Gloves not included.

ello all!
A minor celebration. This is post no. 20!
That's that.
I have recently moved to Calcutta. My Father has in typical fashion landed a job where he's being paid pittens but he's been given an exorbitant flat to live in. It really is quite stunning.
Anyway, I came here some 10 days ago and have been living here at 'home' with a friend of mine who might also fall under the tag of 'Hobo' which I picked up in my year at Wilson. We've both done our bit of moving and we've both done our bit of walking. As it stands, he has no legal identification and no forseeable, tangible future. What he does have is his plans, his guitar, and his bag filled with wrappers and a notebook. His 'situation' is as some might see it, essentially hopeless. Yet in seeing him get his shit together and grabbing his life by the balls, and growing and learning as much as he can, it struck me just what it is to be a hobo.
It's something I'd imagine we all have when we need it, but that doesn't make it any less amazing. It's the reason he can move from a comic book to a musical seamlessly. It's, as he put it in a post of his own, the ability to get up after falling in crud in some random street in Dubai and to keep walking. I've met some extraordinary people thus far and the list would be far too long for one blog so I shall stick to my purpose.
This is by no means a tribute post, but I would like to express something about the two people closest to me. We'll call them K1 and K2.
K1 has suffered a blow larger than any blow, we agree, he has ever suffered. It has already and will continue to change his life. We all create futures for ourselves in our head. Sort of an imaginary railroad for our trains to choo choo over. But sometimes that railway line gets yanked out of place and it becomes something entirely different. As it stands K1 has lost his initial track. He's pretty much running on mud and tar right now. His hoboness, though, is the fact that he is still moving, though slowly and a little carefully, and he's putting together some more tracks made from fucking twigs and hair and shit, and riding on it. His hoboness is that he like my room mate is getting his shit together and taking life by the balls again.
K2, who is I must confess the real purpose behind this blog, has suffered many blows. They seem soft on their own but accumulated they've smashed the shit out of the railway line. They've pushed and shoved the train onto different tracks and back. They've even just hit the train out of pure spite and dented the front. K2 would to most look like an absolute wreck. But for some reason, beyond hoboness and anything I can understand, K2 is still going on. Still chugging away, still riding those very battered wheels to the ground until the track starts to show up again. K2's hoboness is beyond me. It is amazing.
This post is a mix of awe, respect and hope for K1 and K2, and indeed my roommate too. But more than anything it's a hope that they will chug on, because from here in this useles, helpless, position where all I can do is cheer, I feel like I do every time I'm at a bar cheering Arsenal on. the season's derailed entirely but the red and white is just so beautiful you have to keep on yelling.
This is to hoboness.