A Memory 2010

I am out in the woods. I am going to create a new world. I am going to start everything from the ground up. My physical suffering isn't the point - it's winter - as I'm already suffering, like it or not. I have a broken leg. And I'm cast out. I've dropped myself out. Society might as well not even exist. Except for the strange boy up the hill, and his awful parents who live in the filthiest trailer I have ever even conceived.

It gives me shudders to write this.

I'm down in a valley and there's an open space bordered by woods. About 2 acres. My dog is with me. Radar, the dog I have now. My best friend. The night before, I'd lit the wood stove in the abandoned car port. The space was too big and open to get warm, so I built a little shelter on the other side of the wall where the heat came through, in order to trap it. No telling if that was necessary, but it got us through the night. Port wine helped me forget that this was scary and almost not even possible. You can't build a new world. You can't create a new life. Right? You cannot do it alone. I know that's right. Or, I know that now.

I feel like I can't publish this without some catharsis. It's an awful point in the story. It's also an amazing point. It's a story that might need to be told because it was unusual, like all our stories. There's a peace mingled with terror as I write this. There's a knowing that one doesn't run from where one's been. There's no catharsis that happened on this land, just some very spooky stories. I wasn't there long, about 5 days in this location. How surreal. This is where I was. It's where I've been.