Walked Forty-Seven Miles of Barbed Wire
Once, years ago, there was a dream. The dream was fiery and pure, and I believed in it uncompromisingly. How could I not? The dream was uncorrupted; it lit the way and by it, in its red-hot reflection, I knew who I was.
But now, the dream is hazy and faded, and I've long since lost the way to myself. Slowly, the dream has been eaten away and the subconscious has succumbed to the influence of trite culture. I must fortify myself against the American Dream, reject the round brilliant diamond solitaires, the wedding bands, the simple ceremonies, calm careers, children in each gender and whatever's left over in genetic spare change, the suburbs, the cellulite, the slow tedium of passing holidays and unimportant goals, and all of that clamoring mess of distraction. And it is so easy to be distracted by it, the stale siren song of that simple template of life. But it isn't for me. Ten minutes back in Concord Mills, just sitting, watching, growing depressed by the neverending parade of the so-called American Dream--it's more than I can bear. That false Dream has been looming in my mind, just below conscious perception, first complacent and then stagnant, and then growing ever more poisonous in the back of my mind. We can't just be complacent. We can't just settle, just drift, just lose ourselves in the festering soup of apathy. We must have our dreams, our passions, our selves.
I must take whatever's left of myself and find the rest of me. I must recapture the once-pure once-proud dream, the one that was mine alone, that was my passion and my mission and my unyielding sense of identity. I must not stop until I've found it. The dream was the most important thing I had. What are we, without our dreams?
But now, the dream is hazy and faded, and I've long since lost the way to myself. Slowly, the dream has been eaten away and the subconscious has succumbed to the influence of trite culture. I must fortify myself against the American Dream, reject the round brilliant diamond solitaires, the wedding bands, the simple ceremonies, calm careers, children in each gender and whatever's left over in genetic spare change, the suburbs, the cellulite, the slow tedium of passing holidays and unimportant goals, and all of that clamoring mess of distraction. And it is so easy to be distracted by it, the stale siren song of that simple template of life. But it isn't for me. Ten minutes back in Concord Mills, just sitting, watching, growing depressed by the neverending parade of the so-called American Dream--it's more than I can bear. That false Dream has been looming in my mind, just below conscious perception, first complacent and then stagnant, and then growing ever more poisonous in the back of my mind. We can't just be complacent. We can't just settle, just drift, just lose ourselves in the festering soup of apathy. We must have our dreams, our passions, our selves.
I must take whatever's left of myself and find the rest of me. I must recapture the once-pure once-proud dream, the one that was mine alone, that was my passion and my mission and my unyielding sense of identity. I must not stop until I've found it. The dream was the most important thing I had. What are we, without our dreams?