I'm essentially homeless and my rootlessness a manifestation of potential mental illness. I'm sure I'm suffering from something that resembles mental illness, but somehow I'm not prepared to receive a diagnosis from a guy who lives in a cabin in the woods without electricity. I remind him that everyone where we used to work thinks he's off his rocker and gone completely Walden Pond. Whenever one lives in an uncommon manner, the mainstream judge them as disharmonious and strange.
However, it would probably serve me to settle in one place for a month and not live out of the back of a truck, as free as that is. A woman I know lives in a very charming house on a lane in a south Jersey barrier island. Although her street is surrounded by commercial property and a boardwalk amusement park, her area is all residential, with older homes with old copper beaches planted on the easements. Every August she leaves for a few weeks as she can't take the crowds and heads to her family's other house in coastal Maine. As I taught both of her children, she trusts me also with her house and her cat and plants. And, and she lives just a block from the beach were I learned to surf, it's as close to ideal as I could hope for.
So, as of August 1, that'll be my address through Labor Day weekend. Ah, a bed in a room, a kitchen in which I can cook, legal parking, and access to what normal people would understand as a bathroom. That'll be just the ticket.
Also, I ran four miles today and feel ready for the next adventure.
