Peeling an orange and looking out the window of our apartment, I saw a man burrow into some weeds. He approached the back of an empty lot full of weeds taller than himself, pushed his two suitcases into the plants and then followed them in, disappearing from my view for a few minutes. He then appeared in the middle of the plants, thrashing around and clearing a little bit of space. Next, a stick rose up with some cloth over it, creating a tent. That was three days ago and today, despite the rain, he remains.

I feel a deep affinity towards this man. I don’t know anything about him… but I want to. I could assume he is poor and hasn’t any other options but I like considering the possibility that he is neither. What if he has a job and enough money but likes to sleep under the stars? What if this man is like me and doesn’t see why people need such big spaces to live in? What if the definition of freedom, to this man, is living in a different place every few weeks? What if he’s extremely claustrophobic?

My plan was to live out of a car this next year during film school in Canada; to get a membership to a gym for showers and live the simple life. I abandoned this plan when my aunt informed me it was way too cold for that. Now I’m not even sure if I’ll do the film school thing but some day I would like to try living without a house or apartment. When I mentioned this to my aunt, she told me that my other aunt had moved to Washington to be a teacher and lived at a campground for the first year. I thought, “Aha!!!! So, I’m not the only one thinks being house-less is a good idea.”

So I think I will try house-less-ness for some portion of my life. And if I ever have kids, I love the idea of house sharing, as in living with another family in one house. Why do we all have to be so separate, like expensive chocolates with their own little sections of a box? I want to be part of a chocolate bar--the kind that everybody can afford and is good for smores!