Running for Home - 30. November 29, 2021

November 29, 2021

I talked to Vange again today. She was able to get some statements from a number of people back in L.A. that we could use as evidence in the suit. There were a few others among the names I’d suggested that had given a refusal, but she told them that they may be given a subpoena anyway if the case did go on to be heard before court. We’d need to subpoena Dom’s bank records along with my own to try and show that his cash was coming pretty much exclusively as transfers from me. We needed to show I was giving him money to spend on paying debts and also groceries at first, but him spending that money on booze and other things that he wasn’t supposed to instead. Thank god I did the transfers electronically and not in cash so there is a paper trail, and I know for a fact Dom was too lazy to go to the bank or an ATM if he didn’t have to and didn’t like carrying around cash. He’d run a tab on his credit card at the bars he frequented. Vange also said that she may have a lead on a woman with whom he may have cheated on me. Apparently it looks like there was more than one after all. Getting testimony from the one Vange found would likely require a subpoena, but at least it was something.

I guess the big conclusion was that Dom would be an idiot to insist on bringing this to trial. Vange said we have enough to go ahead and send his lawyers an absolute refusal of any out-of-court settlement. I told her to do it. That’s a relief, in some ways. It doesn’t mean this is over, but I’m hoping it won’t drag on for much longer. It would be a nice gift if this could be over in time to give me a Merry-fucking-Christmas. Ho-ho-hold-the-payments, thank you very much.

I’ve been thinking about taking a trip somewhere. Not in the immediate future, though. Christmas Break is already too close and I’ve got plans to be curled up in front of the fireplace in the great room with a writing pad, or at some café with my laptop with a steaming chili mocha latte in hand. I’ve been writing down some ideas as they come, little prompts and character sketches, plot ideas… I don’t have anything fully formed, fully envisioned, but I can feel a story crystallizing in my subconscious just out of reach. Maybe once classes have finished I’ll head off somewhere to be alone with myself for a few weeks, just to get away from here for a while. Not too far away, just... away. Maybe even off the grid. I don’t know.

I’ve thought about heading to Australia again. That’s always there in the back of my mind. The American government might not consider me a dual national, but the Aussies do. I’m not sure exactly where they would stand on me, though. Thanks to my mother I’m a citizen, technically. But there is that niggling doubt in the back of my mind that even if the US government had wiped my record in that pardon that the Aussies wouldn’t let me anywhere near them. I don’t know why that thought causes a twinge of pain, but it does. Maybe because it’s something that connects me to my roots, something deeper than my mom and the bullshit she put me through as our family’s lives fell to pieces when dad lost his job. But if they let me in, if they let me in to Oz… I think it would be good for me. It would be an odyssey of sorts, though I think that a few weeks would be far too short a time to truly consider it an odyssey. Besides, that would be during Australian winter. I’m not sure when the best time for a journey like that would be since the continent ranges from an equatorial tropical climate in the far north to the cool end of temperate in the south at Tasmania.

A better idea for a trip would probably to rent a cabin or just go camping out in the wilderness somewhere. The Adirondacks if I want to stay close by, but parts of the Rockies and the Cascades are more appealing. Maybe even go to Yosemite again, though things would be getting pretty hot by that time of year. Really, I just want somewhere quiet to spend some time living simply and not having to worry about much other than food and my writing.

It would probably surprise a lot of people that I’d be an outdoorsy type. I admit, it was something that surprised even me back when I was a teenager. But before the Cure war at Alcatraz, and afterwards during my days as a fugitive, and finally in Freedom Force I ended up spending a lot of time out in the wild staging for battles to come or just trying to fly under the radar. I guess it’s become familiar enough that it doesn’t bother me. Maybe even makes for a good change of pace. I went camping by myself a few times while Dom was in jail, though I didn’t stray too far. I went to the Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia national parks. Did some hiking, some stargazing, watched the wildlife and the plants and just fucking relaxed in the quiet. And, of course, I wrote. Not about things going on in the outside world, not the usual fictions I’d been creating in my inside world. I just let the pen flow and embraced whatever came, be it poetry, stream-of-conscience, prose, whatever.

I started a brand new moleskine each trip, and brought an extra just in case. After the trip was over, I just put them away. Memories, but not something I’ve drawn upon for my published writings. Maybe that’s stupid, but for some reason I always felt like they were something too pure, too intimate to be brought forward for others to see. I still have those moleskines. Maybe I should get them out and have a read, find myself within the ramblings of my mind in those expansive wilds.

I wonder how much I’ve changed.