Terrible things were happening in Connecticut. When I wrote Scar Tissue, I was coming to grips with the fact that after decades of keeping my head down and staying out of trouble, I was suddenly facing my worst case scenario. It ended up being so much more than that. I cannot explain what has happened to me. It is technically describable, but I write this now, over three years later, from a place beyond exhaustion. I have more to do than recount memories of situations on par with scenes from horror movies. So let’s move on. I had to get out.
“All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you…” — Richard Adams, Watership Down
Knowing only that I had recently broken up with my boyfriend of four years and was now a freelancer no longer commuting to an office, my father invited me to live down in South Carolina with the rest of my immediate family to save on rent. At this point, I knew I would be following The Path: my life and previous conceptions of the world would be destroyed, I would live in a constant state of agony, but — without a doubt — I would survive all of it. There would be no point in resisting. I had been found out. Making Vulturesong was still my job to do, but I could not learn what I needed to learn about life and death if I did not confront my deepest fear of losing my financial stability and slipping between the cracks of society, which was a smokescreen for the One True Fear: the fear of death, shared by all mortal creatures. I wrote more about this, exactly one day before I became homeless, in Liminal Space, where I announced I would no longer charge money for access to my Patreon:
“My purpose is to teach and to share, and my message is one of love, and knowing you love always in the face of death. This is a truth that when fully internalized dispels fear, as all fears are a fear of death, and only with love can you accept it and release yourself from fear's grip. That is a freedom that no one can take from you.
The fear of death is what fuels the fires of capitalism and fascism, the enemies of humanity, and its proponents know this. Our fears seem to be numerous and keep us divided, scrambling for ourselves, when they are really just one fear, disguised in the traumas of the day. My unchallenged fear of death is what kept me trapped in a job that was destroying me, and it was what kept Vulturesong behind a paywall until now. I ask you, just as I must ask myself every day: what would you do, if you were not afraid?”
Above: Angel Oak of Johns Island, taken two days before becoming homeless.
Our paths in life are inextricable from the paths of others. We are all connected, even if painfully. When I moved down to Charleston County, a collision was inevitable. Anyone with abusive parents knows no matter how cordial encounters may begin, your luck eventually runs out. An argument with my father one day turned to him calling for my brother’s medical incarceration the next. My brother had nothing to do with this conflict, but when is abuse ever logical? I had lost track of how many times my father had previously called for my brother to be locked up in a psych ward because he felt like it. He couldn’t punish me, so he punished my brother, and it took the doctors three weeks to admit that he showed no signs of schizophrenia or aggression and release him without any diagnosis or course of treatment. The cruelty was the point.
I was livid, and vocal in defense of my brother as I grieved his absence. A few days after my brother was taken away in handcuffs, my father drew up the paperwork for my legal eviction, signed by police. I did not give him the opportunity to serve it. Within two hours, I had packed up my car with camping gear, clothes, art supplies, legal documents, and electronics; racked up my bike; and tossed my house key on the dining room table. I did not say goodbye.
I did not know where I would end up. All I knew was that my path was leading me out of South Carolina. I picked up some falafel, checked into a local hotel, and started planning a trip across the United States. My first goal was to see some friends in Texas, so I looked West. I booked a hotel in Atlanta within walking distance of the Georgia Aquarium and went to bed comforted only by the idea of having some fun on what I could only guess would be a very long road trip.
If this was all to be my trial by fire — if I was going to spend all of my money for the express purpose of building myself back up from nothing — I was going to see as much as I could and do as much good as I could. As a follower of Buddhist philosophy for nearly half of my lifetime, I knew that I could no longer ignore a deep-seated sense of responsibility to live monastically. I put in a request to cash out my retirement accounts early, which, after six and a half years of deposits, had exactly zero investment growth. This ended up being roughly $41,000 on top of about $5,000 in savings. I realized the correct course of action was to spend all of it as quickly as possible — to pour gasoline on this fire and see what the universe had in store for me. If I was meant to crash and burn, I wanted it to be over with as quickly as possible. I would shed any attachment to my identity, redistribute my corporate savings across the country, and see if anything could actually manage to kill me.
No one believes a monk with a 401k.
The next day, I checked out of my hotel and plotted my route through Columbia, home of my favorite restaurant: A Peace of Soul. I’d travel over 11,000 miles across 32 states and not find a single restaurant that came close to serving a better vegan mac and cheese. I craved that mac and cheese every day for the last 10 weeks of my journey.
For the next four months, I would live wildly. I traveled so far, so fast, and met so many people scattered across this beautiful country — working Americans, artists, musicians, engineers, scientists, a politician, foreign and domestic military... but the best days of my journey were spent hiking through nearly two dozen different National Parks and Monuments. I left each one a changed person. I took over 10,000 photos with my phone, nearly 800 with an instant film camera, but never once did I feel like I was distracted or living outside the present moment. I am always here. I love this place.
I’d learn that all moments of euphoria would be matched by equal devastation, one way or another. The universe is balanced like that.
