In driving through the countryside this summer, we found the remnants of people’s dreams. They were houses, barns, shops, gas stations, cars and even a US post office.
Every weathered edifice speaks to vision and decay. Looking on from the outside, I don’t know the story of each dream, but I know well enough how they work in general. There is the spark of invention, creativity, interest. There is the Herculean task of putting it into action; begging, saving or inheriting the money, buying the boards and nailing them together. Maybe even synergy with partners. Seeing the reality of a shared vision come into being.
Then there are the years in which society decides to go a different direction; to send the wheat to a different mill, or perhaps to decide not to eat wheat at all, maybe to let out the wheatfields to a wind farm entrepreneur. To find someone who will carve a cheaper widget or mind the cows for less pay. The car that was once the dream set of wheels now rusts in a field and the new one runs on a computer made far away.
Dead dreams are never solely about one person’s failings. The photographs of dereliction, the story of the passage of time and the turns taken by society, remind me not to think of my own dreams as mine alone but as part of archeological activities stirred by the greater world, the climate, the people, the passage of time.
Fire season in the west is almost here. Some people’s dreams will end in conflagration. My own dream for this season, is that no fires will be started in stupidity.
Technically this is more of a fearful emotion than a vision for anything I could craft. I have no control over this hope for preservation beyond my own care out in the environment. It’s sad to see things with a lot of promise die. Yet being out and about with a nose for smoke, I know that where something once flourished, there is likely to be a gorgeous death. There should be signs next to beautiful dead things that say: “Stop to celebrate the story here.” If there are no cues to slow down and feel the beauty of life and death dance together, I’ll take pictures and post them in a blog.
