Outside

Some of my earliest memories come from my days in the country with my family before I started school. I recall being a passenger in my father's car and the sand hill dunes that neighbored our large white house in the cottonwood hills of central Kansas. The roads were covered with thick and rough sand that would burn in the sun and yet cake up when it went down like the film that appears on refrigerated butterscotch pudding. The car that my father drove was a silk white 1974 Racherro with bright red 50's diner upholstery. The interior motor, as I later found out, was that of 1969 Mustang, and so as you can image, the car could both duck walk and strangle the road.

Sometimes, my father would take me to the local theatre to see movies, notably Muppet's Go to Manhattan (my first glimpse of New York) and the last of the Back to the Future films (first glimpse of the west) and we would coast back to our distant home through the velvet paths of pavement and dirt. Outside, through the window I would look ever so intently at the lights that slowly passed in the distant yards and farms that we lived next to. The white, yellow, and black flew past and wasn't so captivating to me so I focused on the radio towers and trees. I could see the houses faintly and the bugs. So many bugs were there that they looked like hyper magnified pixels and they attacked the light posts fervently, rightly so. Since the land was so flat, there wasn't much to look at so you had no choice but to focus on the small matters that surrounded you. The air would hum gently while the gentle mustang pulled us forward to our home on a shabby two line highway, which, may I tell you, was a good ten minute drive out of town.

There was something about the windows that I will never forget and that is my own appearance through the glass. The thin piece of silver screen that was my father's passenger windows was a great sense of enjoyment to me and I was startled to see myself in it as well. Something about the way the window contained the sparklers of light and darkness, greens and heavy blues, while at the same time brushed my soft body and in the corner the etches of my father's leg that just got to me. Somehow I understood that nature, machine, and man were all the same at that point. That we're all stuck together somehow and that we moved with eachother while at same time retained our own ground. The invisible window told me that we marched fast and with no intention of stopping until we all got to that sweet spot where we could rest and better yet, dream. The ground was flat, and so was my bed, and so was the movie screen and so was the soda that I was drinking--it all maded sense. In the window I saw the world, myself, and the Ranchero as one.

Even though we maybe of the same source, I still gulped in horror at the thought of being out there, outside, without that sweet hymns of the radio and gentle purr of the motor. I wondered what it would be like to be outside on my own. Who would I meet there? Would they hurt me or would I hurt them instead? Now, I've been outside and I've done both of those things. However, I still know that we are all in this great story together, and I can't really change it, only move with it. To create our own wilted dirt roads that others can travel by, and grow to trust, as they too look for their own dream.