[Afternoon freewrite]
I'm cheating a bit here.  Instead of doing htis first thing in the morning
hte way I'm supposed to, I'm doing this at noon.  Why is htis such a big
deal?  Well, I'm supposed to be doing this first thing so that I can empty
out my thoughts.  Put things in order.  Spew.  Before the day begins.  Start
the process of release early.

Still, not doing too badly.  I've written three letters this morning nad
read Anais Nin.  I'm cleaning my room and so I'm trying to write something
to people when I grab their letters and before putting htem in the letter
box... In a way, I've decided my room is like a giant IN box.  Anything
unresolved is put back into the room until dealt with.... Like any IN box in
a mythical company, there's always so much more coming in than going out....

What am I to do now?  I read a letter Sara wrote me quite a while ago.
before (and partially inspiring me to) begin my trail hike.  The trail.
Meaning.  It is meaning that I seek.  It is meaning that the trail has.  The
letter talked about looking for meaning.  (This is chaotic.  That is the
purpose in a way to allow you to pour out information and not worry about
structure.  That will come after you understand everything that you have.)

Have you noticed that I make comments on my work in progress freewrites?
This is the critic in me.  Rather than allowing creation to take place, I
have to comment upon and criticize the work in progress.  Is this a bad
thing or a very bad thing?  When it intereferes with my creation it is bad.
If it does something beneficial then it is only a partial badness.
Mitigating circumstances....

What am I to do?  what am I to do?  There is so much to do, so little time.
So much that I do not want to embark upon.  So muc hthat I cannot deal with.
So much that I want to deal with.  So much I don't know.  So much that...
This is a  senseless ramble about nothing in particular.  Why do I bother to
write it?  I don't know.  THere may be a reason or maybe not.

I think there should be something somewhere to make sense of all these
meaningless things that have no meaning for I see that there is
meaningless....

I have been caught in a loop.  My thoughts are looping.  Just circling over
and over and over through ideas.  Is this a sign of Obsessive Compulsive
Disorder?  I heard that it is.  It is getting worse as I get older.  I need
it to stop.  But I don't know how.  I have coping strategies, but I can't
break the pattern completely.  I recognize when I'm getting stuck and can
make an effort to stop.  But it causes me psychic pain.  And so I have to
deal with it some how.

But how?  How does one do this?  Can one do it on one's own or must we go
forth and ask for help from others?  Can we?  Do we?  What is going on?

[End afternoon freewrite]

I'm living in a small, rural town that's experiencing growing pains.  Not
enough workers, not enough housing, an influx of new faces mixing with the
old.  (And some of the old leaving, unwilling to face the changes.)

In many ways, this is a sad time for the Town.  The old way of life is
dying.  A new generation is beginning that has no idea of the customs and
traditions of the old.  Continuity has been broken.

The community is losing cohesion.  Perhaps church or the grocery store or
the neighbors or the families of the children who played baseball with
)your_ children bound you to othersin the former community.  But now those
bonds have disintegrated and new ones have yet to form.  A transitional
period.  The old ways in which people socialized are dying; new ones have
yet to form.

How does the Trail differ from this community?  After all, the Trail is
flooded with new hikers and new ideas -- a new community -- every year.  But
the Trail has _no_ continuity with past years, past hikers.  Every years
hikers are allowed to start afresh in a land unpeopled.  The hikers from
last year have migrated on.  The hikers of this year have the land to
themselves to make their traditions and rules on a fresh slate.

Yet even without continuity there is commonality among the hikers.  They
come fit to slot into a place into the new community.  For each hiker has
come to this place for a common purpose, to hike the Trail.  And each hiker
is dispossessed, uprooted, a person who has given up their home in order ot
pursue this dream.