dear ——,
i just read your letter and i keep going over words and sentences in my head of what i would write back to you, so i’ll just get it all down now. i think letter writing is the only thing i don’t procrastinate on…

and i’ll write on a computer despite it’s nerdiness and not because i like to write letters on computers–i don’t–but because traveling east has worn me out with the time change and then to spend four days in the city that never sleeps…well, i followed along and didn’t sleep much. i think what wears me out the most is airplanes. when i hitchhike and ride buses or trains, i get don’t seem to get so worn out so quickly. i guess the slow travel lets your body adjust as you move, as opposed to the crash that happens after a six-hour airplane trip.

[regarding violence and bike accidents and deaths happening in new orleans lately:] i heard about l. right before i left town, and the story was super confusing from m., and then s. spent a day at our house to chill out and we talked. but of course the whole incident has been confusing for everyone. the incident makes me angry, but it’s that anger that i can’t aim anywhere and so i just feel upset and confused. sometime a week or so ago i got a call from tony about p. and j.’s bike accident while i was planting lettuce in a garden in portland. it was another pileup on my anger at this…whatever this is that is causing harm to our friends. it is faceless and mysterious, like a spirit of hate and violence or just plain carelessness or recklessness that does so much harm to innocent people. it’s uncontrollable, and so we feel helpless when our friends fall at the hands of it. and even when i am doing something to relax my mind, like planting lettuce, this spirit haunts me and all my friends.
i had not heard about b….and i don’t know if i knew him, or at least i can’t picture his face. did you know him well? i hope you are doing well with all this. i know you have had so much death in your life lately. like so many folks in violet, too…they all say it’s been that way ever since the storm. or maybe it just feels like it. but i don’t know.

i think all this news has been causing me to emphasize the unhealthiness of new orleans in my conversations with outsiders. people usually want to talk about new orleans: oh, how’s it going down there? what do you do? do you think you will stay? i feel obligated to talk about it, mostly just for myself because i think about these questions all the time and i never really have a concrete answer. new orleans is always changing, i never really do the same thing and when i finally decide to stay, i think about leaving…and when finally get away from the city and travel, i get to thinking new orleans is the only place for me. it makes sense because nothing makes sense in new orleans. you know?

i think some of my anxiety and indecisiveness comes from my personality and not just the insanity of that city. i want a steady, stable place to call home, including a house with my tools and music and instruments, but i constantly change my perception of “home” and sometimes think i will only be happy if i surrender myself to the movement of travel. i think i am a nomad, an itinerant. well, no…not an itinerant, because i have many homes in many places. i just can’t ever settle down in one. new orleans suits me well now, and i want to make art, play music, help rebuild houses, and have dance parties in a place i call my home. but inevitably, i realize that new places bring me new inspiration and again, i have homes with other best friends in all the far corners of this country. i’d like to think of my home as between two oceans. think of my home as east and west of the mississippi.

i’m reading into the wild because my sister gave it to me. i have been hesitating reading it because of the fact that the movie made the story very popular in mainstream america and, in my opinion, devaluing the meaning of what it means to detach yourself in wandering. yet despite the cliche nature of the whole thing–the movie, the popularity, etc–i think our culture is ripe to receive some of the messages held in into the wild. the story of alex (the man who the story is about) is helping me understand myself as a restless traveler, not to mention my constant questioning of everything. wayne westerberg, a south dakota friend of alex’s, recalled:

“i think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking. somtimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often. a couple of times i tried to tell him it was a mistake to get too deep into that kind of stuff, but alex got stuck on things. he always had to know the absolute right answere before he could go on to the next thing.”

still, i am empty handed. there are no answers, but, like some abusive human instinctual response, i keep searching for them.