We Live In An Age Lacking In Refinement …

... a coarse age, the age of cosmic harmony long, long gone and seldom remembered now. So last night I decided how I would like to spend the rest of my life. It came to me while I was lying in bed just before I fell asleep … or perhaps I was asleep & it was all a dream.

I want to disappear … vanish. Sounds rather strange doesn’t it? When I say vanish I don’t mean like “whoosh!” in a puff of smoke, but rather: “We’re afraid Dax's whereabouts is unknown at this time.” That kind of “disappear.”

I firmly believes in the old French saying: “It is impossible to overdo luxury.” But the longer I stay among the glass & steel cliffs of the inner city, the more I lose my sense of wonder. The big city has become a “sea of shadows” where people are often untroubled by anything as inconvenient as scruples.

I’ve always wanted to live in an inaccessible place but I realize that is just a pipe dream. So I am going to find a small, quiet country town off the beaten track, a place that when it’s dark, the stars shine so bright they’re like fire from heaven. Some place where when you turn off the lights to go to sleep you can’t see your hand in front of your face. And when you hear a noise outside in the small hours, instead of reaching for the panic button on your remote, you turn over and go back to sleep because you know it’s only some wild critter snuffling around.

A town where when it rains, the sweet breath of the wind brings you the scent of the countryside instead of steaming tarmac & fetid drains blocked by plastic bags. Where strangers will pick you up at the roadside on a dark stormy evening, share their supper with you & insist you spend the night, and then drive you to the bus station after breakfast the next morning.

Perhaps a town where the only cell phone reception is up on a hill ten miles away so that people have to stand in one place while talking on a regular telephone. Where satellite dishes are only seen on the local radio station building & TV reception is so poor nobody even bothers to watch it. A little town whose radio station still broadcasts stories that kids listen to and who use their imagination to fill in the gaps. And the smallest structure in town is the jail & the largest the public library where I can find out everything I need to know without once clicking on a “search” icon.

I’d like to spend some time working with my hands for a change, something I have never done nor ever needed to do in my life. Maybe wear blue coveralls and do odd jobs, working for as long as I wanted, but always doing something for somebody in need or less fortunate than me. Perhaps dig a hole for them, help out at a store, wash a dog, mow a lawn, rake up leaves or better still, write them a poem! Maybe teach someone’s kids to appreciate the written word. And when I was called in for lunch, I’d wash my hands & face under an old fashioned hand pump operated by some or other earthling. They could maybe repay me by cooking me a meal, giving me some fresh vegetables or a chicken that I could take home and cook myself.

Home? Hopefully it would be a small cottage or log cabin or maybe even a tent to begin with and I’d like to live just outside town among some trees near a lake. Then on the days I wasn’t helping folk, I could take my journal & a pen and walk in the woods or beside the lake. Seeing … not just looking … hearing … not just listening & writing about the heart beat of the countryside. Perhaps fish or just snooze in the shade, where the anesthetic scent of wild flowers & berries would assail my senses, making me so weary that I would feel the weight of each of my eyelids closing my eyes in peaceful slumber. In the evenings after supper I’d write until midnight & later, sipping wine that tasted like the tears of the full moon shining in the clear sky.

Saturday morning I’d walk into town and order one of Ma Bennett’s special breakfasts of fried eggs over easy, crisp farm bacon, sausage, and fried tomato, mushroom, toast and steaming black coffee, the aroma alone worth the price of the meal. Then on Saturday night there’d be a square dance in the town hall, with music provided by a band whose members go by the names of: “Charles Cannon, Don Delight, Scootles, Tattoo Eddie, Amy Arena & Booful.”

Just maybe, perhaps at one of these dances I’d ask a lady to dance with me. She’d have wide set eyes of hyacinth blue & an alabaster smooth petal-like complexion. She’d tell me her name was Emma-Lee & that she was a soldier’s daughter. That he husband had perished in Afghanistan three years ago and that she had a four year old daughter & lived on her parent’s farm.

We’d walk outside breathing deeply of the magnolia scented night air and she’d teach me words new to my ears, like “combine-harvester, alfalfa & silage.” Later we’d sit on a rustic white painted bench in the moonlight holding hands, the world so quiet that the sound of our heartbeat deafened us. And I’d ask her if I could see her again and she’d whisper: “Yes … please.”

Sigh ... Perhaps it was only a dream.

 

Ah, you really truly are a wonderful writer. A dream I have often had, that will become a reality one day. I believe it. A simpler life away from all the things that people believe matter, when in reality it doesn’t. It is just about living, appreciating the small things and a small world that blocks everything out. It is just about you! 5those you care about, what you care about. Those you love and helping your neighbour. What you see is your life, not what is told to you. The wonders and beauty you surround yourself with. It is a beautiful thing, as is your writing. Blocking it out is great! It is what happens when I paint, but I don’t want complete isolation, interaction, acceptance, being considerate and being considered. Love your writing. I joined you in that dream

 

And lack of education. Nicely written Dax.

 

The horror within us all.

 

I feel something like that at times too; many of us have similar fantasies. But all I have to do is remember what things were like not all that long ago. Chattel slavery and lynchings were facts of life, for example. Dentistry for the common people was unheard of. And nearly everyone was ignorant by today's standards.

Life was also incredibly filthy. I love this description of Paris, the city of love and romance, written in the 1800s and published in the newspaper Le Figaro.

"In every street the pipes gushed out where decaying rat carcases drank everything in, tails dangling and whiskers bristling with greenish lumps. Bellies in the air, they floated amid apple peels, asparagus stalks and cabbage cores…it was like a vast infection of tooth decay, like the flatulence of a rotting stomach, like the emanations of a man who has drunk too much, like the dried sweat of rotting animals, like the sour poison of a bedpan…this avalanche of excretions tumbling down the length of the purulent streets…let off its nocturnal fragrances."​

I feel lucky to be alive in the 21st century...although I wish sometimes that I had been born much later.

 

I on the other hand TD, would love to have been born earlier ... I don't belong in the 21st century.

 

Than you so much for your wonderful review of this piece. It was written from the heart. Stuff like that is easy to put on paper so to speak.

 

Thanks so much. Very kind of you!

 

I think you so right.

 

You are so right. Thanks for posting.

 

Maybe we'll all find our Utopia one day.

 

When i moved to missouri ozarks it was still decent in some places. & there may some left. But its changed.