I found this in the comments section of the spearhead.....fascinating.
a harbinger for things to come?
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I was homeless for a stretch after an exit from a disastrous PhD program.
I lived in my car, sleeping in different parking lots every night in order to avoid suspicion.
Fortunately It was a state with a warm climate (Texas) and I was able to bathe myself in rivers/streams in wooded areas on the outskirts of Austin.
One day while in said woods, I encountered another homeless man.
He had been divorced and to prison twice for failure to pay child support.
After leaving prison for the the second time, he left the Northeast where he formerly lived and headed South.
He managed to get a job working off the books so that he could feed himself and lived in a shack that he built for himself in the woods.
Austin is a unique city in that it has a relatively large population in a warm climate without a real suburb surrounding it. There are quite a few wooded areas right outside the city that are wilderness that you can hide away in without interference from people.
He told me he would ride his bicycle to work in the city during the day and come back to the woods at night. It was only during the few cold months (end of November to the beginning of February) that he would find someone who had an apartment to be a roommate with and live with them. The rest of the year, he lived in a shack in the woods and did his laundry at a the laundromat.
He managed to live off the grid and at least survive anonymously in a society that treated him like a criminal.
a harbinger for things to come?
_____________________________________________________________
I was homeless for a stretch after an exit from a disastrous PhD program.
I lived in my car, sleeping in different parking lots every night in order to avoid suspicion.
Fortunately It was a state with a warm climate (Texas) and I was able to bathe myself in rivers/streams in wooded areas on the outskirts of Austin.
One day while in said woods, I encountered another homeless man.
He had been divorced and to prison twice for failure to pay child support.
After leaving prison for the the second time, he left the Northeast where he formerly lived and headed South.
He managed to get a job working off the books so that he could feed himself and lived in a shack that he built for himself in the woods.
Austin is a unique city in that it has a relatively large population in a warm climate without a real suburb surrounding it. There are quite a few wooded areas right outside the city that are wilderness that you can hide away in without interference from people.
He told me he would ride his bicycle to work in the city during the day and come back to the woods at night. It was only during the few cold months (end of November to the beginning of February) that he would find someone who had an apartment to be a roommate with and live with them. The rest of the year, he lived in a shack in the woods and did his laundry at a the laundromat.
He managed to live off the grid and at least survive anonymously in a society that treated him like a criminal.
