R2DBUS, A Saga: Part 1

About a month and a half ago, we embarked on our (trip?) (life?) (excursion...?) BOUT with building and existing in a tiny house converted from a late 90s school bus. We started out in the Dallas/Fort Worth area of Texas, having spent several months there and finding all the jobs and contributions we tried to do failing and crumbling beneath us.

One of us fleeing from a job gone awry and one of us fleeing toward a kidnapped child, we find ourselves in Johnson County, Texas, subsisting on sparse work and living at a Christian Lodge, more or less out of our cars and on the road.

Fast-forward 2 months later, commuting to jobs and endless time spent on craigslist trying to land a paying gig- any gig- to just get ahead a little bit and settle down like a "normal person". We didn't really know that we would forever negate our status as members in that club until one week, when we decided after leaving the lodge and developing a somewhat-functional system of rearranging all our paired down belongings around in an '03 Suzuki Vitara every night into a makeshift backseat bed that often left kinked necks and stiff backs screaming in the morning...that we decided to start a search for a more inhabitable vehicle. We had given up everything. Throw us in the ocean for all we care... The barely meaningful ennui of scraping together enough resource to have a couple meals a day and avoid the aggressive Texan police force that goes out of their way to persecute and harass you started, after two months on the road of sneaking into campsites and finding loopholes that annoyed restaurant employees ad nauseum, it started to become nauseating. Nothing related to anything else in the world: the potential and the basic ethic of life, what neo-new-agers might call "The Energy" of the place was complacent, oppressive, stagnant, inert, decaying, delusional, dull. Our color-bedecked, long-haired beingness had no place in this armpit of a state (so we thought until we got to Austin, but more on that later...)

When people undergo a run of bad luck that drains them completely of their entire will to subsist with an acceptable standard of living and basic necessity management and provision, it is a sad state, indeed. Doughnuts became the highlight of our day. I will say, during this time of modern asceticism, we rediscovered a vitality and ability to create art like never before and a will to try tricks skating that could have killed us; perhaps if it wasn't for the passive suicidal feelings we never would have wandered into the area of the psyche that thought it so appealing- nay, pertinent- to take such risks. Poverty and lack have their place in spiritual advancement, that is for sure.

Without divulging the details of all the theys and whos who fucked us over and under the bus (ha), we'll suffice it to say that the underbelly of people were definitely apparent. People are not afraid to expose themselves to those that they perceive to have less power than them. Waking up in a new neighborhood or area everyday, sometimes by cops and sometimes by congregating churchgoers (some more friendly than others) stimulated the adrenal glands and exhausted the body's natural will to provoke action in the day.

Denied library cards. Food droughts. Rude, selfish drivers. Employers who refuse to give fair payment, if any at all. Sexists. Users.

Yet we persisted. Schedules, public libraries- no photo ID: a system that chooses only its subscribers to acknowledge as legitimate people. Sneaking into KOA camps to sleep and shower.

Deep within the struggle something creative and active, despite the day's despondence came through. Most contact with friends had dissipated and we relied on one another. Every night, we worked together to shift ALL of our belongings onto the roof or the ground or the front seat to create a space to sleep. Within the midst of this frustrating cycle, a realization happened that we were not really any different from those outside of the privileged and comfortably indifferent sect of society. The souls who begged and struggled and had to make it through the day without unleashing the fury on some poor soul to displace the unfairness experienced for no apparent reason. God's forsaken children found themselves roaming in similar walks and different bodies. It didn't matter that we were "pretty" and talented, there were people trying to exploit and use us, and we were moving targets.

#bus #buslife #journeys #adventures #renegade