This became a lot of words for answering your question

2.

Hi,

thanks, and I like your letter/letters, “ad”, your answers.

I just don´t know where to begin my answer, which in itself is a beginning... let me start a year ago, when I was living in a cottage in the forest, alone, like you as some self-appointed hermit.

There was only one problem, it was/is my ex who has the lease on the place, I will get back to that. A life that I felt strongly for, the self-sufficient one.

I left this society and it´s demands, demands for service in return for permission to participate, where it´s not enough to be a citizen... with a right in my world to citizen´s wages. You are supposed to be humiliated and stand with your hat in your hand and be forced to apply for jobs you don´t want, ask social services for”help”, and so on. I can´t deal with that!

But that does not mean I don´t like to work... I like to dig in the earth, to farm. Head out into the forest and chop my wood... and that is how I lived.

Then my ex thought, she was my ex then already, that she too wanted to live there, in the cottage, in the forest. After some discussions on “rules” for such a solution she moved in there and at first it went well. Then we came to what I feared, that she wanted so much more with us living in the cottage, she wanted to be more than just friends... Of course you can´t help how you feel any way... but I had been very clear on how I felt and that is if we were both going to live there it would be as friends, nothing else.

So my choice was in the end pretty easy. I packed a bag and left... I should also say that I had payed the rent for a year, gathered a large amount of firewood and food, started growing some vegetables, and so on, so there I stood with a backpack, almost broke (for money), without any safety net to fall on... Mixed emotions, a feeling of freedom, being able to do what I liked, but also some loss from having to leave what I built up, where I was supposed to live for (at least) a year.

 

I could have been the snowbound one writing you from a cottage...

Instead I am answering from an apartment...

But between the cottage and the apartment a lot had time to happen... a few homeless months I would not want to be without, even if it they were tough, cold and poor. But I also had learning experiences, warm, loving and rich... Met a lot of interesting people on that “trip”, that adventure.

This became a lot of words for answering your question, what is my passion.

My passion is the “simple” life in the forest... fixing your own heat and food. I am passionate about meeting new interesting people, like now...

There is also a lot of other things I am passionate about, I am happy when I can/am able to play the drums...

What are you passionate about?

What is/does civil disobedience mean to you?

And I recognize myself in what you write, I don´t work for money either, money does not make me happy, and I don´t have nor do I want a TV. But I think you are wrong when you write “when you have neither work nor TV there seem to be nothing to talk about”, I think/believe we have a lot to talk about.

Let us talk, like now for example.

A good beginning of a conversation...

Quantum physics and zen buddhism, interesting.

I know the old Greeks talked about atoms, I´m with you that far... And I have heard about Siddharta Gautama...

I like your questions, what I am passionate about and how I spend my days, my nights... probably the most important questions in a persons life, how you spend your time...

My passion faded some after the move/escape from the cottage, but it´s coming back...

I am waiting... waiting for and making opportunities... I feel a bit like that, like I am waiting, getting ready... Waiting for a spring... I got somewhat a taste for the homeless life, being on the road... and one doesn´t have to leave out the other, I don´t see a cottage and being on the road as incompatible, it can be nice to know you have a place to rest, a place to just be... a place I don´t know where it is, but I know it is.

How did you end up where you are at?

So how I spend my time, “seeking” for interesting developing meetings in the form of people, my own and the thoughts of others, books, music, movies, nature... where I think many clues are, if not any given answers...

In that case I feel exactly as you wrote: “I come close to something there”... a something which is´nt easy to put in words but which humbles me, a good feeling, of belonging...

I live in a small town called ------, no place I have any prior connections to, but I got a tip about a vacant apartment here... and it´s beautiful, I like it here, as much as you can like living in an apartment... a good place for planning... for continuing the trip...

Speaking of traveling... it is four hours by train between where I am sitting writing, and you.

This was a long answer... I feel like there is so much I want to answer...

But for this time it´s enough, I have to take a trip to “town”...

But I hope I hear from you soon again.

Warm friendly greetings Thomas.