I think, more often than not, my favorite writing is the stuff where I set out with no real idea where I’m going. No plan, no topic, no goal. I just start typing. Maybe it’s about skinning a knuckle, maybe just sentences about memories. Those things often turn out best.
We slept in Walmart parking lots, sometimes. When we lived in the road, which was August of 2018 through August 2019. If we were going somewhere, and couldn’t quite get there in a day’s drive, and didn’t have an in-between there before the next there.
It’s not the romantic full-timing experience people imagine, but I really have fond memories. Maybe it’s because so… anti. You’re just smack in the middle of one thing, and in your little amniotic bubble you and your family are doing so much the opposite thing.
It’s a bustling parking lot, it’s the capitalist promenade, and you setup camp in the fucking middle of it, sleep there, cook there, shit there. You’re not even working, you’re just living in an RV.
It’s nice because, in the morning, early, but not so early it’s before the long-haul guys pull-out for the day, and not so early the work vanpools are still gathering, smoking and drinking coffee from travel mugs. No not that easy but early, still. You can go shopping. Get what you need for the next few days. The aisles are empty and lines short and you can be stocked and done and rolling before 8am.
At night, after dinner, you can hit the built-in Mcdonald’s for an ice cream cone. At bedtime, the tall lot lights make the interior not very dark. You hear an occasional car maybe, maybe bass, maybe a drug deal is happening outside, maybe they’re looking at the RV wondering if they could break in.
You’re in your underwear, it’s your home after all. You’re up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water, from the freshwater tank you filled three states ago, and you’re in your underwear. Outside a woman who works swing shift is carrying plastic bags of produce to her rusted Datsun, maybe. Someone else maybe sleeping in their car, not in the privileged way we are, though.
Yeah these things often turn out best.
Also written on this day...
- the elastic band on your underwear - 2020
- awfully bored humans - 2010
- contrary science is fun - 2009
- mr. miles - 2005
- you say tomato - 2004
- wanna be hero - 2003