rswfire had been organizing his space most of the day — the RV interior, the arrangement of things inside it, work he had been at long enough that he could say by afternoon it was just about done, that it felt like home. Then he put on classical music for the first time in months, and Max Richter's On the Nature of Daylight came on, and he says it broke him. He describes thinking about his mother, about his old life, about a relationship he calls complicated: that he loves her, that she makes him feel safe when he is near her, and that even on the phone there is a distance, that there has always been a distance. He states he needed to get out of there. So he left.
He walked about a mile from the campsite to the river. The watch read an elevation of eight feet, and then it read zero, and he noted both — that he had hit zero, that he had been at zero elevation. He sat down in front of the water. Rain was beginning. Somewhere out on the surface a duck was working, and he broke off mid-sentence to point at it, to say it was worth watching, to wonder what else would come. He mentioned that by some accounting this is one of the cleanest rivers in Oregon, and then said he could see shades of green out there that looked a little concerning to him — almost neon. He left the observation unresolved. Nearby, something was about to begin growing, and he said he would give it a few weeks, that he was excited to see it, and that he would still be here when it did.
The plan he laid out was the plan the rules permit: fourteen days at a campground, three days out, so a week remaining where he is, then three days at a state park on the ocean, then two weeks back. He said that was the extent of any plans he has. Alongside it, the ledger — down to $200, unless the client pays, and he stated it does not look to him like the client will. So he assumes non-payment. It would be a nice surprise if the money came. He described his financial situation as bad, said he needs to do something about it, and said he is working on that.
From there he turned to his own archive. He had been going through old videos the day before — footage from less than a month after he got on the road, sometime around May, when he quit Tramadol. He recalled that everyone told him it would be a struggle, and that it was, and that a week later he was through it. What he took from watching himself was not the outcome but the method: he says the whole time he was showing how he approaches problems, that he tackled it and moved on and that was the end of it, and that watching it was inspiring. He applied the precedent forward. He quit smoking; he is vaping now and is thinking about quitting that too, and the Mountain Dew beside him. He states he does not think it will be as much of a challenge as society tells him it will be, and that maybe telling people it is hard is one of the ways they keep you doing it. If he could quit Tramadol and not look back, he can quit this. He said he has been thinking a lot about it and is just about ready — that once he makes a decision, that is it.
He acknowledged the audience directly, and the feedback channel he has for it. He had been angry a few days earlier and says he is sure that upset some people, that he has seen it in the number of dislikes on his videos. He said he must seem angrier, maybe even bitter, and that there is some of that — but that it is mostly a recognition that things are heading somewhere very dangerous, that they are close, and that of course it is affecting him. He stated he has never met anyone like himself. That people have changed over the years, over the decades, so much that it does not feel to him like the same species. That he has nothing in common with people anymore, and does not know what to do with that.
He closed by naming the position rather than solving it. He said he has been in a limital space since he got to Oregon, and that he is working through it — that he does not know how long it will be, how long it will take, or where it will take him. Seven months of journey, threads coming together, and what he said he needs is time. Then the last line, delivered at zero elevation with the rain coming on and the duck still out on the green water: this is where I am today, and so I document it.