Hippie Dippie Highwayman

I got an account at flickerR.com. I created the account when i first bought my digital camera. There is no pictures much on that site except for my daughter's wedding in Seattle. Well, not in Seattle, but across the bay or sound west of Seattle. I basically took a bunch of pictures for her keepsakes. The camera takes really good pictures of whatever it's pointed at when it's button is pushes.

It doesn't matter what pushes it's buttons. The button could be pushed by scraping up against a tree, and it would still take a near-perfect picture of wherever it was pointed at the time. It's not hard for me to be very detached about operating this machine. It doesn't require anything from me except fresh batteries, and a penchant for pushing buttons.

Of all the accusations that's been aimed at describing just what sort of person I am is, the most frequent and enduring is in the form of a question delivered by a twisted, scrunched up face that spouts "You really like to push people's buttons don't you?" The answer to that question (that's not really a question at all) is "YES!" Most definitely yes, but with a broad exception to the rule.

It's not pushing buttons that's so attractive to me, but finding the buttons in the first place. That's the real adventure for me. Pushing people's buttons seems frivolous and mundane if I do it more than once or twice to twist the knife. Like door bell buttons. Once or twice is good enow. Even if someone's home it's obvious in just a minute or two that they don't wanna be disturbed. Pushing it one more time and then running can be fun too.

I think learning to push people's buttons is like a smoke grenade for me. It provides me with a cover so I can disappear from controversy. The most powerful thing that ever happened to me was being a bum on the road for months and even a year or two at a time. I usually didn't have any money or even a change of clothes. It became a game for me. A quest. A quest caused by a quest-ion.

Living like a bum only happened off and on and all total maybe seven or eight years altogether. In about three months I'll turn seventy years old. If I round off all the time I stayed out on the road as a homeless bum, that would leave sixty-two years I wasn't a bum.

Those sixty-two other years when I wasn't a bum won't no bed of roses. I didn't like public work or private work either. I tried my best not to work more than six months a year, and I can prove it by the ridiculously small amount of my Social Security check. I don't mind working if that's what's called for. I was raised to work. My father used to brag that if he taught his boys nothing else, he would have taught them how to work. He did that, and it was what I rebelled again to reach my own conclusions.

My question for me at the time was "How do I figure life out if I make myself an indentured servant to another man?" Everything learned of practical use to me happened when I was living as a stranger in a strange land. I didn't have to defend my family's reputation by acting like I had some sense. I was forced to act like I had more sense than I actually had because that's what my family expected of me. We were educated, and we were smart, and we were progressive, and I had to act that way or suffer the pangs of hell. I was a product of a family nobody would think was dumb.

Nobody expects a bum that stands begging beside the road to be anything more than that. I could ask anybody anything without worrying whether they though I came from a dumb family or not. They expected me to be dumb. Why would a beggar not be dumb. He's a beggar for God's sake! If he had any sense he'd have job and be making somebody some money. He probably can't keep a job because he's too stupid. Why would I not feel ecstatic? Everybody I met who thought I was dumb said the sa-me thing. Why waste my ti-me learning to be the sa-me thing they were? I wanted to know what was different.

There is another way that being a bum and close to it practically all my life. Movies. I went into a movie rental store with a friend of mine so she could rent a movie. She instructed me to walk around the store and see if I could find a movie I hadn't watched. My search soon became a seeking to find a movie I had seen. I hadn't seen any of them, and probably won't. Music? I own one CD. No records. No tapes of any kind or size. I like real people doing real things in real time.

That's why e-mail and the internet caught me off-guard. I'm communicating with real people about things that are real to them in real time, but I don't know what they look like; I don't know what they smell like; I don't know what they sound like; I don't know what they feel like; and not knowing what they smell like might be a true blessing. What's this world co-me-ing to?