#jesse things

"Some people say it's easy," mused my dad... "Easier to steal than work; easier to lie, to get away with it. Sometimes they're right. Sometimes--too much--the system just isn't geared for the ones who have nothing better. The dropouts and the addicts; the ones with nowhere to go. Sometimes it's easier to cheat, because life is hard. But you gotta have your mates and your family and people around you who love you and give a damn. You gotta have hope, big hopes for the future, ideas about what you want, because of you got all of that, then living becomes easier--not easy, just a bit easier--and you can see that cheating is desperate, and desperate is hard."

Beyond that, there is the gap that forms between you and other people. They all are going to be here tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. Me, I barely know where I’m going to be tomorrow. I have no idea where I’ll be next week. I couldn’t begin to guess my locations for the year, not even within a 300 mile radius. Romance and sadness have always gone hand in hand, of course, and the romance of travel never more so. The bloom of excitement is so quickly replaced by the quiet despair, and looking out another motel window at another motel parking lot, and the highway on the other side of the tall wire fence. And this knowledge that no matter where you go, it’s still you, standing in a room with yourself, looking through the same eyes, thinking the same thoughts.