VAGOSCRIBE, n. (spanglish) travel writer

In the mornings, now that the light of winter has returned, I stand in the kitchen with a cup of tea and watch the orchestra of sunrise come upon our earth.  A sharpness that pierces the dark morning, but in a subtle, gentle kiss, is winter’s daybreak, and during it, the solitude of tree branches with no leaves standing witness to the event fills me with serenity.

I long to be one of those tree branches, myself bared for all to see.

We have been told a new dawn is upon America, a dawn filled with hope and belief in the ideal of change.  I, too, am happy that the darkness we have been living in seems to be dissipating, but at the same time, I am hesitant to believe that America will really change unless we expose ourselves like those tree branches in the morning light out by the alley.

Will we as a nation move to bring about justice for the world by calling for the criminality perpetrated from within our government houses to be brought to trial?

Will we as brothers and sisters work to empower the powerless?

Will we as consumers and marketeers seek fairness and equality in economics?

Will we turn our heads as our natural world is pilloried for profit?

Optimism is not something that fills me when I see people I know and love, people who know what needs to be done, go about their daily life doing what is best for them, first.  Be it the cheaper product at Box Mart that saves them a few dimes, even though they’ll drive the extra few miles to get there.  Be it the want for that fourth shirt that looks so good on them, despite it being the same color as the other three, but maybe a different name brand.  Be it the choice of not shopping local food markets because the products are more expensive, even though they know their tax dollars heavily subsidize an agro-food industry that is wasteful and harmful to our health.

Emmylou Harris sings a song on her newest album about how when it comes down to it, “all that you have is your soul.”  I listened to that this afternoon while driving down I-65 from Chicago to Lafayette, the warm winter sun of a 40 degree day sliding down the horizon into the flat lands of northcentral Indiana.  A chocolate ice cream cone from Fair Oaks was in my hand.  Emmylou sang:

“Hunger only for a taste of justice

Hunger only for a world of truth”

A friend of mine from Peace Corps recently asked me if justice might be what the American Dream is about.  I’m not so sure about that one.  It seems that we have achieved some justice in the country, but we’ve also handed out a lot of injustice since our founding days.  Maybe the pursuit of justice is what it’s about, but we might have to ask who holds the scales of justice before we decide how we want to pursue it.

I don’t know.  Really, I don’t.  But I do know…

Tomorrow the sun will come up again.  I’m hopeful the day will bring a little truth and justice our way.  If that is the American Dream, please don’t pinch me.  Let me be hopeful that maybe I will also be like those tree branches some day.

rainy and cold

somber skies

old curmudgeon

love never dies

wet leaves lay

on the ground

cannot even 

rustle a sound

a beer, some leaves

weather is great

wanna come along

and be my mate

(part 1 is below this entry)

Dear American Dream,

            Please allow me to get right to my thoughts.  I apologize for not including any salutations.

            The last time I wrote to you, I was comparing you and your seeming flexibility in the eyes of those who seek you to the mechanics of a rubber band.  I was concerned of your being stretched too far, and of you possibly being overused and worn which could lead to an eventual breakage much like the rubber band under the same pressures. 

            Do you think I am on to anything with such an analogy?  Or, am I overreacting, taking things a little too far?

            The reason I ask is because I care about you.  I care whether or not you are capable of being able to live up to the ideals that so many have of you.  I care not so much that I need for you to exist as an autonomous entity, but rather that you should exist only if you are true to what you are.  You should exist only if the eyes of the seekers are rewarded upon finding you.

            But what kind of rewards should the seekers be finding?  How would the rewards look?  What would the rewards do?

            Is it enough for a dreamer to find his dream of lifting his family out of poverty if it means him being simultaneously treated inhumanely by working long days, being the punching bag for bigots and racists, and getting paid an unjust wage?  Where is the dream in that?

            Is it enough for the dreamer to find her way to political freedom in a country where she will still earn less than her male counterpart, much the same way it was in her home country?  Is it enough that she will maybe have her own home, but her dignity will still not be acknowledged by the boss man who wants to get her in bed, and the cat caller on the street who reduces her to an object? 

            You see, American Dream, I do not think it is good for you to be many things conceived by many people.  You need a foundation, a foundation that stands on its own, not in a historical context, but, rather, in a universal understanding of human righteousness.

            How do I dream you?  American Dream, to me, you are the impossible made possible.  You would provide for the less fortunate, calling on the fortunate to contribute to a cause of greater goodness, both here and abroad.  I am not simply talking of a financial contribution either.  We need to take you a little farther, or deeper if you will.  The contribution would include active participation, hands-on, get into the thick of things and do something about it action. 

            Also, you would infiltrate all minds and hearts with the lesson of respect for others so that racism and sexism would no longer detriment humanity.

            Greed and power would not be sought because the government would not be their best examples.  Instead, the political state would work to abolish it, giving power back to the people.

            Yes, American Dream, you should be these things in real time, not in the imagined.  It is time for you to shed your abstractness and come into the now.  It is time for you to end.  It is time for us to be you.

            We need to be the American Dream.

Sincerely,

Jim 

Dear American Dream,

            It has been a little while since we’ve last communicated.  I suspect you’ve been busy searching for yourself of late, and I, well I have been searching for my place within you.  There was a time when I believed that we shared a common connection, almost umbilical, but that time has passed, not instantaneously like the scissors’ slice though.  Rather, it has been an eroding like rain on a hillside that has been stripped of it trees.

            Do you recall the time we shared together our ideals of equality for all peoples everywhere?  Do you remember the evening we spent together before a most possible dawn, a dawn of increasing radiance that shone over the land with an infectious spirit of “unlimitedness”?

            I haven’t forgotten those ideals.  I haven’t forgotten that dawn.  I will admit, however, that my energy to strive for those ideals and to dream for another dawn has been waning.  My tank of desired true personal freedom and liberation needs to be refilled.

            I need to be frank with you, for humanity’s sake.  Are you still viable in today’s United States?  Today’s world?  Have you been reduced to a lifestyle?  Are you defined as an increased income yearned for by some amongst the world’s poor should they make it across your borders?  Or, are you a car in the driveway maybe, and/or a home on a street named for a tree?

            I assure you I am not minimizing the situation of the less-fortunate human beings who call our land a foreign nation.  Remember, I communed with them for a short period of my life.  What I am trying to say to you is:  should we work to redefine you, make you again an endless expanse of possibility?  I apologize for assuming that you are not that expanse, but only if my assumption is unequivocally wrong.

            How might we go about doing this act of redefining?  Should we begin with your history?  This may prove difficult though.  You are an abstract notion.

            Maybe we should ask, first, what does it mean to be “American?”  How did this word develop, and how has it developed throughout our vernacular? 

            Couple that with a dream, a fictitious place of imagination and vision.  In your case, you are something wished for, something that is strongly desired by more than one person.

            Hmm.  Allow me to digress a bit here.  If many persons are trying to attain an abstract ideal, does this suggest that the ideal is really many ideals and not one?  Meaning, could each desirer really being seeking the same ideal?  And if the ideals are constructed by individual desires, desires that are perhaps selfish in nature to begin with, could it be said there is no one dream?  Of course similarities amongst all the dreams could lend themselves to unifying into one general theme of the dream.  Is this what we have now?  Or, are you, American Dream, whatever you need to be for each person that desires you?  This could be viewed as strength, couldn’t it?  Your elasticity, if you will permit me to call it that, is what makes you so desirable.  You can be many things to many people.  Is this a good thing, this flexibility?

            I suppose that such a characteristic is generally viewed as being positive.  I think we should allow for caution to enter here though.  Even the rubber band, a very flexible tool, breaks when it is stretched too far and when it is overused and worn out.  Have you been stretched too far, overused, or worn out?  How have you been maintaining yourself since the last time we talked?

            It appears I have reached the end of my space on the page.  I will send more to you next week.  Do take care of yourself.

Sincerely,

Jim

(written 13 February 2005)