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Breaker, breaker, this is WAR1974 from I-64.

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That’s right. I’ve gone back East. I got a hankering to see the ocean and, well, I can do whatever the hell I want. 

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I’ve been up and down the eastern seaboard more times than I can count. If I had a stomping ground, this would be it. At least from Massachusetts to Florida, I never got up to Vermont or Maine much. I did spend a winter in Hastings, New Hampshire once. Tiny town, good place to catch some quiet. But the problem with certain small towns is that being a stranger is the most conspicuous thing you can be. People get curious. Curious people are never very good for business. 

Being on the road for the last few weeks, it’s really made me realize how strange it’s been to live in the same place for six years. Same house, same town, same roommate. The last time that was my life, I was fourteen years old. After that, the longest I ever spent anywhere was the four or five months at a time in New York. I guess that was home base as much as anything was, but it never felt like home. 

And bumfuck Pennsylvania sure was never home, but you spend six years straight somewhere and it becomes…something. You grow accustomed to things, like the way the morning sounds different in winter than it does in spring, when every goddamn bird in the state elects themselves as your alarm clock. You learn the patterns of the light over the fields behind your house, you know just how to hit the fridge when it starts making that rattling sound. You grow around someone else’s habits, make room for them, no matter how unwilling. 

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So, let me tell you, it has been pretty nice to just sprawl. The car is an absolute mess and I tried cleaning up the West Virginia house best I could, in case those owners ever do come back, but lord knows I probably left something behind. When I eat my lunch on the side of the road, I put my feet up on the dash and I don’t take my boots off first. The toolbox in my trunk is organized with my flawless system and it has stayed organized, because no one else is going rooting through it, moving things around and messing everything up. 

Not that being out here in the great wide world doesn’t come with a price. I’m definitely not sleeping as well as I usually do, what with all the strange sounds. Or, not even strange, it’s not like there’s very much out here, but just…unfamiliar. I have to make every meal myself, which is why I’ve been living mostly on jerky, and I tore my favorite pair of jeans the other day and have always been crap at sewing things up evenly. Not to mention that whole incident with the gas stove the other night. 

It’s a small price to pay, though. Freedom shouldn’t come at a cost but…well, I guess that’s sort of how we ended up in this situation in the first place, isn’t it?

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