Incipient Vagabond--Verily

              I stole a tent from that hobo.  I'd come back from exploring town and he was back (I'd seen him earlier in the day walking out to beg for change), which was unfortunate because I had plans to pick up and be off quietly while he was out.  He started to tell me some stuff, at first things that he'd said before; that he smoked pot with Vanessa Hudgens and how the dude who killed Tupac tried to set him up.  It was alright, safe, because I knew he was just a little gone but besides a time killer, pretty harmless.
              But then he went into more depth about the framing, talking about how the guy had confided in him about the dead body, and how it was this girl they knew, and he saw the black hair, and then the police arrested him and held him because he was suspicious.  Shit, I start thinking in my head, could he be out here because he is hiding from the police?  He also told me about (I stayed through this whole time because I was having some lunch) how (because I had left all my stuff and he asked why and I said I trusted him, but in reality it was just because I knew he was too lazy to move just to keep my stuff, and besides I didn't leave anything valuable, just my sleeping bag and drums, which came to me free) he didn't steal nothin', not from family and friends, except this one time he stole his grandpa's shotgun and his momma's 4-wheeler.
"How come, you hunt?"  I asked him.
"No I was on a suicide mission.  Ya, I wanted to kill myself.  Then I just got angry, y'know, not really for any reason I was just angry at the world, and so I just wanted to kill somebody, anybody."
Shit, sorry I asked.  I got a little anxiety wellin' up at that moment.  I knew for sure I wanted to be gone that night.  But I didn't show no signs of it there.  I contemplated whether I should be getting this guy help, turning him into the authorities, whether they could do anything for him, whether they would do anything for him, and whether it would be better, or whether he was a menace to society.
See, it's those moments when I realize the extent of my autonomy as an individual in this world.  No longer do "adults" have the right answer.  They all have different answers, though sometimes there is more consensus than others, but ultimately it all depends on bias from past experience and temperament. So it's my decision.  Our decision, each and every one of us, and it affects ourselves and others incalculably.

Is it possible that I am simultaneously more vulgar AND more noble than most?  To some I am too sweet, and to others too dirty.  My value system, perhaps, simply doesn't mesh.  I have ideals which are unwavering, such as respect and harmony with nature, but some of my means are less welcome; considering euthanasia and sterilization of those who are unfit, allowing that survival of the fittest is natural and necessary, even with humanity; but then compassion and gentleness and discipline and eloquence, the things of civilization and culture, are subjects of appraisal in my mind as well; so individuals who are greedy, and irrational, and emotional, and impulsive, are not friends of mine.  I allow for mistakes, but flaws of temperament I too often cannot look past.  I would like to return to this subject more, later.

To capture the moment of the young man sitting there, leaning against the rail (a recurrent symbol in my view of the world), not idolizing but simply contemplating the cold survival and brutal existence of nature, and how distant man is from it.  The people standing at the railing, watching the racoon and taking its picture, as if to say "Oh hey, that's where we put nature."  Certain patterns of survival repeat themselves, like reactions in physics; I am like the coon, stealing in the night what humanity denies me in the day.

The only other thing really noteworthy in the past couple days is the street kids.  It started with just Tye-dye Andrew and his girl, strummin' down on the rock wall by Fisherman's Wharf; I approached them to get some socialization into my head to help calm my nerves before I tried my own hand at spanging.  We hung out, Andy hubo tocando la guitarra and I was singing along as he did some Johnny Cash, Sublime, Shinedown; today I'm headed back to play my drums alongside while his girl with big ole' doe eyes holds a sign; I'm gettin' a cut of the profits for finding cardboard and helping him remember songs with my laptop, so he can re-hear the songs and the words; plus with my drums and chatting with people.  So I oughta have a few dollars in my pocket soon enough.
This is all made easier by the fact that Monterey is a HUGE secret.  I was thinking about it when I got here; I thought "What's all the fuss about Santa Cruz?  Monterey is where it's AT!"  This I say, because there is a high proportion of natural spaces to home spaces here, the people are uber-friendly, and there aren't that many vagabonds--more homebums (old stationary chronic bums, all either alcoholics or mentally deficient or simply comfortable) than street kids and wanderers, though the street kid situation is different right now because thousands and thousands of kids are in Norcal right now, looking for work trimmin' bud, and Bright Eyes and Andy from Indiana and his girl are all talking about how most of them are probably being dumb about it, while I just sit here and listen, them full of knowledge about a world I hardly new existed until today.  That's the way of things, you know there are SO many communities that spread their networks across the globe, gamers and yachters and marathoners and fashionistas and furries, street kids and squatters, stamp collectors and surfers; all of them with their own body of knowledge which it's taken a lifetime to collect.  I'm awful tempted to join this culture for a week or a month; to become a street kid, to pick up their slick-talking ways and don't-give-a-fuck attitude, "Be content with nothing and believe you own everything."  Well I wouldn't put it that way, but yeah, I'm considering not having money for a month even though I can, whereas before I had no money simply because I couldn't.  "Have nothing, have everything"  perhaps?  But no, if I get money I will continue to be thrifty, and move up and say fuck them because I can get what I want and where I want and stay healthy and even though I love the present I can also plan for the future so I'm not chronically attached to any form of work, but instead maintain that flexibility that is liberty from attachment: for even these kids are attached in ways they don't realize.

These kids have balls though; sleeping in bushes and having open containers of pot on the side of the walk, talkin' bout pot trucks fronted as taco trucks right on the sidewalk; asking passersby if they happen to have a million dollars they can spare, and seeking out and utilizing all the empty spaces; we found a space last night in what Andy thought was a bunch of businesses, mostly closed, but I pointed out was a college campus, right fuckn across the street from the Wharf, which is weird as hell; and as we're sitting here drinking and talking a motherfuckin' deer shows up, a four-point buck, and we talk about how he's just one of us, wild and pickin up what the world--nay, humanity--is putting down.  Still, I'm thinking how the hell did a deer get all the way up here to the coast through city streets and all those other facets of civilization?
Like the deer, like the raccoon, we are wildlife, real life, existing in our moment and not capturing ourselves and clambering to be anything beyond; I am not fully one of these I speak of, for I record for you, and thus I already deny myself like Moses, the one cannot fully be the other, for instantly he is committing treason and denying his membership as one or the other.

I am too real to be a badass.  My actions speak fantastic things about me; my personality falls short and gets hidden in the shadows below them.  Perhaps someday after I'm gone I'll be fictionalized as some kind of distant rebel; already I am there but the world doesn't know about it yet, can't know about it until after the fact--this is a way of things.  Perhaps my writing this is an effort at vindicating the rebel--he is not so straightforward as we cast him.  He has a momma, he knows empathy, and struggles, within and without his deeds and ideals. So I am writing down everything, and I leave it to my future editors to cast and recast my image in a form designed for better consumption.  Perhaps this will be me in a distant state, and if so I ask you to take your time trying to recall all of the senses behind each word, memory, idea.  And also remember that everything I've written could have been said in a different way, and sometimes I simply reached for the nearest word in my head, and so feel free to correct some things, for integrity to the essence of each statement is much more important than integrity to the word.

Anyway, it's getting on into the afternoon and I've got to get stuff done.