I met a nice guy today. Like most of my neighbors here on the Hill, he’s Mexican*. He has inherited property, next door. But the interesting part was his day job. He’s a welder, and he spends his weekdays working for the Man, the Migra, down on the border.

Patching holes. In the border fence. With his big welder. Holes cut by people from his culture of origin. Over and over. They cut ’em. He patches ’em.

He seemed … a little defensive about it.

I would be too, if I was him.

Or more properly, and for better or worse, I would never be in that kind of situation in the first place.

He’s just doing his job, right? Just feedin’ la familia. Good pay for good honest work, more or less.

Nothing wrong with that, ennit?

No reason at all, to be defensive. I guess.

***

Anyway, the reason we got to talking was that I spent the day in the driveway, putting some of the finishing touches on the roof top tent. Specifically, it is now carpeted with vapor barrier, and there are sheets on the bed. Even a pillow in a pillowcase. I documented thoroughly with the camera, so you’ll be seeing it.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, I’ll tweak the last things like the ladder and the rainfly rods, and maybe nail down the bedliner finally. The cut scraps of vapor barrier carpet will help.

And then my attention will turn to the next steps. I have the Starlink. To use it in this context, I’ll need electricity. I have a box of electricity. It needs some testing, but I think it’ll do nicely.

And then some kind of beginner chair-and-desk arrangement.

With that much, I can wander out into the desert, the mountains anywhere, anytime, and work, or sleep … write and shoot and edit.

I have potential solution kits for things like eating and hygiene too, that could extend the capability of the base rig beyond day trips theoretically.

These kits are kind of bulky, because they were not intended for a truck-only rig, but for a trailer.

I have a trailer.

It’ll need more work first though, and that means February at the earliest.

In the meantime I want to see about miniaturizing and seeing how far I can get with just the truck. By ‘how far’ I mean in time, not space. Probably the limiting factor on the length of trips will be water, eventually. Drinking. Dishwashing. Handwashing. For cooking.

I’m in the habit of keeping ten gallons around, but I don’t know how many days that translates into. And the ten gallons are typically secured inside a house. Mobilizing them may be complex, especially without the trailer. But solving the complexities sounds like a kind of fun that interests me.

In time I need to make money. I’m no longer counting on the next video breaking out in viral blooming. I need a job that isn’t the moral equivalent of welding the border. They are more scarce than they would seem to be.

I need the money to buy four walls and a roof someday.

I have four walls and a roof, but they’re in Sand Rock instead of on the lot here in San Vicente.

It’s all very complicated.

But I’m a Sorter. The Sort is the raw material for belletristic endeavors of my kind.

***

Catching-up companion piece, the very last one, posted under 25 Nov if you care to. My god do I ever have a shitpile of politics going back weeks, in spite of this temporary outlet. I think tomorrow I’ll do a massive dump of it all and clear my books, not to mention my head. You’ve been warned, just in case.

* A million years ago, I took a college course in Mexican History, which, due to the academic peccadilloes of the instructor, largely concerned itself with what to even call people from here–Hispanic, Chicano, all that. So I’m aware that the current favored term is “LatinX”.

But I’m 99 percent sure that referring to him (presumably him–I didn’t check for pronouns), or to anyone around here that way would be met with amusement, an insulted silence, or both.

So yeah. Privilege checked, and found wanting, but Mexican will just have to do for general prose purposes on this Spill. Ars longa, vita brevis.