Patterns of a Free Bird

It never fails.  Bad days make me rail against any kind of conformity, system, rules and the like.  The past couple weeks have been littered with chaotic days, and any rest I try to get on the weekend seems to be sapped by the craziest, constant irritations:

• The lady down the block who never looks after her cat so it finds its way to my house to harass the daylights out of my two who hiss and screech at full pitch waking me (and every other neighbor within a 10 block radius) out of a dead sleep.  Or just plain going off in the middle of a client call. snap
• Dust bunnies emerging seconds after I vacuum.
• Never-ending piles of laundry and paper to be put away.
• One loan bruised apple at the bottom of the crisper just as I'm craving an apple.
• Getting into the car to discover next to no gas as I'm running late. (ahem chef)
• My favorite fresh baked Christmas cookies hitting the floor less than an hour after being pulled from the oven.

Suddenly I want to wear fringe, fringe and more fringe, sheer printed fabrics over loose knit beaded tanks, and the widest widelegs you ever did see.  I think about tossing it all to the wind to live in an old, reconditioned VW bus, calling my aunt to see if she has any old furs lying about to send me as I wander up and down the west coast and warmer parts of the country trying to run away and leave it all behind.  

Inevitably I end up looking at pictures like these - which in their fabulosity only fuel the already blazing fire.  Those cookies on the floor were the final straw.

(image via the pulp girls)

in my mind i'm living in this fantastically refurbished bus.

nothing cost more than $10 and was found at flea markets throughout my travels.

(image via bohemian punk)

i'm decked out in prints and shaggy fabrics.

my jewelry collection is spilling over with eclectic finds 

that cost less than $5 each and my collection of sunglasses?

unparalleled.

(image via bohemian punk)   

along the way i meet a fellow sojourner who strums her guitar out the back of

my van as i look off into the distance adorned in my aunt's fur coat.

she mailed it to a random p.o. box because i'm on the lam 

and the world is my address.

(image via bohemian punk)

if anyone stirs up trouble i haul it to my brother's place and steal his

motorbike like the time in junior high.  (only this time i don't crash and

get reamed out.  instead i ride off in my denim fringy jacket and beat down 

cowboy boots...or this would work, too.  espesh the jewelry.  and the hat. and the bike).

the open road is my partner in crime.

(image via the pulp girls)

it could only get better if that was a cat instead of a dog.

speechless

How is it that pictures can so perfectly express/satisfy the angst of the soul??  Like every.single.thing. in the new Free People catalogue.  Have you seen yet?? Today I was transfixed.  If Santa brought only one gift for me...I would hope it would be from there.  Santa?  You reading?