Cowboy Dreams: a Summer in Wyoming
I rode a horse today. It had one of those horse names like Lucy or Sally or Slowpoke, but I forget which. I rode cowboy style, through the shimmering wheat fields and dusty red hills.
Okay, well maybe not quite cowboy style. My faithful steed stopped so often to nibble at grass that I thought it surely must be starving. That was before I thought about the other possibilities: it could be a bottomless pit: never full but never quite empty; or, more likely, it could be trying to spite me and my chance to make it big as a cowboy. But I can still pretend, can't I? Well, after spending 28 dollars on a real cowboy hat at the store downtown, I'd better be able to.
Words, words, words August 20, 2003
I wrote this while sitting in an airport where people tried their best to pretend you weren't there--or they weren't there; either approach seemed to work to successfully avoid talking to people. There were the journalists hiding behind laptops, the children behind DVD players; there were the crossword puzzles, the televisions, the newspapers, the magazines... in this place of comings and goings I wondered about these people's lives--surely they could have shared something: grand stories, nuggets of wisdom, or maybe even just crude jokes. Yet we all avoided each other, and settled instead for printed, broadcasted, recorded, digital, fabricated words:
Bored, twiddle-thumb, look--ad!; words.
De-pressed, log-on, distract; words.
Lonely, television, fake love; words.
Silence, musak, rhythm of; words.
Alone, cell phone, exchange; words.
Emptiness, distract with; words, words, words.
Silence, fill with; words, words, words.
Every day, swim in; words, words, words.
Words, words, words, words, words, words, words.
And I thought to myself, "My flight leaves in an hour. It'd sure be nice to be able to board right now and avoid waiting with these people who would rather know words than me."
But if I give up that hour, I might as well give up the few minutes I spend waiting for class to finish, the extra day I spend in Seattle before my plane leaves for Sweden, the week of spring break that I won't plan anything for, those last few years when my health will fail me, and the years of my life before retirement...
And I realized that pretty soon I wouldn't have anything left. If I successfully partitioned my life into "useful" and "useless" time segments, I wouldn't have any life left. The only solution seems to be to cherish each and every moment: staring in awe at the way that a spider jumps, admiring the waves in the bathtub, enjoying the washer's spin cycle.
Before you turn on the television, pick up the newspaper, or log-on, consider:
"All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why." --James Thurber
Other Thoughts To Consider
"...getting high on information..." --Red Hot Chili Peppers, 'Californication'
"Vladimir: That passed the time. Estragon: It would have passed in any case. Vladimir: Yes, but not so rapidly." --Samuel Beckett, 'Waiting for Godot'
"There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said--no. But somehow we missed it." --Tom Stoppard, 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead'
"Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead." --Matthew 8:22