Looking back on our lives is one thing most of us have in common, I would imagine. We look back on memorable and painful events, we look back at our families, our loved ones… people we have lost. We look back on mistakes, the paths not taken, the roads we should not have travelled. I think about jobs that I have lost, especially times like these, since I haven’t had a job since October of last year. This week I had two interviews with no results so far. That’s better than the months on end when no one even called for an interview. I think about Walt Disney World, the ultimate dream for me at one time. It isn’t just the land of dreams and magic, it’s a cold and calculated business, an enterprise, a world-wide phenomenon. You can start at Disney just about anywhere and work your way through the maze and up the ladder just like a lab rat. I regret leaving that place. Disney feels like home to me in some odd and strange way, kind of like my belief that I am really the reincarnation of Walt Disney. I didn’t find success this time around though. Disney died on December 15, 1966 and exactly four years later I was born. Maybe I am a little crazy to think this, but Emily Saliers believes that she is reincarnation of Virginia Woolf and who is anyone to say anything different? Looking back… I thought the world was full of potential and endless possibilities. Like looking out at the ocean from the edge of the sand. Limitless. Now I see fences and ditches, tethers and masks. The fires of life hammer us into entirely different people as we move through the world taking a beating from every side.
So I look back. Back to when things were simple and I didn’t know it. Back to when I thought getting older was the answer to all my youthful problems. We did such amazing things as children. We would climb trees three stories high and not have any reservations, we would propel our bicycles over homemade ramps of plywood and cinder blocks never fearing a broken arm or leg. We would go to sleep at night, excited for the dawn of the new day. There was always something new. Something to belive in. Now I rediscover adventures through the pages of books, or a new movie. Disconnected from reality long enough to become part of the fantasy again, however brief it may be.
My favorite fantasy world is Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately it is not possible for me to say that I have been a life long fan. I was one of the millions taken by the movie trilogy that went back to read the books. I went on to read The Hobbit, The Silmarillian, Unfinished Tales and The Book of Lost tales, though not yet all 13 or 14 volumes of it. I believe that one could spend a lifetime dissecting the layers of these stories, where everything means something, every syllable has a value and a history, every place name is relevant. He took the history of Middle Earth all the way back to its creation. In Tolkien’s world, the earth was created with music. If I believed in a creationism theory, this would be the one I should choose. It is the most pleasing and it makes the most sense. It is a natural development, as natural as the bird songs that begin before the dawn, the wind through the leaves, the songbirds in the trees, the cicadas in the twilight and the songs of frogs and Killdeers through the night. These are the thoughts and sounds that ground me in this unhappy world. Most humans are naught but a cacaphony that seek to subdue instead of share this earth while singlehandedly destroying society, our natural survival and nature all at the same time. Without progress we would not be dependant, without electricity we could pump the water from the well, while ceasing to strip the earth and pollute it. Are we happier with this new world where the television spouts out death and destruction or the latest murder rate. How many were killed last night across the city? Why?
Sometimes when I’m looking back, I’m looking way back. Back to a time before I was born this time around. To a time where, even without a job, there might be a way to find survival. Back then, our jobs were survival. Work the land, give to the land and she would provide for you. Let the young and the old all live together in the cycle of life. This was not long ago! We are now alone in this world. Visit ancestry.com and look up a relative that was alive during the Great Depression, the 1930 census. The young lived with the old, branches of families lived together to help support each other.
“Hate was just a legend, and war was never known. People worked together and they lifted many stones. They carried them across the flatlands, but they died along the way. Built up with their bare hands what we still can’t do today.” –Neil Young
Sometimes I find comfort in looking ahead. The roads that are still forking before us with new choices and a chance to make things better. A chance to make things right. I’m putting a few eggs in the basket these days. Working on new inventory for The Green Dragon, still working to promote my book , still putting in resume’s every week and trying to find a job. The golden egg in the basket is that two friends and I have started a band and we are hoping, at the least, that we can get out and do something that we all love. Whether looking back or looking ahead, music is the soundtrack of our existence and it always makes life more bearable.
“Where did you go to, if I may ask?” said Thorin to Gandalf as they rode along. “To look ahead,” said he. “And what brought you back in the nick of time?” “Looking behind,” said he. –J. R. R. Tolkien (The Hobbit)
