this feels like an odd post to follow the one about baby alice...but seeing these photos this week in
oxford american by an accidental-documentarian "
the polaroid kidd" recently lit a little fire in my belly (or maybe it re-lit it).
all my life i've wanted to jump a train and
live like a gypsy, and when i lived in the delta the first time and freight trains full of soybeans or cotton drove past my house not 100 yards away at least 3 times a day, it was all i could do not to call a friend and ask him to get ready to pick me up whereever i could get off. something about the freedom of not having control over where i would land or when i could stop seemed so incredible...
but i never did it. not once in the eleven months.
now we live a block from a freight train line again, and after seeing these photos i'm feeling a rekindling of the dream. its not that this seems glamorous, or even super fun*...but it seems so
real...and the freedom! there are just things that need to be done, and if i don't do it now, i probably never will.
are there things you dream of doing?
* i know that this lifestyle isn't always a choice people get to make for themselves, so it's probably "freeing" when you get to choose it from a place a privilege, but even so, i'd like to experience it at least once.
