A chain of lakes and a network of winding roads. A tiny little town shut down by the powers that be. Clocks stopped. Everything on pause.
A visit to the great north woods. Sand in every direction and birch trees and pine trees and a shuffle board court long forgotten.
This is where my kids live. Way up here in all of this. Way up here in all of this quiet and seclusion. Way up here in this foreign land.
And me? I do not live here. I am transient. I am a visitor in the places I occupy and I have been for years. I am a loner. I am lonely. Hunkered down in the back of this 25 year old van trying to find the smallest of pleasures to ease the pain that comes with wandering around. Coffee from fresh beans. Incense in the air. Anything. A smile. A laugh. I’m pretty good at it. In fact, I’m great. I laugh and I joke and I always have the words to make light of everything because it’s what I’ve been doing for twenty years...finding the silver lining.
Twenty years. Twenty fucking years. Not a drop of liquor. Not a single drug. Nothing to alter my mind. For twenty years I have worked to make chicken salad out of chicken shit and I have done an amazing job. I really should be proud of the effort.
Instead, I’m in the back of a van and I’m lonely and it doesn’t matter if I’m in this van or in the room at the house or in a crowd of people...I’m lonely, but man have I got the jokes and the funny stories and the stories of amazing adventures. I have it all. A library full. It’s incredible the lengths I’ve gone to. Coping mechanisms. Walls. All of it and yet somehow I expect to find some exit door. Somehow I’ve convinced myself that I’ll find that escape hatch and I’ll step through it and I’ll find that alternative universe where I feel a part of, rather than apart from. Someday. I keep telling myself that. It helps with the present. Whistling in the dark.