Running Free: July 9th-July 25th ‘07

So those pots I was going to fire? Never happened. I gathered the wood. I broke the wood. Then I broke into tears. After evaluating my situation (lonely, depressed, hating my job), I decided the only reasonable thing to do was drive across the country to Portland, Oregon. So Sunday morning I packed up half of my belongings and abandoned the other half in the woods giving Rock Scout instructions to use them as he wished or store them in a safe place. I was unstoppable. I drove for three days sleeping only a few hours each night. I dyed and cut my hair in a hotel room in Des Moines, Iowa. I quit my job via email in western Wyoming. I arrived in Portland around 6:30 pm on Tuesday. Urban Scout didn’t know I was coming and wasn’t home, but he would arrive shortly.

I have no plans to move to the West Coast. I expect to be back in PA come September. So why did I do this? Love? Nah. Money? Haha. Adventure? Over it. I’ve had my share of psychotherapy. I harbor no illusions. This maneuver was escape pure and simple, a distraction from inner emotional turmoil by changing superficial circumstances, hair color, location, etc. This isn’t the first time I’ve “run away”. At age 16 I tried to canoe to Pittsburgh alone. I once went to Philadelphia with my sister to look at colleges and then took the train to New York City under the pretext of visiting my friend in Brooklyn. Visit I did, but instead of returning I hopped a bus to Vermont where I got a job in the library and lived in the woods until I got sick of it found a new place to stay by holding up a cardboard sign outside of a punk rock show saying “Lost Puppy Take Me Home, Please”. I lived on an ashram in the Catskills and at a raw foods ecovillage in Costa Rica. I took a roadtrip with a boyfriend around the south and relocated in Charlottesville, VA for several months. None of this shit made me happy. It only threw me more off balance. So I moved back to my hometown and forged a new, deeper relationship with the land. Still didn’t make me happy, but it’s the most meaningful relationship I’ve ever had, and that’s why I can’t move to the primitivist haven of Portland, even though I adore Urban Scout and all the other fine people I have met here.

Work wasn’t sooo bad. The day before I left we found a great patch of black raspberries, the Cadillac of wild berries.

My new haircut. Not sure if I like it, but I was going for sort of a punk rock meets white trash look, Betty Paige does Elvira.