i am not impelled to simper like some grateful mouse but to roar like a lion. or so i thought. i look back over the last few pages of the history of my existance and a cold black creeping dread settled over what we shall charitably call my soul. i'm boring.

how did this happen? where did it all go? the drinking, the drugs, the adventures, the stories, the rock and roll... my panache, is gone. now i work nights, have a fiancee and am saving up for my own flat. why? i was happier in myself when i was homeless, i don't want a flat! i don't want to work nights! i DEFINATELY don't want to live in some sleepy countryside town! how is this better than death? once i counted no man my master and had no obligations, sure i was poor, but poverty, like most things is a skill. one that i have acquired admirably. i used to smile, not this fake smile i adorn now for my customers at work and my fiancee at home. i have become lost and i fear there is no salvation for me. Every day at dawn i look to the east and know in my brain that i could run, just run till my lungs burned like fire and my legs failed, i just have to start running and i can be free again, but i can't, my fiancee would never come with me, i stay for her, to make her happy. the woods call to me, they whisper "you have your tent, your knives, your sleeping bag, water and you've stashed food caches everywhere, come back to me" but i can't. i used to be happy. strange the envy i now feel for the homeless men i see, though never any in my woods, i have no idea why, my woods are beautiful, my woods feel like home, i just want to go home.