I got here too early. Way too early, at the end of February.
I wanted to get a good deal on a used car at a time of year when car sales are slow, and to pick up one from at least a year ago rather than a few months ago. Via Hertz Car Sales, anyway, more reliable than Bob's Random Car Sales Lot or a private party.
I have no home here anyway, so I needed to make a transaction happen within a span of days rather than of weeks or months. That part worked. And then what?
I sat. In the rain. In the rain inside the library. In the rain inside the car. In the rain, sleeping, at night, in the car, listening to the rain pound down. For a long time now. Like a week short of three months, although the rain let up about a month back. Despite that, I still have to wait.
First I waited for the rain to end, and now I'm waiting for high-country snow to melt.
I've checked. Anything above 4000 feet (1200m) still lies under snow. Can't walk there. Can't drive close enough to walk there. The backcountry is closed, the roads are. Even some low places I could go have washed-out roads, so I can't go there either. And now the Memorial Day weekend is here, and all sorts of nuts will be out driving around. Have to wait that out.
Maybe in a week. I will get out. I will. That's why I'm here.
Right now, though, I'm waiting. Still waiting. Waiting is harder than it sounds, partly because everywhere I go, I'm visible. Out there. A fixture of any public place I happen to be in, and there are no private spaces for me here.
I used to live here. I had an apartment. I liked it. I was in my apartment a lot, and when I wasn't in there, I knew that I could return to it, go through the door, shut the door, and be home. Alone. Alone and quiet and safe and private. I can't do that now, not here, not at this time.
I have a car. I can move, I can drive, I can go, but I can't drive home. I can't be home. I have none. I can be a guy sitting in his car eating in a parking lot, or a guy parked, sleeping in the back of his car, in what I hope is a place that no one will investigate.
Everything I do is public now — sleeping, eating, bathing, pissing, shitting, traveling, cleaning house, making my bed, reading, sorting, packing, unpacking. Everything. All of it.
Even if I'm out in the woods, privacy is temporary, if I happen to be in a place where no one else is, at that moment, then I am alone for that moment only. When others are around my privacy is partial — screened from one side if I'm on the other side of my car, which just leaves me open and visible and vulnerable, at least to being seen, on the side I'm on, anyway. There is no resolution, no absolute, as in closing the solid front door of my apartment and shutting out all the world without exception.
Now I'm out there, out here. I'm here, and if you are too, then you are too, and all I can do is to put up with it, or drive away. Meanwhile I have to do only those things that are allowed in public, and not do the others, and try not to look too "suspicious", which is a description these days.
It gets stale. It does.
If I do any more of this next year, and I might, or might not, I'm doing it in a van. It would not be glorious or luxurious but it would be private. That's all I really crave. I could sit on the floor of a van with a squirt bottle and washcloth and bathe. I could do that, with the cover provided by even a small van, and be satisfied, in my own little way, but I can't do that in the vehicle I have now, which is too small even for me, and all windows.
So later then. We'll let things stew for now. I have months to go. We'll let things stew and later on I'll decide yes or no, or stay or go, but I won't do things this way again. I am not a public person and need to live up to that