●The green carpet where I slept was dry even though it rained most of the night. I could feel an insanity resting deep in my face. The moon was still visible but it could not save us. I spent most of the morning looking at my phone and wondering if any of the thoughts inside of it would survive. Something terrible would soon be able to touch the all the nuclear codes. When I began walking I had an urge to stop traffic until all the roads in america died. One day everyone will be able to walk down the middle of the road free from all the violence this society has built.

●I passed a golf course and felt unhinged. I hope you’re happy touching sports so good you never notice when everything finishes burning around you. Before I left Defuniak Springs I stopped at a grocery store and bought some kale. People pointed and whispered, “It’s one of those kale eaters.” The day felt monumental not because it was my hundredth day of walking across america but because a man who hates everything except himself (or any other rich white man) will be free to burn the world for profit.

●We now have a president who does not care about the future of humanity on planet earth. I’m ashamed of the majority of white men of america to the point I want to remove all evidence of being a white male from my body. It began to rain so I sat on a bench and watched the rain.

●My dad called. We talked about trying to find hope in a system where the only safety net will be wealth. Part of me wanted to curl up and wait for my brain to melt but instead I began walking in the rain. With each foot step I felt more angry and helpless. Grow an organism so large it drowns out anyone and everything who has ever tried to harm a living being. Anyone who supports the president does not care about humanity or the future of earth. If you support this president you openly admit it’s okay to hurt women, people of color, minorities, the disabled, poor people, or anyone in need. I wish there was a way to transfer all the emotional and physical violence of this new presidency from those at risk to myself. I am out here in america. Please bring me your hatred and pain. We would have been better off electing a barrel of burning tires as president. As I was passing a junkyard a man with a pickup full of old washing machines yelled, “trump for president.” I asked him why he wanted to see the world burn. He just laughed. The language of this world has maybe died and been replaced with another hole that can only say things its own thoughts already believe. An hour later two people in a white truck stopped and asked if I needed anything. I lied and said I didn’t need anything instead of being honest and saying, “I need you to admit climate change is real. I need you to do everything you can to fight for this earth. I need you to reject everything our fascist president tries to do to this world and its people.” I need people to understand this earth does not only have to create systems of death and wealth. When it got dark my legs didn’t want to do anything else. I walked another four miles in the dark.

●My map said I was near a church but the only thing I found was a cross next to a carport. I crawled under it and went to sleep before I even finished zipping my sleeping arrangement closed.

●I woke up on earth. I was in a hotel. One of my legs felt disconnected. I did some yoga. My leg felt more connected. I left the hotel and ran up the street to a grocery store. I found some things to eat. One of the workers pointed at a shelf. It was pretty good shelf. I began moving in the direction my map told me to move. It was almost cold, but my bare feet helped regulate the temperature of the rest of my body. My map told me to take the New London Turnpike. It was a dirt path. I was a little confused but I began down the dirt path. A woman and her dog told me I should watch out for hunters. I got a little nervous but then I found a stream dripping across the dirt path and I forgot about all the men with guns out in the woods trying to kill things. I was moving very slow on the dirt path. There were a lot of medium-sized rocks. Around noon I sat down next to a baseball field and meditated. When I was done a guy pulled up in a truck and said, “I was just going to check to make sure you weren’t dead.” ●A few miles up the road the dirt was no longer dirt and I was back running on pavement. I saw a pond, a mail person, a dog person, a mom person, a horse person, and a message from a friend who said she heard me on the radio. I guess they put me on the news. The pavement I was on continued until my map told me to walk on something that wasn’t pavement. It wasn’t even a road. It was a field of grass behind some houses. In the middle of the field two teenagers were crying. Their relationship was ending. Some dogs asked me wesr my shoes were. I found a grocery store. One of the workers pointed at me and said, “You like hiking.” I nodded. The worker said, “I like hiking too.” ●A piece of the food I bought fell on the ground. A worker said, “You’re losing your stuff.” I picked up the kale leaf and ate it. It was almost five. I lay down in a field and ate some beans. I thought about stopping for the day. I had walked fourteen miles. I called the only motel in town. They didn’t have any rooms. It was nine miles to Connecticut. I walked for three hours in the dark. Sometimes the pavement hurt my feet so I walked in the grass. While I moved through the dark alone I listened to an audio book by Maggie Nelson about giving birth. At ten p.m. I crossed barefoot into Connecticut. It was another mile to the nearest motel. The man at the counter seemed confused. I was still wearing my headlamp. He gave me the key to room 112. I had traveled over twenty three miles on my bare feet.

I got a late start on the day. I dont really like beds but it was difficult to leave the bed I slept in. I’m glad I did though. I would be very disappointing in myself if I decided to never move again. After I got out of bed I did some modified yoga stretches. I’m pretty sure I would have already retired from my barefoot journey if I didn’t do a little yoga each morning. It always makes me feel more like a person and less like a bag of sore meat crammed inside my skin sleeves. Before I left the motel I noticed a large man rubbing an electrical outlet in the lobby for good luck. Maybe he was praying. The road was both warm and not warm. A van yelled at me. At a gas station I tried to buy a banana. They didn’t have any bananas. I bought some almonds. When I began running again I saw another man running. He was trying to get unswollen. We waved at each other. It wasn’t long until I was in wine country. I didn’t know Connecticut had wine. Maybe only horses are allowed to drink it. I ran for about an hour before I saw someone else. He was touching a mailbox. One of his ankles didn’t work. I nodded. He laughed and said, “Back when I still had two ankles I used to run around like you.” I asked what happened to his missing ankle. He shrugged and said, “I don’t know. I just woke up one day and it wasn’t there.” I continued running and probably would have made it to Ohio but I stopped to go pee. After I peed I sat down next to a rock wall and looked a field. An hour passed. It didn’t look like I would make it to Ohio now which maybe is for the best. When I finally began moving again some of my pieces weren’t as good at moving. I thought maybe I would have to rent a helicopter to take me home but instead I looked at my phone. A few miles later I found a farm stand on the side of the road with zucchini and tomatoes. I bought two bags and ate them until while it got dark. It was three or four miles to the next thing so I walked three or four miles in the dark. At one point I found a small red ball and kicked it a few times. I was going to maybe kick it all the way across America but the next thing I knew the small red ball was gone. Where did the small red ball go? I tried asking a donut man but he was just a boy and didn’t know what I was talking about. Up the road I found some empty beds. I filled two trashcans with ice so I could soak my feet. There was a television in the corner but I ignored it. Before I went to bed I rubbed three different creams on my feet.

My feet didn’t feel like doing anything. I tried to make them drag me across America but they were like, "Nah we’re good." Eventually I tricked them into leaving the motel room because I told them there was a giant water slide outside. There was obviously no water slide. My feet weren’t pleased. One of them said, "I’m never going to hang out with you again." The other one drooled a little and tried to crawl in a ditch and die. Despite these concerns I began moving very slowly across America. A car stopped shortly after I began. The window rolled down and some questions were thrown at me. I told the person in the car I was crossing America barefoot. The person laughed and said, "You’ve been standing in the same place for twenty minutes looking at your phone." I couldn’t disagree. My phone felt more interesting than doing anything else with my life. Part of me wished I had told everyone I was going to look at my phone for three consecutive months instead of crossing America barefoot. This would have been easier and more realistic. I could have even raised money for a cause. The headline would have read: Man looks at phone for three months and raises $100000000 to help defeat climate change. Anyway, my point with all this is my feet did not feel great. I tried to move like I had the previous days but that was not realistic so I moved slower than I ever have before. I moved so slow I almost turned into one of those houses people abandon which eventually become so deteriorated it’s illegal for humans to even look at them. My only hope was going to the grocery store and eating large containers of food. The grocery store had a large container of dates and a large container of grapes. I got both containers and ate them as I moved slowly towards one of those concrete things. When I finally managed to climb up on the concrete thing I looked down at the water and thought, “This moment of existence feels pretty good.” The one good thing about moving slow is that as long as you keep moving slow you’ll eventually get somewhere. By the late afternoon I was no longer where I had been. It was difficult to describe what it felt like to move so slow you think you’ll never make it anywhere but still end up making it somewhere. Late afternoon quickly drifted into night. Like the previous three days I was walking alone in the dark. But I still had my phone. And it gave me communications with the rest of the world. One of the communications was a text message from friends driving back to Providence from New York. They asked where I was. I looked around. I replied to the text message and told my friends I was near another concrete thing hovering over some water. An hour later I was in a motel room. My friends were giving me hugs and cantaloupe. I smiled and hugged them some more and then almost fell asleep in their arms. They asked how it was going. I looked at my feet and said, “I don’t know.” Later after my friends left I lay down on the bed and tried to figure out something I can’t quite remember because I fell asleep before I figured it out.

When I woke up I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to do the thing I had been doing. My right foot hurt and the left probably only seemed fine because the right one was in worse shape. I walked down to the parking lot and watched a lawyer go into his office. I was tempted to follow him and ask for a job filing his documents. Instead I went back to my room and packed my bag. When I left the motel I walked across the street to that big river known as the Atlantic Ocean. I asked it what I should do. It didn’t respond and instead kept doing what it had always done. I took this as a sign. I began to run slowly up the road. At first my feet were like, “We need to talk,” but as the mikes passed they were like, “I don’t want to live in a world without you.” At some point I stopped and took out my phone. There was a pile of messages. Each one encouraged me to continue doing what I was doing. It made me a little emotional. Across the street a man selling hot dogs watched me cry. I began running again. The afternoon was making me sweat. Some strange man in a white truck seemed to be following me. I stopped and looked at him. It was a mail person. I asked if he had any letters for me. He didn’t. I drank my water empty. It was a few miles to the next thing. Eventually I made it, but when I went inside this next thing I couldn’t find the bean cans. The store manager pointed at the candy aisle. I bought two cans and decided to keep moving. There was another big river but it wasn’t quite as big as the Atlantic Ocean. It was probably only as large as the state of Connecticut. On the other side of this big river I found darkness. I put on a headlamp and did another five miles in the dark.

I had a dream I was a truck face down in the mud of a pond that had very little water and would soon dry up. The day began in reverse. I walked back up the road to a grocery store to buy some things to put in my mouth. One of the things I bought was green. Another thing I bought was purple. After my mouth was finished becoming different colors I started moving down Route 1. Some of the automobiles were kind and gave me space. I thought about the moon. I hadn’t seen it in a few days and wondered if it was depressed. If I could deliver a message to the moon I would say, “You are very special. A lot of people respect you and love you very much.” It’s odd I was thinking about the moon because the sun was very warm and it seemed to be enjoying all the sweat it was creating. I watched one piece of sweat fall off me and run into a marsh. I’m not sure what will become of it. Some men were resting on the side of the road. I smiled at them and held up peace signs with both my hands. One of them asked if i was Richard Nixon or Jesus Christmas. I continued. A van stopped and asked if I needed a ride. Before I could respond the van melted into an abandoned gas station. I was pretty sure I had seen this van before. Maybe some government people were following me and disguising themselves as the capitalist decay of an America built on the unsustainable infrastructure supporting personalized automobile transportation. For lunch I went to a thing with food. I bought a pile of salsa and a pile of hummus. There weren’t any chairs left on this particular piece of earth so I sat on the grass next to the road and ate my piles of food while listening to an NBA podcast discuss Chandler Parsons musical tastes. As great as it is to be in contact with the earth day after day, listening to grown adults talk about sports ball people is still very dear to my heart. The afternoon was growing dark again. This isn’t too uncommon. It happens at least once a day which is probably good because if the afternoon never got dark we’d be stuck in the unending dream landscape of someone’s interpretation of the world and all our thoughts and desires would remain unfulfilled. A few minutes before the last of the sun disappeared a man yelled at me. I looked at him. He said, “A friend of yours from high school went to college with my brother and I was told you’re doing something.” I nodded. I was doing something. We shook hands and talked for a bit. When I began walking again I noticed I had an email. Someone wanted to publish one of my poetry books. This was a nice way to end the day. I moved through the dark with my smiles. When I got to the motel I had planned on staying at I noticed there was no empty space. I continued through the dark a few more miles until I found something with some emptiness.

It’s been one week since I began crossing America barefoot. This is the point when I write, “It’s hard to believe…” and then write something I have a hard time believing. But honestly, I feel at least a hundred years different then when I began. The days I spent in Rhode Island seem as if they were a log I burned four billion years ago on another planet. Maybe the routine of waking up somewhere and going to sleep somewhere else will grow old. I’m not sure. Yesterday I woke up in a town I had never visited and took a picture of myself. Someone I went to high school with commented on the picture and said, “Hey I live in that town.” The world keeps getting smaller and smaller. Of course, I still have three thousand miles to go. Two minutes after I began walking a man gave me $5. Later I saw a person pause while crossing the street to look at their facebook. That was cool. It was nice to know I’m not the only one who checks facebook. Somehow I ended up next to a pond. Then I was at a farm stand buying tomatoes. You can’t make this stuff up. Unfortunately if they were making a movie about this journey they would not include this moment when I bought tomatoes. That’s what’s wrong with hollywood these days. There just isn’t enough scenes of people buying tomatoes at farm stands. I eventually turned on a road with some acorns. I sat down next to one of the acorns for a few minutes then I began walking again. I didn’t make it more than a thousand feet when two cops pulled up. They said, “We heard you were lying down next to some acorns. People are worried.” I told them it was okay because I was crossing America barefoot. They agreed and stopped bothering me. In case it wasn’t already clear: I’m white. Sadly the cops treat me differently than people who aren’t white. About this time I got an alert in my phone. My campaign to save earth had surpassed $500. I felt good. Only $99,999,500 to reach my ultimate goal of 100 million (or 9,500 to reach the smaller more realistic goal of 10,000). When I looked up from my phone a man warned me I was nearing New Haven. I shrugged. He said, “Someone got killed there last night. Some guy just walked into a corner store and shot the cashier but didn’t take any money.” I continued. A friend had put me in contact with someone I could stay with in New Haven. They said they had a bed I could use. I was confident I would not get shot. As the sun was setting I put on my spotify weekly discover playlist and began to run. My legs felt like two big piles of meat the gods had wrapped in iron. One man who saw me running told me I reminded him of Wayne Gretzky. After a few miles I stopped at a stoplight. The light was red. I began crossing the street. The light changed. A car moved towards me. I had to jump on the hood of the car. The old person driving the car seemed scared. I said, “It’s okay. No one died.” When I got to New Haven the person sitting next to the bridge asked if I had been visited by a higher power. I told him I hadn’t, but I had learned how to feel alive in a pretty good way. The person laughed and crawled inside a trash bag. New Haven was pretty nice. A bunch of people were playing volleyball in a parking lot while a child went around selling cigarettes two for a dollar to the people watching. At around eight I walked into the kitchen of some people who knew someone I knew. There were lentils. We talked about trampolines and how to name babies.

Before I tell you how I almost won a hundred free bean tacos I should explain what led me to this almost victory. The day began in a bed. This bed was labeled “David’s bed.” He was not using it so I was allowed to use it. David is nice though. He would probably let me use it even if he was using it. After I used David’s bed I got up for a drink of water. Julie was in the kitchen making coffee. We talked a little about Brazilian literature and then I went to pack my bags. I had a lot of wires to pack. If you ever cross the country for any reason make sure you bring a lot of wires. When all the wires were packed I got ready to leave. Julie was also leaving. I asked her if she thought it was going to rain. She nodded and put on her rain helmet. I watched her open a garage door, take out a bike, and ride away to do a lot of thinking about Brazilian literature. I went across the street to the little market so I could post on facebook and all the other websites I like posting on. It took me about two hours to do all my posts. Every day I tell myself not to spend so much time doing the internet but I love posting on the internet so I will probably never stop. As I began walking through New Haven I wondered how long until the raindrops started. I was not wearing my rain helmet. It was in my backpack. In the center of New Haven I found a giant square building. It was full of all kinds of rare books. One of the rare books was a cup from a burrito fast food restaurant. I was getting a little hungry so I ate a container of lentils. Then I walked out of New Haven into a construction zone. Some policemen on the other side of the street yelled at me not to walk in the construction zone but I pretended I couldn’t hear them and ran through the construction zone as quick as possible. It wasn’t until I was through the construction zone that I realized I had run from some cops. I looked back. They weren’t paying attention to me anymore. It seemed odd. I’ve heard news stories about people running from cops. It’s sad how some people are ignored when they run from cops and others aren’t. Anyway a few miles later a minivan pulled over. The two women inside asked if I needed help. I told them I was okay and just trying to make it barefoot to California. I’m not sure they understood but they got back in the minivan. Eventually I was passing through a region of consumer products. Every few feet there was another business trying to exchange short term benefits for profits. I ignored all of these businesses except the one with the sign that said, “I’ve got the hookup.” I interpreted this to mean if I went in this fast food restaurant and yelled, “I’ve got the hookup,” then they would give me a hundred free bean tacos which I could then disperse to the locals. Unfortunately I was given no free bean tacos when I yelled, “I’ve ever got the hookup.” Everyone just looked at me until I left the fast food restaurant, walked up the road, bought arugula, ate it until it began raining, put on my rain helmet, and walked barefoot in the dark until I found a cheap motel.

I stayed in a motel room with windows. It was nice to stay in a motel with windows. I opened all the windows. Most motels and hotels in America don’t have windows. They just have pieces of glass in the wall. If you are in a motel and you can’t open the windows then you’re not really in a motel with windows. You’re in a motel with pieces of glass in the wall. As I was leaving the motel I looked at my phone. Someone wrote a tweet about me. It felt good. I wanted to celebrate by doing a lot of miles. I began doing some miles until I found some beans. I did two bean cans and was about to do some more miles when it began raining. I wasn’t scared. I put on a poncho and continued doing more miles. The miles were a little slower in the rain. I did miles until I was on a bridge. Then I did miles until I was on another bridge. I wasn’t probably going to do as many miles as I wanted but it was okay because I sat down on a bench and began to meditate in the rain. I was not bothered because I was still underneath my poncho. I wonder how I would still be alive without my poncho. A few minutes after I was done meditating the sun came out. Maybe I had somehow manifested the sun with my brain. I could feel all the sun’s warmth making my forehead glow. I began walking again. This one guy who saw me walking without shoes was like, “You need shoes or cocaine or something or else you’re going to die.” I pointed at his stool and said, “stool.” A few minutes after that I got sad. Some piece of dirt was yelling at a pebble because the pebble wanted to run out in traffic and be wild. This reminded me of the time in college when I tried to change my name to WILD STYLE. Anyway I don’t like when dirt is yelling at its pebbles when all the pebbles want to do is be wild. It’s like if you were a cardboard box of sweaters and someone tried to tell you that you couldn’t buy a train ticket to the sweater colonies. People and things need freedom to explore their own personalities or else they’re just going to get stuck following whatever personality they get stamped with at the bread factory known as the American industrial educational complex. Eventually I was walking under a bridge. A lady stopped and asked why I didn’t have shoes. I told her I was trying to save the earth. She said, “I’m in an environmental science class.” We shook hands. It got dark. Some birds on a wire looked at all the cars for sale in America. I found a store. It had all my favorite snacks. I got a large bag. Some people in my phone asked if I was real. I pretended to not be real. The snacks disappeared. I walked into the darkness while listening to some men argue about sports.

I went down to the motel lobby. There was a pile of fruit. I ate four bowls of the fruit pile. A television was talking about the weather. People kept saying, “flash foods.” I went back to my room and packed my bag. It was raining when I began. I walked very slowly while I answered emails on my phone. It felt strange to send emails while walking. When the emails were done I began walking faster. Some people I passed seemed concerned but didn’t say anything. A few minutes later a cop asked me for my ID. He did a background check. Another cop arrived and asked if I was worried about my foot falling off. When the background check was done I returned to walking. A few minutes later a car pulled over. It was someone I had recently met on facebook. We shook hands and chatted about the size of the world. It felt nice meeting people I had recently met on the internet. I walked over a bridge. I looked on the other side of a wooden fence. I walked past a rock that said, “great swamp fight.” I began running. I thought maybe I would finishing crossing America before dark. I was running real good. The entire trip was going perfectly. Then I stepped on an acorn. My right foot began to swell. I thought, “Well I guess this is it.” My foot hurt so much I probably would have walked home if my foot didn’t hurt so much. I felt embarrassed and ashamed. I thought, “Everyone is going to think I’m a failure.” I decided to keep moving forward. I moved very slowly. I tried not to limp because I didn’t want more people to call the cops because they saw a barefoot man limping through the rain. I walked four miles on my swollen foot until I came to a grocery store. I bought some food and sat down. A few of the things I bought had turmeric. I hoped the yellow powder would heal me. Before I left the grocery store I bought a jar of turmeric and a jar of pepper. It was no longer raining but it had gotten colder. I walked over a bridge with a hundred american flags. On the other side of the bridge some people were trying to teach their children about money. I passed a sign that said, “24 Hour Brunch.” It got dark. I walked in the dark. Some trees were glowing. I stopped at a convenience store and bought salt. Across the street was a motel. I bought a room. It had two beds. I filled the trashcan with ice water and put my foot in the trashcan. After twenty minutes I emptied the ice water and filled the trash can with salt and hot water. Then I put my foot in the trashcan. I kept my foot in the warm salt water until I almost fell asleep. I got up, emptied the saltwater, drank a cup of turmeric water, and climbed into bed.

Summary: I went to an insane grocery store. I met someone real people from the internet. A truck tried to make it but couldn’t. I woke up. People in the next room where doing motel sex. I took out my journal: When I stepped out of bed my foot didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. It did not seem like the trip wouldn’t continue. I thought about the ice baths and turmeric water I had drank the night before. I took out my journal: After I left the motel and began walking I wondered if I should contact the news and tell them I wanted to become famous. I passed a car dealership full of automobiles with American flags glued to the windshields. I took out my journal: At each intersection people seemed confused by my bare feet and forgot they were in automobiles. I was befinning to have a minimal effect on America. As I was crossing one intersection I noticed someone had lost a pumpkin seed. I took out my journal: I stopped at a grocery store. In the entrance there was a picture of Ronald Reagan holding hands with the store’s owner. The store was designed like a maze. I had to pass rows of ground hamburger and conveyor belts of milk before I found a pile of vegetables. I filled a basket, paid, and sat down next to the buffet line. I took out my journal: After I left the grocery store I walked in silence. There were a lot of American flags and car dealerships in Connecticut. I passed them all. A few minutes after I saw a car dealership with one of those giant floating balloon oracles I got a message from someone I knew on the internet. The message said: An hour later two people walked up to me and touched my hand. We talked about a mountain and about the guy with a lot of different methods involving ice cubes and the human lung. The day might have ended there but I kept walking. There wasn’t much else for me to do. At this point in my life walking slowly barefoot in locations I’ve never been is about all I have going for me. As I neared the tunnel leading to the next town I noticed police lights. I was worried they were waiting for me. When I got closer I saw something stuck halfway through the tunnel. It was a truck. This truck had been too large for the tunnel. I took out my journal: I thought about waiting to see how the truck would get removed from the tunnel but I worried the police might start shooting the truck and I didn’t want to see anything get shot so I kept walking. At some point I ended up near a large animal made of synthetic materials. The large animal was the shape of a bear so I took a picture and sent it to everyone on the internet. As I waited for everyone to look at the picture I took out my journal: I’m pretty sure something significant happened during the transition from three years old to an adult but I can’t remember. I guess it’s possible nothing happened or maybe I wasn’t ever three years old. It got dark about the same time it had the previous day (maybe a few minutes earlier). I was still walking. My foot felt pretty good, but a piece of it had started bleeding a little. I spit on the part of it that was bleeding. I was only a mile from the motel where I planned to stay. I noticed two people with grocery bags. They were both wearing the same patterns. I took out my journal: In my motel room I filled two trashcans with ice cubes and sat on the bed thinking about whether or not I should sell my feet when this journey ends.

I left Connecticut and walked barefoot into New York. People looked at me weird. The motel in Stamford Connecticut had curtains. I wrote the word, “television” on a piece of paper and stuck it to the mirror. It was six a.m. I decided to go to the motel lobby and look at the breakfast options. There was no fresh fruit. I went back to my room and took out my journal: I am disappointed by how many pancakes get eaten every day. As I was packing my things I looked out the window. A person was climbing into their automobile. They were holding a cup of coffee. A little spilled on the ground. I took out my journal: Life can be so careless. I remember once hearing a story about two people who almost didn’t fall in love because my great grandmother hid the letters my grandfather was sending my grandmother behind the refrigerator. I walked a mile to a grocery store. It had an entire aisle devoted to canned sweet potatoes. I bought a can and sat down in the aisle with all the chairs. A teenager asked if I was trying to get famous on the internet. I nodded and took out my journal: A part of me hopes I will one day get buried in the same grave as the person who was in the movie about the bad thing that once almost happened. I left the grocery store and began walking towards the Connecticut border. On the way a friend sent me a text message. It said: Another Monday has arrived in the universe. I began to sing a little, but I didn’t know the words to the song I had made up so I stopped and watched the automobiles for a little bit. When I was done watching the automobiles I looked at the ground and saw a flower that will never die. It was made of plastic. I took out my journal: When I was too small to have thoughts I used to think vacuum cleaners were a strange lost piece of the ocean. For the last few days walking through Connecticut it’s felt like I’ve been walking in a suburb of New York City. Each town seems to be trying to outclass the neighboring villages but their efforts mostly result in fast food restaurant getting built in a way that makes them not look like fast food restaurants. In one town I saw a Panera Bread in what I thought was a stone postal building. For lunch I meditated outside a grocery store and then went in and bought some hummus and a new hat. The store manager was announcing the specials into a microphone. I took out my journal: The noise on earth is distracting me from remembering I’m on earth. I walked down a hill. At the bottom of the hill was a pile of wet animals. I looked up. A cloud was looking at me. It almost seemed like it was going to begin leaking. I waved at the cloud and walked over a bridge. On the other side of the bridge I took out my journal: The pebbles on this piece of America aren’t very much different from any other pebbles but I think they are part of a new trend the children will someday talk about. I still wasnt sure where I was so I yelled at a person touching gasoline. They said I was in New York. It felt strange to no longer be in Connecticut. I took out my journal: It’s possible Connecticut might not exist the next time I’m in Connecticut. A few minutes after I arrived in New York I took a picture. Someone asked if I was taking a picture of the wires. I shook my head. The person said, “You can’t take a picture of the wires because those are my dad’s wires.” I nodded and took out my journal: I hope when I finally own a child that I no longer own any wires. The sun went down. A person on a bicycle with a child hanging on their shoulders pointed at my feet, laughed, and said, “You should be on the internet.” I walked past a train station and convenience store. Three people called me on the phone. The first person said: I heard you were doing something with your body. I hope your body doesn’t fall apart. Maybe when your body is near my body we can yell at our bodies together. The second person said: It’s nice to hear your weird voice. The third person said: I like when you look at things no one else looks at. At around 9 p.m. I walked past a high school football game. Some of the teenagers were doing young people things. I watched one teenager squirt ketchup from the window of a moving vehicle. I ignored the teenagers and walked into a motel office. A man told me to sign my name. I did. He gave me a key, a cup of ice, and the wireless password. I went to room 27 and took out my joirnal: I hope when I wake up I have the ability to do all the things I wasn’t able to do today.

The green carpet where I slept was dry even though it rained most of the night. I could feel an insanity resting deep in my face. The moon was still visible but it could not save us. I spent most of the morning looking at my phone and wondering if any of the thoughts inside of it would survive. Something terrible would soon be able to touch the all the nuclear codes. When I began walking I had an urge to stop traffic until all the roads in america died. One day everyone will be able to walk down the middle of the road free from all the violence this society has built. I passed a golf course and felt unhinged. I hope you’re happy touching sports so good you never notice when everything finishes burning around you. Before I left Defuniak Springs I stopped at a grocery store and bought some kale. People pointed and whispered, “It’s one of those kale eaters.” The day felt monumental not because it was my hundredth day of walking across america but because a man who hates everything except himself (or any other rich white man) will be free to burn the world for profit. We now have a president who does not care about the future of humanity on planet earth. I’m ashamed of the majority of white men of america to the point I want to remove all evidence of being a white male from my body. It began to rain so I sat on a bench and watched the rain. My dad called. We talked about trying to find hope in a system where the only safety net will be wealth. Part of me wanted to curl up and wait for my brain to melt but instead I began walking in the rain. With each foot step I felt more angry and helpless. Grow an organism so large it drowns out anyone and everything who has ever tried to harm a living being. Anyone who supports the president does not care about humanity or the future of earth. If you support this president you openly admit it’s okay to hurt women, people of color, minorities, the disabled, poor people, or anyone in need. I wish there was a way to transfer all the emotional and physical violence of this new presidency from those at risk to myself. I am out here in america. Please bring me your hatred and pain. We would have been better off electing a barrel of burning tires as president. As I was passing a junkyard a man with a pickup full of old washing machines yelled, “trump for president.” I asked him why he wanted to see the world burn. He just laughed. The language of this world has maybe died and been replaced with another hole that can only say things its own thoughts already believe. An hour later two people in a white truck stopped and asked if I needed anything. I lied and said I didn’t need anything instead of being honest and saying, “I need you to admit climate change is real. I need you to do everything you can to fight for this earth. I need you to reject everything our fascist president tries to do to this world and its people.” I need people to understand this earth does not only have to create systems of death and wealth. When it got dark my legs didn’t want to do anything else. I walked another four miles in the dark. My map said I was near a church but the only thing I found was a cross next to a carport. I crawled under it and went to sleep before I even finished zipping my sleeping arrangement closed.