Savage questions this morning, hard and deep. Why did I choose this path? And did I choose it, or did it choose me? And who in the hell talks about a path these days anyway. I don't mean having a casual interest in marginal things, or living the Pagan way, I mean actually living the mystery in a time when modernism has done it's best to erase all mystery with 300 channels and unlimited internet pages chocked full of readily available answers. Shit is as shit is and that's all the shit there is - the motto of 21st century living. There ain't no paths, fool.

When did I become 'odd'? When did I fall through the cracks and fall so hard that nothing about being alive is as simple as the brochures make out? Why is that the words mortgage, security, garauntee and the phrases 'fixed variable rate' and 'all you can eat' induce a grimace and turn my stomach? Arn't these things normal, every day experiences? In any case, I loathe them. I loathed them like all young people loathe them, except I actually did something about it. I left. That's where the path started. When you leave the highway and head out into the jungle, that's where the road ends and the path starts. When you leave.

I didn't want to live in a world without magic, without mystery. I was tired of everything being obvious - tired of cliched living, of predictability, of weekends in the same bars and weekdays following the same routine. I hated knowing where people would be before I called them and knowing what they'd say when I did - oh hey, come over, we'll have a beer. Most of all, though, I hated my parents - i hated to see them decaying slowly as they dug their own graves in financial drudgery and the tedium of keeping a bouyant a life that should have sank long ago.

So I left. I stole dad's chevy and hit the road, and for the first three hours I thought I was free.