Hello internet,
I’ve been writing a lot the last few weeks about our semi-official plan to leave Texas. A plan that has been a long time coming, but often changes too quick for us to get a saddle on it. We’re gonna move and then we’re not, we’re going to Mexico or Maine or Alabama. In a van or a camper or a motel. We want to be traveling and settled, somewhere gone but still familiar, we want it all and it is simply too much to ask for.
We have lived here too long and we are leaving in the morning some day
I wrote most of this a month ago, but “someday” finally came. We realized that what we really wanted was to be gone already and that didn’t need a new van or a sold house. It just needed bags packed and gas money.
“Don’t let the best be the enemy of the good.”
- Voltaire
(I don’t remember where I heard this quote, but its been with me a lot lately)
So howdy from a motel somewhere in southern Illinois. We are four days down the road and it already feels like home. We are still asking a lot of this trip and I can’t wait to see how it answers us.
Below I’ve included a short piece I wrote last month about leaving - or at least about trying to.
Thanks for reading.
Alex Sparks
OnlyOnly
y_O
Trying to Be Gone Already
We are trying to move. Trying to pack up and head out, to rejoin the road, to buzz off, burn out and disappear.
We are trying to run away, to finally ditch Texas cause we are fresh start over it.
Trying to be young and careless and free again, to be boldly ignorant in our bliss, bare bummed and sun tanned, too much love here not to be skinny dipped in.
We are trying to plant roots or sow our wild oats or reap whatever it is we’ve been sewing.
We are trying to be gone already, midnight bags packed and postcard goodbyes, two ghosts gone to haunt another house, so sick of being homesick at home we are regurgitating glorified homelessness, gonna go gentrify the Walmart parking lot again, burn fossil fuels to dig in the trash. We are a rolling contradiction, but we are doing our best.
We are trying to chase some lost belief in a better world. Trying to bottle naivety and sell it as hope.
We are trying to save money and make money and to stop thinking about money so damn much.
We are trying to just go, to change, to heal, to live a life again.
We are trying to have an adventure like kids do, like we did when we were.
We are trying to live up to our own self-imposed grandiosity, always lugging more stone to the peak of the mountain in hopes to make it taller, always full mouthed asking for more and more and more.
We are trying to do better, to be better, to break bad habits and build some new ones.
We are trying to get out of here, out of Texas and the heat and the politics. Trying to be polite, but we are ticked off with the way things keep going. It’s not right and I got nothing left to say about it.
We are trying to make wise decisions, to be good stewards and practitioners of our convictions.
We are trying to go to the voices, the call of the wild, the wind and the whiplash of wanting, that ol’ familiar sirens’ song. Top 40 highway blues sung loud into a megaphone. The lights flash or pass and taper off.
We are trying to pull over, to camper van and casually vanish.
We are trying to be gone by winter, back by never, but we won’t forget to write this time.
We are trying to moonwalk finger gun our way out of here to a round of familiar applause, trying to see all the people, to love those who love us, to be good daughters and brothers and friends.
Trying not to be all ghost, trying on some matter, some bone, and blood, and vigor.
Trying vulnerability too, but mostly just oversharing to an empty room.
We are also trying not to burn this house down, trying not to throw everything away again, trying not to forget Pilgrim in his hidey-hole, trying not to keep too much or too little.
We are trying to live these last few months and love them as such, to be grateful for our time on Windstream and grateful for the next Gulfstream, Airstream or stream-stream we find ourselves in.
We are trying to let go and let what comes come.
We are trying to take things one day at a time without getting stuck here, trying to live in the present without forgetting to grow forward.
We are trying to start over.
We are trying to try something new.
We are trying to try to try, keyword trying.
Trying trying trying.
Love this! A former nomad who loves traveling, but also loves to be a homebody I get this. A watcher of the tube living in PA. Thank you for the words!
Feels like you guys are growing out of the education you grew up with and that's amazing.