Picked up a hitch hiker

[Nungali]

Actually, she picked me up .  I am about to get in the car at shopping mall and  " Hey, can you give me a ride home ?"

 

I looked over and it was a youngish rather nice looking Aboriginal woman with some shopping .

 

" Where to ? "

 

" Just across the road . "

 

"Okay then . "    - but my car usually doesnt have others in it, it a mess , she had to brush the seat off ... no, actually lift the seat cover and shake the crap out .  Oooops .  And she goes " Where you been ?  Out bush ? "

 

" I live out bush ."

 

" Oh, lucky you, I am stuck here , wish I could go. "

 

"Right ! Let's go then ! "   she laughs then pulls out an opened large bottle of bourbon .

 

I cant drink that ! I'm driving . "   So we take off and in the space of  less than 10 mins driving  there she ;

 

" I dont really drink much .... well, I do, but its better than drugs . I used to take a lot a lot of drugs but I dont any more, I drink instead . ... okay I do take drugs ....  meth, amps .... ice ... okay, I been shooting up ice .  Its fucked me up, my husband committed suicide last year ... and I lost  both my kids now  ....  "  

 

But she seems chatty and  laughs occasionally, and is 'philosophically optimistic  ' ;  " I'm only 27 and I;m still learning.  ... I suppose you think its because I am an Aboriginal? " I said" Nah , and dont start that shit up on me either . "

 

We pulled up on the lawn of the house and some tragic looking damaged guy comes out confused .  She asks me for some tobacco and cause I have a new packet I gave her my old one.   She asked if I wanted  to come in - no thanks. Did I want her number ? Not really.    She looked at me and said ,  you dont want anything and you give me a ride and tobacco ??? "   

 

Then she looked into my eyes and said thankyou and leant over and kissed my cheek .   

 

Then left the car and went into the dingy house with the drug riddled BF  ......   sad .   But there are a HEAP of them out there ... and more and more, all over the place  - black white yellow, culture dont matter ....  

 

.... sometimes it seems society is all going to shit  .  ( I mean I know that , but when you get close and personal up against it !  )

 

 

[Marblehead]

I try hard to not get up close and personal with those things.  I'm doing excellent so far.  I just hope I don't start feeling sorry for people.  That would mess up my life.

 

[Aetherous]

42 minutes ago, Nungali said:

sometimes it seems society is all going to shit

 

I feel this way too, on the other side of the Earth. Lots of people aren't having high enough standards for themselves.

[Lost in Translation]

I've been reminding myself to really see people. I mean not just their facade, not the image they project or that I project upon them - but to actually look into their eyes and see the lifetime of experiences that build up to this small moment. People are like ice burgs, almost all of them is buried. It's so easy to wash them with a single color and call it a day, but we're not background, we're the fantastically rich, beautiful, ugly, messed up, gorgeous whole of it all. Each and every one of us are unique and as beautiful as freshly fallen snow, even the fucked up ones. Especially the fucked up ones.

[Nungali]

1 hour ago, Marblehead said:

I try hard to not get up close and personal with those things.  I'm doing excellent so far.  I just hope I don't start feeling sorry for people.  That would mess up my life.

 

 

I do that .... unless I somehow    'intersect'  .  With them .  

 

I also like people to know that not everyone has  to be an arsehole to them .

 

 

[thelerner]

On 5/28/2010 at 12:33 PM, thelerner said:

I got up early and headed out, 250 miles to go. Nevada was scrub and canyon. Ahead I saw a person walking the highway, they looked like something out of Mad Max. It was near desert and I weighed whether I should stop, maybe he was going to burning man? By the time I made the decision I was half a mile ahead of him. I stopped the car on the side of the road and waited.

 

Thinking about it I was still a 100 miles away from BM. Maybe he wasn't heading there. He didn't have his thumb out. The Mad Max look came from a tarp he had rolled up and hitched across his shoulders, giving him wings that stretched out 2 feet to his sides. I waited for him, then got out of the car and walked down the highway to meet him.

 

His name was Michael (like mine), he wasn't going to BM, he was heading, walking(!) to Southern California to spend the winter. He was a bum, maybe I should say tramp since that has less negative connotations. A long time ago I lived out of a back pack for months. I can respect the decision to live a life of freedom.

 

He was in his 50's. He was heading in my direction so I offered him a ride, he excepted. He had few possession but had 4 multi gallon water bottles that must have weighed at least 30 pounds altogether. It was close to 90 degrees and he was hiking through the desertlike scrub with at least 40 pounds of weight.

 

I enjoyed talking to him. He'd been homeless for years. He described how he survived in the desert, mostly eating ramen noodles. He told me about his family whom he hadn't seen in years. Where he'd camp. How the scrub was filled with tender that burned white hot. I told him a little about myself, we shared a dislike for radio preachers and right wingers. He seemed like a good sort. His life style was by choice, much freedom along w/ ascetic hardship.

 

We drove about 60 or 70 miles, then his route went one way, mine went another. I dropped him off at a rest stop where the highway split. He didn't ask, but I gave him some bottles of gatorade and $40. He thanked me, it would keep him in ramen for a while. As he walked away I felt ashamed I didn't offer more. I'd spent that much on dinner the previous night, not to mention losing twice that in the casinos.

 

I had a feeling I'd have learned more following him and his lifestyle for a week then I'd learn at Burning Man. Course the first lesson would be I wasn't tough enough to hike miles in the desert w/ a pack.

 

For me the big question is whether there's a god in control and whether it gives a damn about us. I hope in deep meditation to get my answer. Til then its nice to have synchronicities like meeting another Michael who is so different yet similar to shake up my perceptions.

 

 

Michael

This was my most memorable hitchhiker experience.

[redcairo]

Day before yesterday my new neighbor came over. She has a 1.5 year old toddler girl named Luna. It was an interesting meeting. I always want to meet my neighbors and have a good relationship with them.

 

It was odd though. She is 25. She and her husband were both meth users heavily for quite some time, and then they found Jesus and each other at the same time and she got pregnant nearly instantly so they married. That was in Wichita, but a distant relative gave them the ref to move in next door via family relation to the owner.

 

She has... not a single personal interest that I could find. I'm not religious but I'd've been happy to spend an hour talkin about jesus (or buddha or anything else) if it made my neighbor happy, but not even that. She did say she likes 'hospital dramas' on TV, that's something, but I don't watch TV really and never that stuff so I had zero base of experience. I spent over an hour covering the entire range of everything I could think of that she might have any interest in -- including books, media, toddlers, even cooking or food -- nope. Nada.

 

I found myself thinking, "For the love of god, NO WONDER this girl was a drug addict. She doesn't read, she doesn't think, she just exists like an NPC and watches TV. What was there to give meaning to her life?" Then I felt like a miserable cretin the rest of the day for being such a judgmental bitch in my head.

 

Obviously, outside my head, I hope I was nothing but kind. I actually gave her my wifi password as they can't afford net and I hoped it would reach into their house at least the part near mine (it does) and I think I have the bandwidth to share. At least now she has netflix and youtube and not just antenna-TV.

 

But it really just boggled my mind that she had no interests, doesn't read... I feel on some level like maybe the drug just sucked some connection to soul out of her. But perhaps that's unfair. Maybe she was that way before it.

 

Here's hoping they don't relapse.

 

*

 

I picked up a hitchhiker a few years ago driving to the other side of town about 10pm. So I was on the way to walmart, which is the only thing open at night in my nowhere small city (in part because it killed off so many other businesses it's nearly the only thing left outside of fast food and medical). I see a young man walking, clearly toward WM because what the heck else is there open, and it's dark, and as he hears me nearing he puts out his thumb and keeps walking, so I ask myself, "Self, will this person do me harm? Life and death here babe, look into it." And self doesn't feel any sense of physical bad in my future so I pick him up.

 

He's flying. "Where are you going?" I ask him. He looks at me, gets a funny look on his face, and then says -- clearly trying to be as scary as he can be -- "To the edge of town. The darkest edge of town."

 

I burst into hilarious laughter. (Don't make me shoot you, kiddo.) He was clearly disappointed this did not have the desired effect. I dropped him off at walmart, after convincing him they had light, bathrooms, and benches to sit on, which would be better than being in the middle of nowhere in the dark alone. ;-)

 

RC

[thelerner]

15 hours ago, redcairo said:

He's flying. "Where are you going?" I ask him. He looks at me, gets a funny look on his face, and then says -- clearly trying to be as scary as he can be -- "To the edge of town. The darkest edge of town."

 

RC

I can dig that.  The last 2 nights that's where I've been heading.  Hiking to the edge of town, searching out the dark places.  Me, the cold the wind and silence walking beneath the pickaboo moon.  It's been nice.