frontier

when i was very young and just learning about my state-- learning that as one moved west through the dakotas the romatic notion of the frontier, the wild west, the old west began to reveal itself. as i often did as a young child, i glorified this idea in my mind and i seized every opportunity to contact the past. the olden days. i loved the museum in my home town because it reminded me of little house on the prairie. i felt connected to the harshness and the openness of the prairie and i loved the images of the west, which was right next door as far as i could tell. i loved to touch things that were old and imagine the lives of the people who touched them before they were old. i loved to dream about dusty dirt roads and horse-driven buggies and ink wells. i bought the nostalgic product that steam thrashing days and jubilee days in tiny north dakota towns were selling. i was emotionally connected to the rugged wild west and i was a descendent of it.

then i got a little older and i forgot about it and i fell in love with other things and i lost interest. western cinema loaded with gun-toting machismo outlaws and slutty bar whores forever dressed in lingerie replaced my vision of tough, driven prairie families who trust and love and care for their neighbors. i was less interested in connecting my self-understanding with deadwood, more interested in the tremendous tenacity of the residents of walnut grove. i eventually stopped thinking about regional history at all and found the energy and power of the city much more interesting.

i didn't give any thought to the frontier for a very long time. then i read karol's book and it was engaging and illuminating and showed me the (real) west in ways i had never understood it before. it was so compelling i began to feel the stinging loss of something i had never even known. i wanted to touch it in the same way that i had to touch the reading glasses and the school desks at the museum when i was 7. but that's the thing about the frontier, isn't it? you can't touch it. by it's very nature and definition it disappears before you can reach it and just when you think you have found it, it no longer is what it was. the whole concept feels more like a scenic overlook than a tangible, breathable space. or the whole thing is a matter of perspective.

there is a fantastic conversation in karol's book about the frontier which culminates with a profound observation made by a character who is known as Travis. "the only frontier anyone's got anymore is that split second when all of your options are still open." this line stopped me for a good while. i had to listen to that and ponder the possibility that it should mean something to me at this very moment in my life. it rang of such familiarity immediately. as a general rule, i am too jaded for lines like this. too jaded for the belief that anything is supposed to mean anything in the cosmic order of things. and as another general rule, i agree with the horrible mr. Udall in the 1997 film "as good as it gets", that "people who speak in metaphors ought to shampoo my crotch." but i am willing to soften for a moment and let this be the poignant moment that it clearly wanted to be for me. i was reading this book just days after i learned that my option for completing the master's degree i had given up on was now back on the table. i was on my way to a writers conference where i would learn whether or not writing is something for which i have any talent. i was about to meet the author of this fantastic memoir and i could not ignore the fact that i may very well be in that moment when all of my options are open. if this moment has ever occurred before for me, i was too drunk or too depressed or too angry to notice. i am willing, just this one time, to concede that this line spoke to me regardless of my refusal to be spoken to by the universe. my subsequent contact and developing friendship with karol and all the support and encouragement i am getting from her does indeed fling wide open the metaphorical door to options i didn't think i would ever have. and speaking of metaphors again, i can totally forgive "travis" for this metaphor-ish statement because he clearly didn't mean to do it. the very next thing he says is, "want some mashed potatoes?" and this totally makes me want to meet travis.