Maybe Tomorrow

I was thinking about wandering off into the desert this weekend. Now, this may sound strange to you, especially if you are not the kind of person that lives in a desert already or are not the kind of person who might wander into hostile terrain as a general course of action. Allow me to explain this desire to you, with the self-assurance and the cocky swagger of the truly intoxicated. But first, I have to change this song, because fuck, if you haven't listened to "Never Hear Surf Music Again" by Free Blood, the first two minute are amazing and the last four minutes fill me with a rage I would have not have thought possible, until this moment of my life. It's like having sex with the hottest woman in the world (I guess that's Jennifer Lopez, according to these guys?), only for her to turn into some sort of freakishly ugly shapeshifter two minutes into the act. Or something. I don't know. Look, the metaphor isn't perfect. Let's just fucking move on.

I had to step outside for a moment. I don't know if it's true in your part of the world, I mean, I imagine it would be, but I'm not a fucking astronomer, so who fucking knows. My point is that I stepped outside to enjoy a smooth Black & Mild, a Sierra Nevada Golden Boch, and most importantly, to revel in the glorious full moon on the perfection that was this May Seventeenth night, in the year of Our Lord, 2011.

I think I was talking about the desert before? Yes, yes I was.

The desert represents two things and those two things depend on whether or not you have ever lived in the desert. If you've lived in a desert, it's just a word that means things. It means that the primary color of your world is brown. It means that it'll rain three times a year. It means that you're a bad person if you lose track of how long your morning shower is. For the record, I like to take twenty minute showers. It only takes me five minutes to get my business down. The other fifteen minutes are spent appreciating how fucking good it feels to be doused in hot water at 6:15 in the morning.

If you don't live in the desert, that you know of deserts from the movies. Let me clear a few things up for you. Most deserts don't have sand dunes. Most deserts also don't have cacti (cactuses?), although mine does, so whatever. If you ever seen sand dunes and cacti in the same scene, you can be assured that the director thinks you are a fucking moron and won't know the difference. I don't know about you, but that would make me kind of mad, the kind of mad that would lead to some hilarious shenanigans (it took me five fucking minutes to spell that word, no joke) that would start with setting a car on fire and end with a night in jail. Look, just trust me on this; you won't find cacti and sand dunes in the same desert. I think. I've heard there are some sand dunes out in New Mexico. They might have cacti. Who knows. That's not the point I'm trying to make here.

My fucking point is that while I was engaging in the usual drudgery of the average job today, I felt a profound sense of disquiet and of panic. I felt the need to GET OUT, to run away, to escape the grim bonds of this static world. Basically, I had this thought: I said to myself, "Self, we've been doing this day in, day out bullshit, for weeks now. It's time for a change." I thought that sounded pretty smart, so here I am now, drunk out of my mind, thinking about deserts and why it's a good idea to disappear into them. Not forever, though, I mean, it would suck to die in the desert. I imagine coyotes would eat you, and that's not good, or no bueno, in the language of the region.

The desert, to me, represents nature in the only form we can really understand in today's technological society. There was a time, I think, when nature was embodied by the jungle or the tundra or the forest or the plain, or whatever. I think that era has come and gone, however. We've proven that we, as a species, are stronger than the forest and the jungle. Our machines can clearcut that shit in no time flat, for lumber, for farming, or just for the fuck of it. These days, we have to protect that shit. These days, the jungles of the world are a rare and precious thing, something to be cherished and savored before it's gone forever, which it probably will be, soon.

The desert, though. The desert doesn't give a fuck what you do. It doesn't care if you clear out the plants, if you send the coyotes and the snakes and the javelina running for cover. It doesn't care if you burn away the plants and reshape the land. The desert still is. If you drink all the (admittedly scarce) water or waste it on twenty minute showers, the desert doesn't care. In the end, the desert is like Hades. It's just waiting for you to die, because the presence of life in the desert is an enigma, an aberration, something that only happened by happy accident.

You can't kill the desert.

As I was working today, as I was serving the needs of people who do not care about me or my desire to help them better their lives, I felt the need to escape. In particular, I felt the need to escape into that desert which is so actively malevolent, that place that will, by its very nature, seek to kill me. Now, this is not a death wish, the desire to disappear into the desert. Quite frankly, if death was my wish, there are many easier and more convenient methods at my immediate disposal. I mean, for fuck's sake, I have a Beretta .40 caliber on my nightstand RIGHT NOW. If death was my wish, I can't think of a more efficient means.

No, it's not death that I seek, in my desire to retreat to the desert. The desert, to me, represents a cleansing of sorts, a primal fire that burns away the bullshit that accumulates over the course of living in our modern world. We all spend so much time worrying about shit, without ever thinking about the things that, in another time and place, would be necessary for life.

The desert represents purification from a world that has grown corrupt on its own excess. Now, don't get me wrong; I fucking love me some corruption. I'm typing this post while drunk off who knows how much fucking whiskey and I smoked a mighty fine Black & Mild first, and the music is cranked up to 11. I'm soft and decadent and in love with the power of our modern technology. I wouldn't trade this life for anything. The motherfucking Emperor of Rome didn't have it as good as I do now; Internet and cold beer and indoor plumbing and Xbox.

But goddamn, ours is a noisy world. There is so much happening, so much noise, so much LIFE, that eventually, it's too much. It's too loud and you can barely think, and that's when the trouble starts. It's when things start getting so loud that you can't hear yourself anymore that you begin to slip, that you begin to lose yourself in the detritus of today's world.

In that place of harsh life, in that place of death, the desert in a refuge. I don't want to go back to simpler times; I'm not fucking retarded. We're living in the best moment, ever, in the history of our species, and anybody that tells you otherwise is a fucking retard, sadly misinformed, or Republican. That's just facts, baby.

But we do live in a noisy time, in a moment in history when it's all too easy to lose the self in the singsong Karaoke copy bullshit of our world. It's too easy to lose the self in the excess, it's too easy to replace individual thought with the company byline, with the official story. In other words, we live in the best of times, even though the best of times are the greatest threat to our sense of self and our ability to think for ourselves.

And that's why the desert, my friend. The desert wants to kill you. The desert is honest like that. It fucking hates that you're alive and made out of mostly water. If the desert had its way, you would be nice, dry, dusty bones. Hence why the desert is like that girl that's a great lay, but not girlfriend material. Good for a nice row, but not exactly who you want to bring around for the family holidays.

The desert doesn't give a shit. It doesn't care about your bullshit, it doesn't care that the boss yelled at you, that the customers were dicks, that the objective wasn't met. In the desert, it's life or die. Find water, or don't. Find food, or don't. Live, or don't. Simple living. Simple dying.

There is a purity, in that simplicity, that does not exist in the urban world or the grasslands or the suburbs or where ever the fuck you live. In the place that you life, there are layers, there are secrets, there are all kinds of rules and etiquette and so much fucking bullshit that seems so fucking important, that isn't, really, at least according to the standards that the desert.

In the desert, the answer to life is water. Do you have it? If so, grats, you get to live for another die so you can find some more. It's simple living, but not in some motherfucking hillbilly way. Those guys thing they understand, but they're just as deluded as we are, just as hung up on the bullshit of being human. They don't really understand it any better than we city-slickers do, though they'll try to prove otherwise as a point of pride.

In the end, you go into the desert because you seek clarity and purity. You go into the desert because there's too much noise, there's too much going on for you to really know who you are in a world of likes and dislikes and favorites and advertisements.  In a world where your image is some company's byline, the desert is the final bastion of true self, where you live and die according to your worth as a man (or woman, let's by fair here).

I love technology and I love the world that has spawned it. I love that I'm sitting here now, with all the music of the world exposed for my consumption, at the click of a mouse. I love that I'm sitting in a comfortable chair, ergonomically designed to contour to my spine, in a climate controlled environment. Whatever I want, I need only reach out and take.

But that does not mean that the desert is not outside my window, waiting. The desert cannot die. If we clear all the cacti, kill all the snakes, suck up all the water... the desert will still be there. She is a place of purity, a cruel mistress that is all too eager to strip away the imperfection and expose the raw weakness of humanity.

But it is that exposure that makes us powerful. It is that moment in which we know our weakness, that inspires us to strength. It is the knowledge of our failure that drives us to be more than we are, to become more than our fathers thought we could be.

The desert, in all her forms, is the source of our evolution and the fountain of our progress.

As I said (or didn't, I'm too drunk to remember now) I was thinking of taking a backpacking trip to her this weekend. It is is my hope that now, you will understand why.

-Matthew