I Have a Goddamn Dream

As I have obligations pummeling me from every quarter and resolved to plunge right into work, I think I’ll write a bit instead. It’s only fair.

So yes, I have a dream! I dream, I dream… I dream of a condition, a state of mind, a way of life. I dream of refuge from the storm.

In our many travels, at least the ones we used to make before moving to the Land of Entrapment (which I do dearly love) and trying to live on nothing, we passed through wide swaths of Middle America that seemed in many ways like paradise. Not only were there long stretches of rolling prairie and quiet dirt roads where one could hear the meadowlarks, but a huge blue sky hung over it all, and there were houses to be bought for less than a fancy bicycle in hip towns like Austin or Santa Fe. Sometimes I think we should have bought one, moved in, and died of boredom. At other times I see the New Mexico horizon–sharp enough to cut your eyes–breathe the holy cool crisp air, and fall down on my knees in gratitude: dear God, I’m here! But this isn’t about New Mexico or even western Kansas, where I’d likely risk a lynching. Rather, it’s about a little peace:

A modest house with a porch. Maybe there’s a barn for my studio. Water and good soil, and summer that lasts longer than a week. We grow most of our own food. I raise chickens for eggs, unless they bug me too much, and then I eat them. We walk everywhere, for miles, along quiet dusty roads and lonely creek bottoms. When the sun goes down, there’s a light in the window. Our water comes out of the ground. I have a few solar panels so I can write this drivel when the grid goes down. Sometimes I see deer and antelope. Hawks wheel in the sky. Nothing else ever happens, and that’s enough.

A powerful emotional field surrounds this vision. Sometimes the pull is quite remarkable.

After all, I don’t need popular culture, television, movies, social media, Web work, professional sports, or the godforsaken blogosphere. I really and truly don’t. And then I think about the books I haven’t written, the cool places I’ve never seen, the crazy bastards I’ve never met, the beautiful people everywhere, and wonder why in the blue blazes would I vanish once more into the mist before my time, before I’ve shown what I can do? Except that “my time” is utterly unknown, and something of a phantom.

And so the dream returns.

(NOW, chilluns, before we molder into the ground!)

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