stultifying conformity and cultural emptiness, sexual hypocrisy, alcoholism, and spiritual despair. Privilege murders the senses there, the creatives tell us. Gender roles strangle freedom. Family life turns the heart of adventure to ashes. There’s bigotry and gossip and dangerous liaisons behind every closed door. Oh, the soul, the human soul! In the suburbs of fiction, she is forever dying.
But me, I kind of liked it there. As a little boy anyway. What was wrong with it? You had your trees, you had your sidewalks, you had your birds and squirrels and moms and dads. Kids played in the street through the afternoons and went home past warmly lighted windows in the evenings. There were summer barbecues and baseball games. There were high piles of autumn leaves that you could hurl yourself into. In winter, there were snows so deep you could dig long tunnels underneath the drifts. In spring, there was a flavor to the air that made you yearn for you-didn’t-know-what. If the suburban ideal of the sitcom was false, so are the elite attacks on a way of life that most citizens of the earth would have sold their souls for. Were people miserable there? Maybe, but the truth is people can be miserable anywhere. You can find hypocrites, drunks, and adulterers anywhere you find humanity. Why not live somewhere with some peace and quiet and open spaces and a twenty-minute commute to the city?
But this world—this suburban world I really did love, this world for which I felt a sentimental, almost nostalgic, affection even as a child—it was sinking away from me, sinking to the bottom of a sea of dreams, visible now only distantly through the wavery undercurrent. I would walk to school and find when I arrived that I could remember not one moment of the journey, not one piece of scenery, not one face or car or incident, only my dreams. I would take long bike rides and come to myself on some strange road, hardly knowing how I got there. Even during games, even during conversations, I would sometimes mentally absent myself to go on some imagined adventure, and come back only half aware of what we had been doing or saying while my mind was gone.
I hardly even saw the trees anymore. I had always—have always—had a sort of mystic fondness for trees. To this day, my mind is nowhere more at peace than in a forest. As a boy, I would lie under this one particular maple in our backyard. I would lace my fingers behind my head and watch the pattern of leaves against the sky. It was one of my favorite pastimes, no kidding. There was an apple tree I liked to climb in our front yard near the street. I would hide in the branches for hours sometimes, watching people pass and cars go by. The autumn change of colors all over town, the whisper of breezes in high parkland pines, the weirdness of weeping willows at the roadside, the boy squirrels chasing girl squirrels up the trunks of oaks in crazy spirals like squirrels in a cartoon, the rare scarlet cardinal meditating in the deep foliage. As an aspiring tough guy, I was embarrassed by how much these things delighted me. They were secret pleasures I did not discuss with anyone.
But over time I found that, whenever I was among the trees, I wasn’t really there at all anymore; I was dreaming. I would make special trips to the backyard to lie beneath the maple. I would try to recapture the sensation of watching its branches against the sky. I would try to concentrate on the patterns and colors that had once fascinated me. But my mind would drift away into dreams.
It bothered me. I missed the trees. I missed the walk to school. I missed my friends and my games and the weather and the whole wide world—not just the facts of them but the presence and awareness of them, the being there with them. It was all dreams for me now. Nothing but dreams.
I had reached that stage in an addiction when you notice that the pleasure of the thing is gone. You didn’t really want that last cigarette or drink. You
But me, I kind of liked it there. As a little boy anyway. What was wrong with it? You had your trees, you had your sidewalks, you had your birds and squirrels and moms and dads. Kids played in the street through the afternoons and went home past warmly lighted windows in the evenings. There were summer barbecues and baseball games. There were high piles of autumn leaves that you could hurl yourself into. In winter, there were snows so deep you could dig long tunnels underneath the drifts. In spring, there was a flavor to the air that made you yearn for you-didn’t-know-what. If the suburban ideal of the sitcom was false, so are the elite attacks on a way of life that most citizens of the earth would have sold their souls for. Were people miserable there? Maybe, but the truth is people can be miserable anywhere. You can find hypocrites, drunks, and adulterers anywhere you find humanity. Why not live somewhere with some peace and quiet and open spaces and a twenty-minute commute to the city?
But this world—this suburban world I really did love, this world for which I felt a sentimental, almost nostalgic, affection even as a child—it was sinking away from me, sinking to the bottom of a sea of dreams, visible now only distantly through the wavery undercurrent. I would walk to school and find when I arrived that I could remember not one moment of the journey, not one piece of scenery, not one face or car or incident, only my dreams. I would take long bike rides and come to myself on some strange road, hardly knowing how I got there. Even during games, even during conversations, I would sometimes mentally absent myself to go on some imagined adventure, and come back only half aware of what we had been doing or saying while my mind was gone.
I hardly even saw the trees anymore. I had always—have always—had a sort of mystic fondness for trees. To this day, my mind is nowhere more at peace than in a forest. As a boy, I would lie under this one particular maple in our backyard. I would lace my fingers behind my head and watch the pattern of leaves against the sky. It was one of my favorite pastimes, no kidding. There was an apple tree I liked to climb in our front yard near the street. I would hide in the branches for hours sometimes, watching people pass and cars go by. The autumn change of colors all over town, the whisper of breezes in high parkland pines, the weirdness of weeping willows at the roadside, the boy squirrels chasing girl squirrels up the trunks of oaks in crazy spirals like squirrels in a cartoon, the rare scarlet cardinal meditating in the deep foliage. As an aspiring tough guy, I was embarrassed by how much these things delighted me. They were secret pleasures I did not discuss with anyone.
But over time I found that, whenever I was among the trees, I wasn’t really there at all anymore; I was dreaming. I would make special trips to the backyard to lie beneath the maple. I would try to recapture the sensation of watching its branches against the sky. I would try to concentrate on the patterns and colors that had once fascinated me. But my mind would drift away into dreams.
It bothered me. I missed the trees. I missed the walk to school. I missed my friends and my games and the weather and the whole wide world—not just the facts of them but the presence and awareness of them, the being there with them. It was all dreams for me now. Nothing but dreams.
I had reached that stage in an addiction when you notice that the pleasure of the thing is gone. You didn’t really want that last cigarette or drink. You
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