If you have traded your soul for possession and use of a fossil-fuel burning, noxious fumes emitting, mobile hunk of motorized metal, then listen up--I have good news whereby there may be hope yet for releasing your spirit from the purgatory of automobile ownership.

Make your vehicle a van and live in it. Abandon rent and utility payments and you will find yourself free to spend enormous amounts of time engaged in creative, educational, and spiritual activities. The sin of owning a motor vehicle is expiated by the simple solution of living in it. Your soul will be redeemed by the hours that become available for creating art rather than making payments on space and things that are not only unnecessary to, but actually interfere with, the creation of beauty and the expression of truth.

"But," you ask, "where would I shower?" Americans are willing to sacrifice much for art, but the sanitization of their nether regions they will not sacrifice. Fine. Join a gym. Join Bally's if you're poor, or Sports Life if you aren't, and you will have gym privileges all across America.

The truth is that if you shower in a gym you will feel compelled to exercise there. And if you begin your day with exercise then most of the lies of life will fall right away. Imagine living a day which began with removal of the lie. Imagine living that way everyday. Imagine that every place you go is home.

"Where," you ask, "would I park when it came time to sleep?" That question is so big that it can never be fully or truly answered. The options are great, and choosing between them is a defining experience for any van-dweller. I will offer you a few possibilities:

The parking lots of fitness centers, coffee houses, churches, and grocery stores are all fine options. The driveway or yard of a friend is ideal, but the truth of who your friends really are comes to the fore when it comes time to make such offers. Soon, though, the time will come to transcend the urban, and the possibilities open up even further.

There are showers at truckstops if one is between gyms, but all that is ever really necessary to shower is a gallon of water and a hand towel. Rest areas work well, and they're on the map.

There is a dirt road from Las Cruces to the foot of the Organ Mountains--no traffic at all and plenty of room for parking. There is a small gravel parking area just below the airport vortex in Sedona. There is a dirt road through the painted desert--turn off of route 89 about a hundred yards south of route 160. It's about twenty bumpy miles to the north rim of the grand canyon. You can park right on the rim with nothing but the sound of the Little Colorado Spilling into the Colorado.

You can't rent that, or buy it even. There is no way to purchase the intensity of the omnipresent immediacy of choice brought into one's life by van-dwelling. Wherever you are your art supplies are with you, and there is never an excuse why you can't create right there and then.

There is a Bally's next to Central Park and one in downtown Chigago. I have been successful at finding free parking adjacent to both clubs. Security, of course, is an issue.

Travel with a pit-bulldog. Sleep with curtains, of course. But leave the cab area visible with your dog in the shotgun seat while you sleep. Potential predators will look in the cab and understand the likelihood that someone in the back of van has something in common with this incredible animal in the front. They will move on.

Lastly--in living and traveling, peeing in parking lots, and climbing mountains, with your dog, try to learn as much as you can from her. If you have enough in common with the pit-bulldog who shares your life and your van, then you will have something so relentlessly powerful and sensitive to express that the world will be compelled to pay attention to your work.