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i've thought about running west. when everything is pent up here, the pressure release of space. the distances longer, the expanses wider, everything a little more lonely. i've thought about leaving—about becoming dust in the desert. if i go far enough, i will end up somewhere different. what can i have faith in but this?
if the american dream is moving up, the american promise is moving out. when there's nothing left here you care about—if here is intolerable—then there's somewhere other than here. in america, there will always be more space.
you left. you had stayed in this place for as long as you could. you had despaired and complained and persisted, you had stood still and watched your life crumble around you. but then last brick tumbled down, and finally you realized you were standing listless among the rot and ruin of your past. there was no choice but to go.
you say you ran away, and you did. but you say running away is shameful, and maybe that it is not. when it is time to go, isn't the only proper thing to do to run? isn't there a courage in the packing up and plunging ahead?
west. you went west, but you didn't ever understand that's where you were going. it was never literary to you—you couldn't entrust yourself to the history of it. i don't think you realized that you weren't the first to chart this path.
you felt so alone.
i wanted you so desperately to feel it, just for a moment—i wanted you to feel this country in your bones, to realize you weren't just leaving but journeying, to understand that going is both going from and going to, that the ambiguity could be your saving grace.
instead, you crossed this country in the air. i'm sure you pushed the plastic windowshade down, i'm sure you closed your eyes and tried not to think too hard about what you were doing. didn't you ignore the anxiety in the pit of your stomach?—didn't you eat those airplane peanuts and ignore the liminality of it all?
i know you were scared.
and then the plane touched down on the runway, and you had arrived, and the plane was speeding along on the concrete, and then it was slowing to a stop. i wish i could believe you had cried out there, on the runway. i wish i could believe you wept.
sometimes, i wonder how you're doing out there, in the west. is it different—are you different? are you building a new life, are you haunted by your past? i thought i would miss you, but instead i just wonder about you, and the days that you're passing by.
Matisse Peppet