“There comes a time when a man needs to fight for his brain.”
~ Doctor Soblesky
The journey of which these writings record is unique, though unoriginal – an orthographic manifestation of myself, the protagonist of this adventure.
There is dissonance abound – on the pages of pulp politics and emanating from flickering screens, a phosphorescent blitzkrieg of images presents America in a confused, and confusing, context. The images imitate themselves on the distorted faces of rich and poor passing by on the sidewalk and, for the past seven years, that noise has shaped and jaded my taste and tolerance for this American life.
For most of my twenty-five suns, I’ve lived on an island, and though the world beyond the shores is neither distant nor avoidant, a sense of isolation has inevitably been sown. What is this place – America – the Land of Opportunity, “the Land I Love, the Home of the Free and the Brave?” The Stars and Stripes, a joining of States United by a common revolutionary history, but what else do we have in common? The warring words and wacked-out theater of our Leaders cannot really represent the ties that bind this country together, for then our union is little more than an illusion that flies high and proud in the breeze.
I am weary of playing the passive consumer of American culture, confined to a couch or a box, allowing my consent to be manufactured by bombardment, the helpless collateral damage of bright shiny information. Have we all been dulled and crippled by fear and frivolity, cowered by things we couldn’t understand? Though it is difficult to maintain faith, I refuse to believe this place has been raped of its revolutionary character. Therefore, I have decided to go out into it, to know America personally, to seek out possibilities where they hide and force from them probabilities. I have yet to see things change by talking to myself. This is America, and if you want something unimaginable, you must make it. The only sure bet is the one you place on yourself.
And so I go – that is the only purpose. In motion, there is interaction; from interaction comes understanding. On the rails, the tracks laid down like veins taking the people to the heart of this place, the countryside will pass by my windows; off the rails, where another crazy kind of beauty lies, I will seek out the people like mountains and lakes to behold of their lives, and the very things that makes us of one and many minds.
