This morning I got up early and I added antifreeze/water to my car's radiator. I've never done that before. But the other day I decided to check the fluid levels, following the instructions in the car's little manual, and I saw that the radiator coolant was low. I know you can't open it while it's hot or steam will shoot out and you'll get burned - that much I know not to do. But other than that, I didn't know anything.
So I added the antifreeze/water this morning. It comes in a huge jug that I will never use. I only used a tiny bit of the jug, and there's still, like, two gallons left over. It would take me about fifteen years to use that much antifreeze. As soon as I started pouring it, I started to get sick from the vapors. I knew to wear gloves while I was handling it, so I didn't get it on my hands. But I could smell it. I started to get dizzy and felt like I was going to pass out. I filled it up, closed all the lids, and took off my gloves and decided that I needed to take a walk until I felt better. So I went walking along the road outside my apartment.
I usually don't like walking along the road. I don't like seeing and hearing cars and knowing that everyone is looking at me. I don't like the smell of exhaust. I don't like walking in a place that isn't covered with trees. But I am trying to avoid driving my car for the next couple weeks, because I won't have any money, and there will be more overdrawn checks, and I deposited a check that my mother gave me, even though I didn't want to. I can't afford to use much gas right now. So I didn't go anywhere special, I just walked down the street.
The chicories were beautiful - I have always loved that flower - and they were not yet fully opened. It was early morning. I decided that this walk was okay after all. I could smell the weeds and plants growing alongside the road. The air was misty as though the cloud bank was at ground level, as though we were in the clouds.
I went to the little park at the end of the road, and swung on the swings. I've never seen anybody ever use that playground or swing on those swings. I've seen kids at the baseball field next to it, but never on the playground. It's not in a readily accessible location. Most people have to drive a car to get there. It's not a playground surrounded by houses that kids can walk from.
But I walked there and I used the swings. I untwisted the chain so it was loose and flexible - I had to flip the seat of the swing over and over a few times until the links of the chain were mostly in a straight line. Then when I swung I spun around and around, pulling my feet in or sticking them out to control the spin, like an ice skater. I swung so high that I hit zero gravity and fell back down, with my stomach and everything inside me floating up. It gave me a weird tickly feeling that was sort of pleasant and sort of unpleasant, and I couldn't tolerate doing that for very long. Then I left the swings and walked all the way back home. It was all uphill this time.
I'm starting to accept that I'm moving out of this apartment and that I'm probably going to spend more of my time in the State College area. I don't know exactly where I'll be parking my car or which 'territory' will be 'mine.' I don't know where I'll eat or sleep. Ever since the trespassing-on-Rockview incident, I've been paying attention to property ownership. I notice government buildings, and I notice the land around them. Most of them will be more easygoing about it than Rockview was - if it's not a prison, they are less likely to care if I am walking near the building. However, I mostly want to avoid government buildings and government property of any kind while walking. But that's not really possible, as they pretty much own all the undeveloped land. If it's undeveloped, it's most likely government land. So I will use my judgment about where to walk.
Today I moved a bunch of stuff into storage. I moved my desktop PC and all its parts. There isn't a lot of stuff left, but yet, it IS still a lot of stuff. It's the kind of stuff that requires a judgment call and some foresight. Will I need this object while I'm living in my car? Can I pack it in the storage unit? Do I use it frequently enough that I must keep it out and put it directly in the car instead of the storage unit? Do I need to keep using it until the day that I really leave? The rest of my stuff, the stuff that obviously isn't urgently needed, has been mostly packed and put away.
This is going to be a sort of sloppy and messy unplanned move. I am not prepared to live in my car, but I'm going to do it anyway. There will be a few days or weeks of major inconvenience, for instance, taking a 'bath' in the sink in a public restroom, for instance. At least I know of a couple gas stations that have closed, single-person restrooms where I can go in there and lock the door.
I won't have a refrigerator, and I also have what seems to be a small stomach, or a sensitive stomach that is easily irritated, because for the past few years, ever since my severe unexplained digestive problem in about 1999, I haven't been able to eat very large meals in one sitting. I can only eat relatively small meals. That sucks when you can't put the rest in the fridge. I can never eat an entire serving of anything I buy at a restaurant. I usually can't even eat a quarter-pounder sized burger all at once. So I don't know what I will do with leftover food yet. In the beginning, I will be using a styrofoam ice chest, the kind of thing you take on a picnic, but that can only hold food for a couple hours. I saw small fridges online, fridges that can run on batteries or something, but they are expensive and I won't be buying anything expensive for now, as the goal is to save money and fix the car. Eventually I will look into that kind of thing again though.
So I went to Spring Creek park after I put the PC and other stuff in storage. I was soaked with sweat and I wanted to go in the water. I decided to go wading in the creek. I went to Millbrook Marsh and climbed down into the creek. According to the signs, this was Slab Cabin Run.
I saw lots of minnows, and I wanted to catch them with a net and eat them. Then I saw lots of brown trout, too. I was reading the signs, and they explained that the brown trout are a non-native fish that survived better than the native brook trout when the streams were filled with sediment and when the water became too warm, in the past when this area temporarily had all the trees cut down and the soil went into the creeks. But I wanted to see the native brook trout, too. Are they completely gone?
I want to eat them, and then I want to replace them in the streams. I would do a fish hatchery of some kind. I want my whole tribe to eat them without using them all up.
I waded through water that was up to my elbows. I waded through water as shallow as the tops of my feet. I saw three or four creatures that were either beavers or muskrats. Some animal made a strange croak that scared me, from within a bunch of very tall grass, and it sounded kind of like a bullfrog, and I was hoping that's all that it was - but then, suddenly, a blue heron flew up and away. Blue herons are beautiful, and huge. They are also extremely shy and they fly away when you approach. I've seen one at the duckpond, years ago, and it would fly away even if I was walking all the way on the opposite side of the pond.
I waded through the creek and went all the way to where the creek crosses under College Avenue, right next to a... government building.
I was anxious that some goody-two-shoes government employee might see me through the window and shout, 'Hey! You're not allowed to walk there! That's a nature preserve!' I started to imagine my counter-arguments. Do they forbid bears and deer to wade in the stream? (Hopefully, there aren't any bears in that area though.) Am I cutting down trees? Damming up the stream? Throwing pollution into it? But in these imaginary arguments, I never manage to convince the other person that I'm right and they're wrong. They always start waving their fists at me angrily and running down the steps and out the door to try to arrest me. So I started imagining myself diving into the bushes and running away through the woods where the goody-two-shoes government employees wouldn't go. However, I am very recognizable - I'm the lady with the dreadlocks, and there aren't very many of those. So they could accidentally run into me at McDonald's and say, 'Hey! You're the person who was trespassing in Millbrook Marsh! Arrest her!' So I wondered if it would be possible for them to charge me with a crime when I was no longer at the scene of the crime. I would be merely a 'suspect' rather than someone they were absolutely sure was there.
After all that imagining, I realized that it was after five o'clock in the evening, and most likely, all of the people in that building would have gone home. So, nothing actually happened, and I got up on the bike path when I reached the tunnel that goes under College Avenue. I walked back to my car at Spring Creek Park.
I fantasized about inviting other people to come along with me, to join me in the real world, to stop paying rent, to stop paying for food, to stop using electricity, to stop watching television, to live outdoors, to grow our hair long, to live at the edges of society but still trade with them and read their books and use their internet, to stay close and to not completely leave, but to become more and more self-reliant and less reliant on the 'domesticated' way of life. I'll look for other people with these interests when I'm ready, and I hope that's very soon.
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