I Don't Believe in Anything But Everything

It is 4:30 in the morning and I can’t sleep, this happens almost every night. Sometimes it happens at 2 a.m. sometimes at 3 or 4---it just happens. Currently, I am at another Comfort Suites, a beigey sort of room, comfortable but non-descript. There was wind where I was camped, a lot of it, and I needed to get away from it. My frame of mind was getting less and less positive.

I need to get away from this.

I said that to myself as I carried the stool stool out into the bush:

I need to get away from this.

Unlike a lot of van dwellers, I have the means to spontaneously book a (modest) hotel room and understand how fortunate that makes me. I understand that but I also struggle; I’ve been trying to get people interested in my books---in me---for over thirty years. I wrote out a paragraph going into that and then deleted it; no one fucking wants to hear that. This year has been amazing in many ways, I need to focus on that.

I do not believe in anything but everything. I wrote The American Outback---(out on April 3rd)---about how I feel like an alien in the country I was born in: I loathe shopping malls and beige housing developments and how everyone feels this need to rush around. The lack of curiosity. We worry about things like credit reports and whether or not people react to our social media posts and not so much about all the garbage on the roadsides and how we built these large cities like Phoenix, Arizona and Los Angeles, California where large cities have no business being. But The American Outback is not a book about the desert, it is about a love triangle. I was thinking about that yesterday, Valentine’s Day; it is a fucked up love story.

I was in a relationship for six and a half years. My ex-wife wanted a life of “security” whereas my desire was to have a life of “freedom.” She wanted---and did most of the word towards us getting---a mortgage. We both worked at our jobs for years (solid job history) and got our credit scores up. I could care less about that sort of thing, but I loved my wife and wanted her to be happy. The thing is, that life made me miserable---have you ever lived with a miserable bastard? It affected my marriage and played a role in the end of it. The American Outback is about that tug of war between trying to be a good partner to someone and yet understanding that to do that you have to lead a life you don’t want any part of it.

I don’t want much in this world but what I need I have to have: Nature. Solitude. Something to write on. I have lived comfortably in the 37 square feet of my minivan (usually). I adapted to using a national forest or BLM land as my bathroom (respectfully, digging cat holes has a weird sort of art to it). I am going to put out a book every three or four months but I have no idea how to market them, maybe I never will. Maybe every book will only sell four copies; either I need to come up with some brilliant marketing strategy or be okay with that. I don’t believe in anything but everything; I don’t follow a religion or a sports team, I don’t fly the flag of any nation, I don’t believe in 401ks or credit reports or feel the need to have a big television or a fancy SUV or an enormous travel trailer---

But I do believe in the healing power of nature. I love walking around the desert, across washes, and see that in what may seem like a barren place, there is all sorts of life. You see the patterns of a deep and volatile river. In the spring, birds and insects and reptiles began darting around the edges. There is life, even in the most desolate places; you just have to slow down enough to see it.

Izk