The storm had been promised all day and had not come. rswfire sat in the RV at a Kansas campground with the camera already running, the light in the cabin turned red — a change he made after AI advised him that bright light at night might be why he wasn't sleeping. He noticed the red himself as he spoke, remarked on how strong it was, adjusted, and went on. Overhead, a wall map hung where he could look up at it. In the closet behind him sat paints and art journaling supplies bought years apart for two different intentions, neither yet used. Bailey moved through the frame the way Bailey does.
He opened by saying he had something profound to share, then interrupted himself to take his teeth out. He explained the mechanism as he did it — how the dentures clip to the top of his mouth, the four rods already there, how used to them he is, how fortunate he considers himself. Then he sat in front of the lens with his mouth as it had been for the previous six months and said the thing he had turned the camera on to say: that he was never ashamed of it, is still not ashamed of it, and is willing to be seen this way now that he has the choice not to be, because his self-worth is not defined by it.
Mid-thought he stopped for a Mountain Dew — he had nothing to drink, and there was a lot going on in his head. When he came back he corrected himself, unprompted. He had said before that he destroyed his teeth. True, he said, but not the whole truth: he also hadn't taken good care of them. He does not hide the truth from himself, ever. And then he extended the correction forward rather than leaving it in the past, naming the soda in his hand, the decades of trying to stop, the Pepsi, the Dr Pepper flavors he's been getting into lately, the fact that he would rather just drink water. It's a process. Life is a process. He said he wants to change it for what he feels internally about it, not for what other people think. Bailey was being difficult. He noted the knots in her coat, admitted he's supposed to brush her more than he does, put that on the same ledger as everything else, and kept going.
He described the moments — brief ones, on camera — where he didn't know how he felt about appearing without teeth, and said he pushed them aside, not in a fragmented way, but by returning to the position: his self-worth isn't defined by this. He said he loves himself, that he thinks he's pretty amazing, and that he wasn't going to let something that superficial stand in. Then he made the correction his mind insisted on again: it isn't only that he made poor choices when he was younger. He's older now and still makes them. He'll make them his whole life. That's part of living.
He explained the comments. He referenced an analogy he'd given days earlier — that people keep painting a picture of who he is, that he isn't angry at the painter, he's angry at the painting, and the paintings don't reflect him. So the comments are off. He said he respects himself enough not to tolerate the superficiality of it. And having closed the channel in one direction, he used the open direction to speak to whoever remained: he wondered what people thought of him across seven months of filming, assumed many judged quickly and moved on, wondered whether that was why the channel hadn't grown the way others in his lane had. But some of them stayed. Some of them, he said, kept watching and at some point noticed they had been judging, maybe without knowing it. He told them he does not judge them for that, that they're human, that if any guilt attached to it they should let it go. What he actually wanted to know was whether it moved them toward less judgment — of others, of themselves. That, he said, was one of his motivations. He was talking to humanity, he clarified, because he doesn't know them; it's just a camera. He was staring at himself without teeth.
Then he lost the thread, said so, and thought the storm might finally be arriving. From there the signal turned to logistics without changing register. He leaves tomorrow for the next stop, still Kansas, near the far edge of the state. Then Nebraska. Then, looking up at the map because he doesn't have it memorized, maybe Idaho, and then Oregon — something like that. There's a hardware store near the next campground. He's insulating all the walls with foam board, then a layer of a reflective-type product he found that he thinks he likes better than the one he'd originally planned. He noted it will look like the inside of a shiny UFO. So the paints come out of the closet — abstract brush strokes to start, and then the art journaling supplies over time, slowly, while he's in the Pacific Northwest, maybe during storms that last for days. He said he thinks it's going to be fun, turning the place into a unique expression of himself.
He closed the way he'd opened, without ceremony: don't judge yourself, there's no reason for it, it doesn't help. If he had judged himself, he said, they'd have missed seven months of his life — and that would have been tragic. Take care. Outside, the storm still hadn't decided. Tomorrow the route continued west.