The Modern World
Like anyone else who moves around the city and pays attention, I had often seen, and pitied, those figures, sunburnt and disheveled, who stand at intersections, outside of gas stations, and in grocery store parking lots begging for help, telling stories of falling on hard times, extending cardboard signs with handwritten messages such as “anything helps” or “God bless.” I had pitied them and occasionally given out a five-dollar bill, but also—though it may seem bizarre and insensitive to an inhuman degree—I had envied them. Their lives, though materially difficult (assuming they weren’t performing; there is that temptation to suspect the beggar of being a fraud) perhaps because of social ills like addiction or mental illness, were stripped, involuntarily, of the falsity of modern life: the rampant status-seeking and careerism, consumerism, dehumanizing trends across media and tech, etc. Although most of them naturally desired reentry into the kind of stable life that brings all of this, they were, in their materially degraded state, free—free without consciousness of their freedom.
Although what I’m describing may come across as a tasteless, almost psychotic romanticizing of homelessness, I desired this state of freedom for myself, but with consciousness of its benefits, the meaning and purpose one may grasp (in my view) by relaxing one’s grip on nearly everything external. Towards this end, I gave the required sixty-day notice to my landlord that I would be vacating my apartment at the end of the current lease, and, during this sixty-day period, I sold various belongings—couch, television, bed, kitchenware—online or to friends. I also canceled every subscription I had and texted a few friends, who were mostly indifferent, before canceling my phone service. Near the end of the sixty days, I informed my parents, who were horrified by the idea. They tried to talk me out of it, but I calmly dismissed their arguments and insisted it would be for the best. They simply told me to come home once I had played out this “tree-hugging fantasy” for a week, and we could sort things out. (They had mentioned institutionalization, but I unfolded all of my philosophical reasons and the sincerity behind the plan so clearly that they perceived the absence of any mania.) Lastly, I gave notice at my corporate job. At the conclusion of the two weeks, I said goodbye to my co-workers, letting them know I was headed “everywhere and nowhere” with “absolute focus.” I didn’t mind their confused looks. On that last day, I left early and went to the bank to close my checking account, then left my car on the side of the road. From there, with the clothes on my back as my only wardrobe, and with a backpack, a knife, a blanket, and a canteen as my sole possessions, I emerged into the world thoroughly detached from its falsity to begin a new existence.
Now, instead of being confined to a drab cubicle during the day and a dungeon-like apartment in the evening—instead of being attached to and even fearful of losing the vacuous things one is flooded with in such a condition—I exist in the open air and breathe freely, I go where I like, I seek no satisfaction from things that are intrinsically unsatisfying, and, although I have become one of those disheveled street dwellers, occasionally begging for my daily nourishment, I only take and consume the bare minimum. It is true that on the surface, this existence may seem painful and self-destructive or, at the very least, inconvenient. In some ways, it is. I am constantly exposed to the heat and the cold, I rely on strangers’ generosity to avoid the kind of hunger that would bring malnourishment, I use gas station restrooms to shower and stay clean, I sleep on benches or in the grass, a different spot almost every night. However, this lack of comfort is precisely the point, or a key part of it—to go past the excesses and vanities I had been accustomed to before, to live in harmony with and embody something more real.
At night, then, lying on the grass as it’s getting cold, the wind whipping my face, I look up at the sky, see the heavenly bodies, feel the presence rush over me, and, clutching my chest, whisper to myself those words, that ritual chant, hallowed be . . . Everything stands still, and, for a moment, the firm ground beneath me seems to dissolve.