voluntaryhomelessness.com

On my first day back "home", I spent part of the mild and sunny early-spring afternoon reconnecting with a long-lost friend over a dog walk in the snow. My "long lost" friend wasn't lost at all and I hadn't even really been out of touch for long, but I certainly wasn't expecting her to pop out of a bathroom stall at the PUB on campus in Fairbanks...and on my first night back to boot. Since we parted ways, she circumnavigated most of Alaska while documenting the life of a dog-musher/iditarod runner, and I circumnavigated the nation, not once but twice, documenting a whole lot of what I like to call "nothingatall" from town to town, job to job, coast to coast. And we both ended up back in the pub on campus on the same day. I really enjoy when life works that way.

Our dog walk conversations only scratched the surface of what we each have seen, done, and learned on our respective journeys. We both had rather monumental birthdays in there too. The most interesting thing (to me) however, is that it hadn't even felt like it was actually six months ago when last I was talking with her over life's ironies, our former urban-icity as simultaneous New York residents, and the frivolity of trying to plan the future. In truth, since I deplaned at Fairbanks International Airport yesterday afternoon, I've had a perpetual sense of having only been gone a few days rather than half a year.

But the evidential difference between our conversations then and now is the urge for a little permanence. Having both had a year of homeless and transient lifestyles, infrequent or illegitimate work, not much to speak of in regards to bank accounts but a goldmine of experiences to savor and cherish, new friends, and coinciding beginnings and endings in Fairbanks Alaska, we both acknowledged the urge to attain at least a temporary or short-term sense of stability. Not too much, just a few months, year or two at most. For me that means my own cabin and a car, maybe some money in the bank...and dare I say a full-time job. For she, a life back at home in Norway with her new dog, graduate school, more 'typical' living after shanty-hopping in the below-zeros of Alaskan winter, and maybe a new hairdo too.

We chuckled at the prospect of rent payments, haircuts, and social responsibility as we remembered that right now we are still both currently crashing in some dear friend's home. How realistic is it for us to commit to just one lifestyle after a year of wanderlust? Then she suggested maybe we should form some sort of union of homeless drifters, complete with a database or classified list for hitching rides cross-country and crashing on floors and couches. I said yes, and it should offer health benefits...for all categories of homelessness. Because the only difference between us and the destitute is the choice. We are voluntaryhomeless(dotcom).

(Post-script: So much for mild and sunny. I bite my tongue...its started snowing, and hasn't quit since.)