Young Homeless Professional

Kenny Peavy

Description

Where is home? And how do we find it? During the summer of 2000, Kenny wanders about seeking answers to these fundamental questions while sleeping homeless in forests at night and working as a professional naturalist during the daylight hours. Along the way he meets weird characters, has bizarre conversations in the YWCO hot tub, encounters the Keepers of Beauty, plasters Athens, Georgia with free Post It Poetry and gains deep philosophical insight and inspiration from a brick mason living in his van. Ironically, to discover where he truly belongs and find his place in the wider world he had to become a Young Homeless Professional.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Memoir

Informations

• Publié par: First Edition Design eBook Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781622876549
• Langue: English

Extrait

Young Homeless Professional
Kenny Peavy


First Edition Design Publishing
Young Homeless Professional
Book II of the Ersatz Trilogy

First Edition Design Publishing
Young Homeless Professional
Book II of the Ersatz Trilogy
Copyright ©2014 Kenny Peavy

ISBN 978-1622-876-53-2 PRINT
ISBN 978-1622-876-54-9 EBOOK

LCCN 2014947763

August 2014

Published and Distributed by
First Edition Design Publishing, Inc.
P.O. Box 20217, Sarasota, FL 34276-3217
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com



ALL R I G H T S R E S E R V E D. No p a r t o f t h i s b oo k pub li ca t i o n m a y b e r e p r o du ce d, s t o r e d i n a r e t r i e v a l s y s t e m , o r t r a n s mit t e d i n a ny f o r m o r by a ny m e a ns ─ e l e c t r o n i c , m e c h a n i c a l , p h o t o - c o p y , r ec o r d i n g, or a ny o t h e r ─ e x ce pt b r i e f qu ot a t i o n i n r e v i e w s , w i t h o ut t h e p r i o r p e r mi ss i on o f t h e a u t h o r or publisher .
For Geetha.
Our paths ran parallel for a while.
For that I am eternally grateful.
A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book will go towards sustainability projects in local communities and villages in South East Asia.

For more information see:

Earth Matters- Connecting People and Planet

www.theearthmatters.asia

http://ersatztrilogy.com
Young Homeless Professional
Book II of the Ersatz Trilogy
By
Kenny Peavy
Life Is Bigger

The people in this book are real folks I have been privileged to know. Similarly, the events and tales contained herein are true, embellished only as much as time and memory warrant.
But of course, we know all writing is fiction and these tales are not exempt from that steadfast rule.
The words we use as symbolic meaning to convey our thoughts, feelings and experiences often fall hopelessly short of capturing the immensity of life.
Not to mention, everyone on Earth has a uniquely different slice of reality and their own skewed personal perspective about life and how it works.
It seems that the less actual experience one has the more likely they are to hold tight to the notions of what they think to be true and famously cling to those skinny truths firmly and with resolute conviction.
However, once in a great while we are sent reminders that we don’t see the whole picture. Much like when we stand too close to a painting and see the swerving and curving brushstrokes but fail to see the image they collectively create.
These cues remind us to get out into the wider world, stand back and gaze for a while slowly and with unwavering intent. Only then can we begin to have a modicum of understanding of how things are pieced together and work as a whole.
If we manage to wriggle loose from the tight embrace of our finite perceptions then occasionally we catch a glimpse of something profound that helps us understand the world, our place in it as well as that of our companions on this spinning globe.
When we find ourselves yearning to comprehend this curious world, longing to understand life and baffled by the actions and attitudes of those around us it comes in handy to remember:
Life is bigger than you. And you are not me.
Confessions of an
Experience Junkie

I scribbled these words with a refillable fountain pen sometime around 2000 Anno Domini, the Year of Our Lord, in an olde fashioned hard cover paper journal at coffee shops scattered around Athens, Georgia, USA.
Thankfully, I survived Y2K.
Later, I transcribed the words from those faded and tattered journals into a Word document that I fortuitously saved on a 3.5-inch floppy disk with a Windows based desktop PC. Luckily, I did not use Claris Works.
Since then I have literally moved to the other side of the planet.
The world has changed. My world has changed. My life’s been tossed about like a horseshoe lobbed at a knee-high stob jabbed in red clay during a family reunion.
I now reside in Malaysia. A country I hadn’t a clue of its whereabouts until I made the decision to move here. I literally had to look it up on one of those spinning globes that sits catty-cornered on a semi-circular metal hoop stand. Remember those?
Out of necessity, I’ve learned to speak Bahasa Indonesia. Yet again, a language I hadn’t the faintest notion even existed when growing up in a doublewide trailer in a patch of woods that has subsequently been converted into one of the most gargantuan malls in the Southeastern United States.
Life is funny that way. You just never know do you?
Since moving way across the big pond over here to South East Asia I have taught science in several International Schools. An option I’d never heard of when doing my teachers certification at the University of Georgia in 1996.
Now that I’m here I've become intimately acquainted with the rainforest, an ecosystem I previously knew only through ecology textbooks and National Geographic TV specials. I never dreamed I’d actually see one in real life. Now I know many rainforest trails by heart.
I’ve also co-authored As if the Earth Matters , a book on environmental education that was recommended by the National Science Teachers Association in North America and I’ve also been awarded the Volunteer of the Year Award by the Malaysian Nature Society.
In 2010, The Benchmarx, a rock band that I was a singer and guitarist for in Kuala Lumpur won an Independent Music Award for The Most Electrifying - Exciting - Thrilling Live Act in Malaysia. To say we were simultaneously deeply honored, ridiculously excited, curiously flabbergasted and plain old shocked would be quite an understatement.
We knew it was a once in a lifetime achievement and planned to make it a memory we would talk about the rest of our lives. So at the awards ceremony I caught my guitar on fire and proceeded to smash the smoking six string over a durian. Durian is a large, foul, dirty feet smelling, heavy, spikey fruit harvested from the forests of South East Asia that I could never have fathomed back in rural Georgia, USA.
That action set the fire alarm off and released a squealing siren from the ceiling as well as from the 800 strong pulsating crowd in attendance. In a good rock-n-roll sort of way, of course.
In 2012, I rode a bicycle fashioned from bamboo over 900 miles from Thailand to Bali, Indonesia to raise awareness for sustainability in the region. During which, I landed on a ferry full of Indonesian prisoners being promptly exported back to Jakarta from Singapore.
As they say, what happens on Indonesian prisoner ferries stays on Indonesian prisoner ferries. Or at least it’s the stuff of tales to be told in another time and place.
I’ve survived all these adventures and my life is richer for the experiences that I have been lucky enough to stumble into and create for myself. I reckon it’s been a serendipitous journey to say the least.
I say all of this not to brag or sound self-important and I certainly hope it does not come off that way. Instead, I say it because I am forever amazed and humbled by the opportunities I have been fortunate enough to be presented with during this outlandish lifetime.
I also truly believe that anyone can live an incredibly outrageous life full of crazy adventures if they choose to break free of the fears and social boundaries that bind them to banality.
Assuredly, all of this has happened for me not by accident and neither entirely on purpose but more so because… I am an experience junkie.
I Will Try Not To Pee
I Will Hold Myself Still

The sun was not up yet but for some reason I raised my head and squinted bleary eyed at the surrounding stand of pine forest. It’s that magical time of the day just before dawn when everything bathes in glowing shadow. A whitetail deer was off about twenty yards in front of me. She bobbed her head up and down eyeing me intensely.
She wasn’t afraid. In fact, whitetail can be pretty curious at times. She was probably wondering what strange creature was lying there on the ground.
I didn’t fit her ingrained image of a human. I wasn’t upright. I was asleep just off her trail. I was not threatening, a novelty for sure to a skittish animal such as a whitetail.
I watched her for a full five minutes. She would pretend to take a bite of twigs then look away and look back quickly trying to catch me off guard. I guessed she was exhibiting this behavior to tempt me to move. She was trying to figure out what I was.
I’d seen white tail behave this way before, especially does and fawns. They’ll sometimes pretend they don’t notice you while keeping a sharp eye trained on your movements as they prepare to bolt at the slightest threat.
Then I had to pee.
It always comes first thing in the morning when I wake up. I sluggishly lumbered my half awake body upwards and staggered off into the bushes. She quickly darted into the woods behind scrawny pine trees and a patch of gangly privet. Her white flag instinctively raised in silent warning to any other deer that might happen to be nearby.
I could still see her about fifty yards off. By now she was only a silhouette. Her camouflage concealed her well. Only the occasional nervous flick of her white tail would betray her presence. I wouldn’t even have seen that if my eyes hadn’t followed her escape path into the woods.
It’s a great life when you wake up to grey morning light surrounded by birds chirping in the distance, whitetail deer feeding just off the trail and squirrels scrambling in a frenzy from tree to tree. It’s the life of backpackers and bums.
While I’m not a vagabond it’s my life for now.
The difference is that I will fold my sleeping bag and sleeping pad, pack them away in my truck and head into work. Tonight after work I will head back to this same patch of woods and lay myself back down on the ground and sleep again for the night.
I’ve decided to be homeless.
Young Homeless Professional is the term I’ve coined for this current state of