LETTERS

by David Eide

The days could be very long. In the beginning the days were extremely long, a dream that kept transforming through doorways and shadows until you think you are in eternity. Yet, you wake. It was only a catnap! I found myself standing, at times, in the middle of the garden in the afternoon heat, just standing like a goof, standing there conjuring up memories after memories of other days. Perhaps it was only a minute or two standing in that heat but it passed very slowly. All through the day this would happen. I would find some happy spot in the sun and think of the past. I was a happy man.

Soon enough though I was like the others, doing chores, getting to know the people on their own terms, and before I knew it the days were sailing past. When I suffered boredom I would go to the little shack they put me in and write. Ah writer, you always knew I wanted to be a writer. Don't we all in this city? And I have a manuscript but have lost interest in it. It details things a great deal better than our conversation but it's as though I have to let this period of time die away before I complete the manuscript.

The first symptom of boredom is nostalgia. Even the things about the city I despised started to look good to me. The bridges! I had such clear and fine pictures in my mind of driving the bridges and watching the boats in the bay. Or driving up Grizzly at sunset and watch the light play on everything I knew to that point. I even missed television once in awhile. Needless to say they didn't have TV there. Rasputin marked it down as the second evil after tobacco. Yes, even those ponderous desires to succeed that seem to flow effortlessly from the screen and simple, 3rd rate stories that makes somebody millions of dollars; I missed it in a way. What I found in my shack were 1940's National Geographics that had outdated maps.

And I noticed this writer. Even as I got use to the place my mind, when free, started devising ways to leave it with peace and honor and go to the next destination. I never knew what the next destination was going to be but I was happy to think about it nonetheless.

Someone had suggested Canada. Canada? What's in Canada but more nature? And a funny thing occurred to me. It would be pretty easy to change my identity and go off to the mid-west or east to live. That always seemed very plausible to me.

I really didn't want to think about it. No, I always tried to get my mind to think of something else as soon as possible. Often I simply enjoyed some of the contradictions that existed in the arrangement in the mountains. I figured it existed on its own and was beyond any point of critiquing it on my part. But one thing stood out. In the city there is nothing but a massive flux of faces, personalities, ideas, machines, roles, and so on who claw the air for some individual identity. By the time that process is complete, phhhttt, no community. It all becomes an ad hoc affair organized by the lowest grade of energy in nature.

Paradise, sometimes, appeared to me when I walked around the mountain. It had a gentleness to it, an ease to it that was a great improvement over the stupidity of city living. On the other hand there was sporadic violence and great tensions seething for the most trivial reasons.

David Eide
April 17, 2000
Back to Jobs page
Back to Letters
Back to Laughing Sun
Back to Oasis