something else i wrote recently

here is something i was working on a few days ago exploring "the free life". im not sure how happy i am with it yet but thats what the blog is for write. i would love some criticisms and thoughts and ideas and anything that you feel so inspired to write. .... hope you enjoy...



I had read about them on the Internet months ago. They described themselves as “not subscribing to the ordinary life the system provides the rest of us; and rather, living the free life”, and that intrigued me. While it has been relatively easy for me in the past few years to begin questioning these sorts of things, and even stand behind these thoughts in my heart, I had not really stood behind them; I had not lived them, yet. And while the free life sounded attractive it was really quite difficult to fathom. And well, here I am, supposedly living the free life, with these people I met over the Internet in the forest in Sweden.

I have been traveling for the past month already, which is hard to believe in of itself. It has been great so far but hasn’t really satisfied that urge to find something different, something out there, something free; over the past month I have lived on friends couches, on strangers couches, on couches in anarchist collectives, and in a house in Spain who I met through an old friend, but none of it has had the feeling that I am looking for, what I think to be an unknown feeling. So now that I am living in the woods I have to ask myself once again, maybe this is the free life? Goodbye mom and dad, girlfriend, friends, school, everyone I know; my family is now Jan, Charlotte, Alexander, and Edward. I don’t know them very well, but they are the only people I know within the region. They are putting me up in an old run down trailer on their property, which they used to live in, as well as feeding me three meals a day, in trade for my every day work, helping to build their house. Is this the free life? Well, monetarily speaking it is a free life.

It is quite common within my group of friends to dumpster dive food. It is like riding a fixed gear bicycle or having a Mac instead of a PC computer, and while there are some practical reasons behind these interests, lets be honest, most of us do them because it is stylish. It is a fad that most of us will grow out of like playing with Yoyo’s or collecting Pogs. But my new family, they are freegans. The six year-old child is eating dumpstered food. The nine year-old child is eating dumpstered food. This is what they know, this is how they are raised. They believe in eating food that is thrown away in dumpsters behind stores that is still edible. As they tell me, they have found everything, from cheese to beer to meat. Maybe this is the free life? But let me just add this: not having the choice of what you eat from day to day, while it may be good on the wallet, doesn’t feel so free to my palate.

I took my first shower today. First observation: sulfur water. But I can deal with that. Aren’t Anarchists supposed to be able to go with the flow? And so I go with it. And I am showering and then bam, it hits…brrrrrr, it goes cold. I forgot, I learned this when I was doing my first chore of washing the last weeks worth of dirty, fly-infested, dishes, the water goes cold after five minutes. Perhaps it is to cut the costs, to make it free, the water heater turns off after 5 minutes. But let me tell you, those five minutes were heavenly. But if it were really the free life shouldn’t I have as much hot water as I damn want?

The children have not received any vaccinations. Clearly this was the parents decision, and not their own. I thought about making an argument that this wasn’t a free life for the children but in order to live a free life one must be able to fully think for oneself, and thus that argument becomes mute. And so I just wanted to include this fact because it is interesting and gives more of a perspective on the people I am living with.

And so all of this leads me to question, for myself, what does the free life mean? Clearly it is intrinsically going to be different for everyone, and maybe this is the free life for them, but for me I am not sure that it qualifies.

Surely parts of it do. Building my own house is part of my free life. Living outside of major cities is also part of what I envision for my free life. But having a limited amount of hot sulfur water doesn’t seem so appealing to me. There must be free ways around this without participating in the system. And for me, the way is through trade, just as they are feeding me and housing me in trade for my manual labor. And so that part of my time here in the woods is the free life.