Everything is aging, and it’s all getting old. Nothing is new, and even when it is, it’s still getting older. There was a day when things were new and could stay new longer, but we killed that by always having to flaunt the next best new thing. With electronic media, nothing has been able to survive the onslaught, and it will destroy everything. Who cares about some city hall in a random town in Texas when there’s a new high-rise in New York City? Who cares about New York City when Dubai builds the tallest skyscraper on Earth? Who cares about a glass and steel building when Kim Kardashian’s ass is the most celebrated object in our galaxy?
[If you recognize that this blog entry is dated 2005, be aware that it wasn’t until the end of 2019 that I got around to writing the text for Days 13, 14, and 15 of this trip]
Out, where there’s nearly nothing, there is everything. Potential lives in the void where we are hard-pressed to find the value of things we can easily consume. By filling the gaps where there was nothing, a building where there used to be trees, damming our rivers, and fouling the sky, we erase the physical world. In the space between frequencies unseen, we shovel porn, shopping, and soap operas into the bandwidth while celebrating our ingenuity. After doing our best to wreck tranquility, we are now hellbent on wrecking civility and any social aspects of our cities by bringing fear of the other into the space we had once enjoyed as safe. It is as though we are afraid of that which is empty, as maybe it could be a reflection of who we are.
Just imagine driving down this Farm-to-Market road 60 years ago in a car with out-of-state plates and the person pumping your gas would likely have picked your brain about where you’re from and asked what you were doing out this way. Today there’s a good chance there’s a meth-addicted homeless person squatting in the place watching “Two Girls One Cup” on their smartphone and could give a shit about someone outside taking photos.
Apparently, this gas station was already closed about 15 to 20 years ago by the time I peered inside. Looking at what I captured here I’m curious about the strange time warp where I’m seeing printed maps on a cigarette machine that sells a pack of smokes for $2.00. Cigarettes are currently $6 – $8 a pack, depending on where you are in America, and I can honestly say that I don’t know if any gas station in the United States still sells printed road maps.
There’s no tombstone marking what this dead business once was. No date of birth, no internet entry about Eureka something or other in rural Texas municipality down the road from the defunct filling station. This may as well be any of us. At one time, it was alive and vibrant, serving a purpose and now it’s shuttered, quiet, without function. It is anonymous and nearly forgotten. Should I ever be so lucky to stumble upon this road again, the building will likely have been broken into, its roof missing, and maybe even its walls. It, too, will disappear with nobody caring that it ever was someone else’s dream come true. This is the sad nature of our lives.
I don’t mean to be pessimistic; it’s just reality writ large in my eyes. Do you see that point way out there? That’s death waiting for you. At the end of your road, it’s but a speck that you can go a lifetime without ever catching a glimpse of. And when it’s approaching, it could deceive you, looking like a mirage over the highway on a summer day where you can’t believe that the apparition with a scythe has risen up out of nothing to claim your existence, but that’s what is happening. Didn’t I say I don’t want to be pessimistic? This isn’t about death waiting to capture us within its clutch; this is about us smiling all the way there. It’s about living with the knowledge that you are running out of time and wasting one more second of it once you’ve begun to understand the fragility of it all and that doing nothing about it, well, that may as well be death itself.
In your 90’s your teeth are probably no longer pearly white. You have difficulties finding warmth and even more trouble moving your bowels. Concentration left you long ago. You’ve outlived everyone you grew up with, and you know you must be one of the next to go. But still, you wave a friendly hello, offer a smile, and are happy to have the map in front of you so you can read the names of the places you’ve been and wonder about the places that are still ahead of you. Living requires optimism with dreams of discovering the unknown while entertaining hopes of being enchanted. What might be considered simple and unadorned is a whole lot better than being locked in the darkness of a mind that is no longer part of the living.
Do horses dream of electric sheep? Blink, and maybe the ungulates were never more than part of the stage set that was only part of your reality. Once you are gone, you’ll never know if the horses ever were or if they continued after your existence came to an end. Of course, you can take it for granted that they are out there waiting by the fence and posing for people such as myself to snap a photo of them, proving to you that it’s obvious that horses are alive and well out there somewhere. But have you ever had a horse smell your face and exhale with those giant horse lungs, emptying warm, equine-scented air that wraps around your head in a kind of horse hug? What are you waiting for? While you wait for life to arrive, we’ll be out there living your share.
Life beyond your door, be it the door of your home or the doors of your perception, must be opened, and you must find yourself on the other side. Do not languish behind either. The paint will chip away; the wallpaper will turn brittle and crack, leaving you in a decrepit shell; your mind is no different. How will you redecorate the home of your mind? Do you really believe that neglect and weathering won’t have a negative impact on your mind, even though you know full well that this is exactly what will happen to the house you live in? How many people make the investment to paint the walls, lay new carpet, repair the roof, buy new furniture, upgrade a TV, and yet don’t read books, travel more than 50 miles away from home, or bring on new hobbies doing things they have no previous skills with?
Somebody sat here in what at one time might have been the lap of luxury. Their 21-inch state-of-the-art TV from 1966 would receive two or three channels even if they were snowy due to bad reception of the aerial out on the roof, but that didn’t matter as they were witnessing a black-and-white reality that one day would be their own. Instead, they likely just grew old and never moved from the Barcalounger, where they had planted their behinds. Around them, the world and their mind decayed, but that was okay because nirvana in the afterlife was promised to them by those who traded dollars for salvation. The only salvation of mind and soul, from my perspective, is found in feeding the imagination with travel, conversation, books, music, and experiences that challenge us out of the funk of isolation.
Don’t waste your time stockpiling your dreams, ambitions, hopes, aspirations, and best of intentions. The silo of what you might like to accomplish in your lifetime is useless if you store it all away. These things cannot bring you value if they are not within your grasp; they must be worked and reworked as though you were kneading bread.
This is your life and a nearly empty horizon. The soil is fertile and ready for planting. Rain will arrive and germinate the seeds, but you must plant things. What if I told you that the building on the far left, that tiny splotch of pixels just peaking over the red soil way over there in the background, was your life so far? That’s how I see my life at 56 years old as I race to learn, do, explore, postulate, create, break, find, love, destroy, and rebuild all that dares obscure my perfect view of the clouds.
You finally decide that getting along and moving down the road might be the thing to do, and all of a sudden, you find yourself in the sprawling metropolis of Tokio. Where are the bright lights and sushi shops might be your first thought? Baby steps, because you are not in Japan yet, this is Tokio, Texas. The effort to go far requires momentum.
Fuel can be pumped out of the earth to propel our cars and planes, but the fuel of the mind is knowledge. Without constant energy found in evolving brains, it all comes to a halt. Like this pumpjack operating on electricity to siphon crude oil from below, there is an order of things that create the system. People create the electricity that is delivered across the arid landscape to this location. The pumpjack pulls oil up from deep below and feeds it into a pipeline in order to collect the crude in a central location. From a tank, it will be transferred to a refinery, where it will be distilled into gasoline and various byproducts. From this point, it can be used to take your car from Crawford to Tokio or from Houston to Tokyo.
Knowledge is deep below the surface of things. Reading and exploring are the pumpjacks that siphon the crude thoughts out of history and into our consciousness. This is our refinery, where we make valuable byproducts. With insight and invention, we are ready to venture out to explore the points between what we are starting to understand and the still incomprehensible.
Had only our obsession with entertainment to the exclusion of personal responsibility come with this kind of warning; maybe we would have turned off the football game, 24-hour news, videogame, or other indulgences that were risking a better future. Instead, we opted for the poison of mediocrity by taking the road that was easy. How is it we were so ready to accept the marketing that convinced the majority that convenience and lack of effort were ever going to bring to us what every generation before us toiled to reach?
Oh no! We’ve reached another state, but the weather is turning gray. I thought the premise was that if we ventured out beyond our borders, the gilded path would deliver us to perfection. There are no guarantees that what we put into the system is going to deliver on our expectations. The best we can do is manage our expectations with mantras that work to affirm that whatever the results of our efforts are, doing something far exceeds that of doing nothing.
Are we home yet? Who broke out the windows of our house? And why is the garage toppled? Oh, this is not our home; this is nobody’s home. I’m done looking for more metonymy as after more than 1,900 words put down in this entry where I thought I’d have trouble finding 100; I’m reaching the end of wanting to go further.
Right about now, I could go for an alien abduction that would pull me into the spacecraft for a good anal probe because, as someone who’s never been rectally examined by an alien species, this would definitely qualify as a new experience. How could I know beforehand that a device or finger made in another dimension doesn’t come with instant enlightenment? So should any beings from other worlds happen to be telepathically reading my blog, you can rest confident that if you suck me off this planet into your ship, I won’t be bad talking you in the press after my reaming.
This stretch of the story is almost over. A few more curves may be ahead, but with only a couple of photos and one more day left to deal with, I can finally let this part of my past join its brethren in the trunk of memories.
That darkness is from the heavy clouds forming in my head, obscuring the words to finish this. I’m searching for the wit to bring an elegant close to my writing, but it’s hard to see a way forward. Maybe some new windshield wipers or turning on the high beams will light or clear the way? No chance; I just have to accept that I’ve taken this as far as I’m going to.
And with that, the golden light of the late day setting sun illuminates the horizon while the god rays of hope pull me forward. I’m absolved of adding another word and can rest assured that another day is just around the corner.