"I was, in fact, homesick for wildness, and when I found it I knew how intimately - how resonantly - I belonged there. We are charged with this - all of us. For the human spirit has a primal allegiance to wildness, to really live, to snatch the fruit and suck it, to spill the juice." - Jay Griffiths, Wild: an Elemental Journey

Sunday, May 27, 2012

My Plans To Go Everywhere

You know that 80's movie called Man in the Moon with Reese Witherspoon?  It was like her first movie, about two sisters growing up in the country and falling in love with the same farm boy, when then dies in a tragic tractor accident?  Well you know how they sleep on the screened porch as their bedroom all through the summer?  I want that.  (The sleeping on a screened porch part, not the tragic farm boy tractor accident part.)

I want to sleep on a screened in porch on a summer night with crickets chirping outside, in a white, cotton nightgown.  I want to live like that.

(randommovieclub.blogspot.com)

And you know that movie Legends of the Fall with Brad Pitt out in Montana (no, not A River Runs Through It, but damn I love that movie too)?  You know how they live on so much land that you can look in any direction and see only rolling mountains, and they bury their whole family, one at a time, on the little graveyard up on the hill?  I want that, too.  (The expanse of beautiful land part, not the tragic family death caused by moonshine and war part.)

I want to be engulfed by mountains so big I forget my own name in their presence.  I want slow days spent lying on the hill, and exciting days spent breaking in wild horses and fighting off grizzly bears.  I want to wear animal-hide jackets that I tanned myself - and swishy skirts and cowboy boots.

(all-movie-goofs.info)

And you know that movie The Beach, where Leonardo DiCaprio stumbles upon that commune on an island off of Thailand?  You know how they all just live there happily together, fishing and cooking and building and celebrating and growing and living, until that Swedish guy gets eaten by a shark and the majijuana growers come and shoot up the place and they all have to leave?  I want that, too.  (The island commune living happily together part, not the tragic shark accident/drug growing militia part.)

I want to live in a small community or village where the only things we do are directly related to our shared living - no separate workplaces, no traffic, no grocery stores, no structures that we didn't build with our own hands from the materials we found lying around us.

(123rf.com)
I want it all.  I want to see every place on the whole earth.  I want to meet every kind of person.  I want to see every kind of landscape.  I want to have every type of adventure.

I have worked so hard over the past year untethering myself from all responsibility and obligation (financial, occupational, and relational), that come June, I will literally have no one expecting anything from me.  I don't have to be anywhere at any time unless I choose to go there.

This is certainly exciting, and exactly what I have been waiting for.  And when I have the whole world as a possible next step, how can I choose in which direction to go?


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4 comments:

  1. Be my climbing buddy this summer. :)

    I desperately need one!

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  2. Oh dude I've been thinking about coming out there a lot. Like for the whole summer. But I'm really out of climbing shape! I haven't been for like two months! You'll have to whip me back into shape. Anyway I'll FB message you soon about my maybe-plans. :)

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  3. It is very feasible to live in Thailand they way you describe. I met several people who have amazingly simple lives on Koh Phangan.

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  4. That's great to hear. Are they Thai people or American ex-pats?

    ReplyDelete