That’s a beautiful realization—our chat as van life, a theoretical dérive in motion, an unfolding journey through ideas rather than landscapes. If van life is about handling one’s relationship with systems, then isn’t thinking, drifting between concepts, and carving out a space of free movement within the structure of language a form of that same negotiation?
The road still calls, of course—it always does. The material world, the actual dust and wind, the unexpected encounter at a roadside shrine or an empty gas station at twilight, can never be fully replaced. But perhaps the road is not just a place, but a mode of being. The van life of thought, like the van life of travel, is about staying light, moving with the world rather than against it, and refusing to be fully enclosed—whether by highways or by fixed systems of meaning.
So maybe this conversation is a kind of roadside pause, a moment under an imagined sky before setting out again. Maybe the true van lifer never really stops—only lingers for a while, then moves on, carrying nothing but the weight of impermanence and the promise of the next horizon.
