…a new society; not great, but fitted by our very faults for greatness.
—Steinbeck, “What’s Happening to America?”
What else is there but gratitude? For the chance to play some little part in making and remaking this land. This vast, lunatic, belligerent, cacophonous, terrifying, and achingly, unbearably beautiful land. For being born to something all at once joyful, violent, incomprehensible, incomplete and uncompletable. I wasn’t born on the Fourth of July but close enough that the land’s communal lunacy and my own private spark of madness have always felt like daredevil brothers, goading, pushing, encouraging each other.
For a boy with continents in his heart, no better gift. I once tried to run away but nowhere’s far enough to escape one’s own heart. After all I was born of the line of those who had to run, each for their own reasons. It would be naive to say they weren’t running from something, but it would be false to say they weren’t also running toward something. Something they didn’t understand, something impossible to understand, since it didn’t exist yet. Maybe it still doesn’t. Maybe they saw a vision. Maybe they heard a call. Maybe they just knew that old trick, putting one foot in front of the other.
I wrap it up in words and pigments and try to give it back but it can never be enough. And only delight that it’s never enough. The vertiginous liberty, the restful ease, of trusting you can plumb the depths all your life and barely break the surface. How great, and how merciful, to be given a love that can never be matched by one’s own offerings. That can never be grasped by one’s own understanding.
250. It looks good on you, darlin. You’re one great big party, and no one’s ready to go home just yet. There’s always a few that sober up too early, pay them no mind. Out back the boys are fighting and in the front yard someone’s doing wheelies in the dirt. In the barn the band is playing and in the meadows love is still real. All the funerals can wait until tomorrow. Myself, I wandered off up the hillside to take in the stars and the bonfire at one vantage. But I know, I know I’ve been gone too long. I’m headed back down now, because there’s still dancing to be done.
I walk down through forests and over rivers and amid bones of better men and the hopes of future ones. I wander and wander, fitted by my faults for wandering, and as I wander I chant my feral American prayer: Lord, may I add my own little tambourine jangle to this beat. May I follow the good light until the morning. May I make good use of bountiful gifts. May I careen trustfully over unknown highways. May I run always toward. May I learn how to be still. May my heart expand to equal endless continental spaces. May my heart purify and condense into the apple seed. May I mingle my blood with this earth. Amen.