"You can do anything," she tells me. "You can go anywhere you want. There's nothing holding you back."
I don't need her to tell me that. Or maybe I do. Shit. Maybe I really need someone I love and trust to remind me that this is my life to live. To validate the sentiment that I don't owe anybody my allegiance. To push me to take advantage of not being tethered to anyone or anything. To remind me that YORTL.
You only remember this life.
馃悽
She doesn't say these words with envy or jealousy, but her tone runs parallel to poignancy. She's my cousin. And she's a mom. Once upon a time she could do all these things, too. She made a choice, a change that she loves. I can make a choice, too. A change that I love.
I'm just trying to figure out how the fuck to do it.
It is acceptable to point and laugh at these flowers.
Money. It's one of those things that determines the outcome of many other things. Money is a tricky bastard. It's energy that flows between humans, energy that has been turned into physical and digital matter and integrated with all kinds of associations like entitlement, status, rights, worth to others, worth to self. Money has the potential to be something beautiful, a traceable, trackable exchange of love and fulfillment of basic needs and beyond. Instead it inspires corruption, theft, selfishness and self-loathing because it tickles the core of our biological need to survive and turns it into greed. At least that's how I see it. The trick is to disregard all my previous conceptions of money and how much or how little of it I believe I deserve and instead look at it as a tool that I must acquire to attain the lifestyle I want to lead. It helps that I live in a part of the world where that can still happen. Where I have control over acquiring this tool.
I'm very fortunate.
View from Frary Peak Trail, Utah.
Freedom. It goes hand in hand with money when considering the life I want to lead.
Freedom to say "Nope, sorry, I am not available to work that month because I have plans to snuffle the flora of a distant mountain peak that, by foot, will take me hours away from the nearest town."
Freedom to fill the tank of my expensive landship with expensive fossil fuels so I can get myself and my little snugglemutt out into the partial or complete wilderness so I can feel all the things that remind me that I am alive, including but not limited to:
awe
fear
hunger
loneliness
joy
love
outrage
melancholy
regret
gratification
gratitude
desire
envy
lust
Confidence. A sneaky school of little fish. Fast. You need a lot of it to sustain the dreams. When it's real, it slips away easily. When it's false, well, you can impress a lot of people with that big fish picture but nobody can eat the fish in that picture, not even you.
I need all the confidence I can get.
I want a life on the road. And a home to come home to. I want to head out for a month or two, then come home and write about it, then head back out again. I want people to read what I write and I want them to like it enough to pay me to write more so they can read more. I want to spread the gospel of confidence that is revealed to me in the church of the roads to and through the ancient texts of the wilderness. I want to be vulnerable as fuck and I want everyone to see it. Every atom of vulnerability I share will find a home in meaning something to someone, somewhere. Will make that vulnerability safe to feel. Will turn the perceived weaknesses back into the human strengths they deserve to be.
I don't have a college degree. Only took a couple writing classes about twenty years ago. I'm not even sure I have a developed voice or style. And I have no idea how to turn my words loose on the world in a way that allow me to continue my pursuit of more experiences and ultimately more words to share.
Intention. It's like confidence meets freedom meets the positive energy of money and they have a threesome and somehow someone ends up pregnant by the other two and in the womb of the mother of this dream the cells of intention divide and divide again until they become something big. Something real. And with a good deal of grunting and pushing and swearing and sweating and hard work I'll push that dream out into the world and make the choice and the change that I love.
I can do anything.
All pictures and words copyright Anna Horvitz (me) and cannot be used without my consent.