The Next Time

Perfection is out of the question for people like us, 
so why plug away at the same old self when the landscape 

has opened its arms and given us marvelous shrines 

to flock towards? The great motels to the west are waiting,

in somebody's yard a pristine dog is hoping that we'll drive by, 
and on the rubber surface of a lake people bobbing up and down 

will wave. The highway comes right to the door, so let's
take off before the world out there burns up. Life should be more 

than the body's weight working itself from room to room.
A turn through the forest will do us good, so will a spin

among the farms. Just think of the chickens strutting, 

the cows swinging their udders, and flicking their tails at flies.

And one can imagine prisms of summer light breaking against
the silent, haze-filled sleep of the farmer and his wife.

- The Next Time, by Mark Strand

This poem has been on my mind for the last couple weeks.  Years ago, my sister Susan owned a small book of Strand's poetry.  As frequently happens in our family of voracious readers, the book got passed around and ended up with me for a while.  That's where I first read this poem.  The imagery spoke to me.  Even now I love the feeling it evokes within me, the perfect balance of restlessness and sense of place.

Certain lines are stuck in my head, connected forever to specific places and times.

A turn through the forest will do us good, so will a spin among the farms. 

No matter how many years I've spent living in cities, there's always a part of me that craves nature.  I can only ignore the desire to be free of the buildings, the traffic, the crush of people, for so long.  Then I have to break away.  When I lived in Chicago, there were times when long walks on the lakefront were not consolation enough.  Only trips out of town - into Michigan for weekend camping in the woods, day trips up through the rolling pastures of southern Wisconsin - could hit my 'reset' button and allow me the inner calm to make it through another few weeks.

The highway comes right to the door, so let's take off before the world out there burns up.

In the summer of 2000, a friend and I determined that we would go to Burning Man over Labor Day weekend.  We committed to this idea entirely on impulse about a week beforehand.  Thursday evening we packed the Jeep with everything we thought we'd need, and off we went on a 4500-mile kamikaze road trip, Chicago to Nevada and back in four days.  Just because we couldn't think of a reason why we shouldn't.

The great motels to the west are waiting.

We drove nonstop through the night.  Iowa was a blur of road signs in the darkness; Nebraska was the smell of feedlots and manure.  At daybreak Friday morning, while filling the tank at some random truck stop, I called my boss and told him I was taking a sick day.  He told me to drive carefully and stay out of jail.  Across Wyoming and Utah we drove through monsoon winds and patches of rain followed by scattered rainbows.  Just before sunset we arrived in Winnemucca, Nevada and found a room in a cheap, old-school motor court off the main drag through town.  It was reasonably well kept and bordered on charming.  We took turns showering and fell into our beds, sleeping so soundly the fierce storm that crashed through that night didn't wake us.

Why plug away the the same old self when the landscape has opened its arms and given us marvelous shrines to flock towards?  

Burning Man 2000 marked the first time I was in a desert climate as an adult.  I'd never experienced a sky so wide and blue, air so clear, stars so brilliant, mountains so rocky and barren.  The landscape held a mysterious sacredness that grasped me firmly and would not, did not, let go.  I had to struggle to pay attention to the chaos of interactive art taking place around me on the surface of the playa.

Life should be more than the body's weight working itself from room to room.

On the return trip, the closer I got to what I had once considered my 'real life', the further away from my own true reality I felt.  It was as if I had emerged briefly from Plato's cave into the light, only to be sucked back in:  no longer was I content to merely drift along, letting the currents take me where they would.