Hiatus Manifesto

How would you feel about taking a hiatus from normal life?

When the season changes, we’d quit our jobs, sublet our rooms, store our clothes in the attic, and buy one­way tickets anywhere.

We’d get radically fit while picking up practical human skills.

We’d hunt and forage, learn martial arts in a monastery, do yoga while on a vow of silence, take long trails to swim in waterfalls, and be buddies.

We’d find a llama, or yak, or elephant, or camel, or dolphin, and they would carry us to the edges of a new place.

We’d thank them and walk the rest of the way together.

We’d hike a great mountain, reach the top, and build a shelter.

We’d stay inside where we’d go delirious from altitude, strange berries, and endless writing.

We’d commune with nature — press flowers between the pages of our journals, nurse strays back to health, and care deeply about a new place.

We’d live savagely 24 hours a day — experiencing life like Hunter S. Thompson said we should , like our manifestos tell us to.

We’d get sunburned, callused scarred.

We’d move so much we’d feel longingly hungry and eventually we’d eat ravenously.

We’d break our daily routines to change our bodies and states of being.

We’d live on the poles of necessity and luxury.

We’d choose to go hungry and sleep outside rather than settle for the mediocre.

We’d save enough money for a bottle of wine and one night in a palace.

We’d have nothing from home but music and, with no one around to bother, we’d sing along.

We’d definitely fight, and makeup, and forget about what life was like before we left.

We’d forget our need for new things because we’d be consuming life too quickly to collect.

We’d half-­love exotic men and leave them behind.

We’d inspire musicians and other travelers and artists and ourselves.

We’d dance until the sun came up over the ocean, across a field, and through the cracks of broken windows in an underground club.

We’d create out of necessity: build because we need shelter, paint because we can’t contain ourselves, write because the story has to be told.

But, maybe, it’ll all fall apart.

We could run out of money, get fucked, and end up in a foreign prison because we know us and that hand is always in the cards.

We could get abducted or addicted or abused.

We could regret ever leaving stability and safety — crave comforts of home.

We could die and never come back.

But maybe we’d do it and then just pick up where we left off — who could blame us?

We’d come back having written something that means something.

We’d inspire others with our boldness.

We’d undoubtedly feel more alive.

We could sell our souls for savings and go in a year. Or take off tomorrow.

I’m just askin’ — how would you feel about taking a hiatus from our normal life?

— To Casey, 2014