TAoCB. Conway, Arkansas.

Living out of your car takes focus.

Which is to say: spontaneity and yes-frivolity, what one reaches for when abandoning themselves routeless to a journey such as the one I am on, require the utility of being prepared.

Everything in the car must have its place. This maintains peacefulness and ease, the sense that you can handle whatever needs handling.  I have a crate which is my kitchen, a heavy canvas bag which my pantry, a zippable on-wheels bag in the trunk which inside holds my house for each outdoor place I temporarily land.  It's important that the car remain tidy: even trash becomes a matter of practicality.  If it is paper-based and able to be burned then it is rolled, similar to all cloths from towels to sheets to tshirts and jeans, and stored in its own place.  Paper-based trash becomes what I will use, for example, tonight in the Ozarks to fire-start.

Many firsts.  So many firsts I thought to myself, one of the only thoughts to occur in the Pisgah National Forest camping for the first time earlier this week by myself.  Mountain single lanes made of dirt and gravel stones, two hours to travel 30 miles up and down on the forest roads.  Camping by myself, setting up the rain tarp, gathering wood. My first fire. I need a hatchet, remember that next time a Walmart's near.  Thankfully I had my mallet and lots of bunjis and rope--also the first time I used all these myself.  Even the single-burner propane stove, use of this on my own.  My first cup of campfire coffee, the best I've ever had.

Moments happen by my mind and I think with such joy and gratitude of Brandon.  So much gratitude, awe, to look back now and see clearly how good we were together, how strong our partnership was in our finest moments.  To sustain this way of life for any length of time demands from one another full tolerance of each other's neurosis.  A good humor, what an underrated survival tool.  Utility requires it.  We were so good and I learned so very, very much with him and I am so grateful too, aware of how much since then that I've matured.  

I love, absolutely love this kind of living.  It is clean, neat, simple.  Peaceful.  There is nothing to be concerned with other than my own abandon.  Yesterday I covered 800 miles, all the way across Tennessee.  It is psychological perhaps--but I hate that place.  Place that stole my brother!  However it is that I came to have such detest I plowed across its land with little thought other than Must Get West.  And anyone who's spent time in the car in this great land us patriots call home know:  west means one thing.  Mississippi, I was coming for you!  O funny scandalous spirit in the heart of Mr. Twain...  And then it was Memphis, and her! The river O Mississippi in excess, and then I was in Arkansas and the orange sun thick in love with her partner the 108 degree heat til the sun and the heat in a haze melted in the sky as sign of each others dedication to this place.  I kept driving I kept driving I kept driving.  It got dark.  I ate mexican food, spoke spanish.  Accepted happily the the bendiciones de los trabajadoros preciosos.  I worried: 800 mile stretch on the road yesterday oh god my yoga-waitressing-surfing-butt must be going to flab.  I am vain.  This does not embarrass me.  I talked to Gretchen a long while, I talked to mom.  In Conway I stopped, didn't even turn the TV on, just slept slept slept soo well slept a long time in a big soft king bed all my own.  There was my meditation this morning, yoga-time and hulahooping and Matlock on TV.  There was my cooler to clean, my leftovers from last night to transfer to tupperware and put on ice, and then, and then!  Out the window--there was a Starbucks.  Calling my name, in the already 100 degree 11 in the morning mid, almost south, west heat. 

I have already accomplished much.  Whatever comes next--Ozarks, Taos, Canyon country--will also so easily be part of all there is to love.

Erika gave me a shirt slash prayer cloth in the traditional fashion of exalted-Christians praying over garments as means of protection, a fabulous soft tee with a cartoon image of Kerouac on it emblazoned in the red with the words On The Road.  The tag of the shirt slash prayer cloth was made to look like the old fashion library stamp-punched cards in the slot in the back of the books, the last name to check out the "book" was Charlotte Bliss.  Hence the series of posts on this blog outlining or spondowning or processing the process of my adventure, will be titled with TAoCB.  Or The Adventures of Charlotte Bliss.  Dedicated to, and in honor of Erika, of course.