207

The American Dream is not dead. As twenty-aught-six draws to a close she crawls along. Her body beaten and broken, her legs crushed beneath years of broken promises and broken ideals, forsaken everythings and squandered kinetics. Exsanguinated, almost, her skull mostly shattered and with syphilis and scurvy closing in on whatever is left she pulls herself forward with her one good arm. And good, here, is a relative term, what with the other one left somewhere in 1999 lopped off for one reason or other. She can’t seem to recall. Ages old before her time and dirty from a hundred thousand lies and a thousand score wrong decisions made badly on purpose, all for the allure of being bad, wrinkled and soured by unkindness she might catch her reflection in a nearby cesspool (they’re, like, everywhere these days) and wonder, for a moment, when she got so damn ugly. So holy fuck, burning-shed-of-rabbit-shit-stuffed-with-dead-dogs-ugly. She might wonder that, but she knows. She knows it happened when she slit her friend’s throat for a new boyfriend she was tired of the next week and a piece of cheese at the end of a poorly constructed cardboard labyrinth, even though she’s lactose intolerant. (she is most-everything intolerant, though, so…) Knows it happened when her new friends slit her throat for no reason except they were bored and she was boring, what with always trying to be exciting. Because they didn’t like her stenciled on smile or her MS Paint scars or her stretch marks or whatever clusterfuck-bronze-star she was sporting most proudly that day. Maybe just because she has a throat and these friends are like the Sir Edmond Hillarys of hate. She knows it happened when she paid thirty-dollars a half hour for skin cancer and four dollars a pack for emphysema and black lungs and yellow teeth. One hundred dollars a month for cable TV and when she prostituted herself for a hit of whatever that was, she can’t even remember. She knows it happened when she read US magazine and asked herself what the hell Ben Affleck was thinking when he did whatever it is he does. She knows it happened over and over and over again but couldn’t bring herself to give a damn. Because not giving a damn was her niche. Her clique, nearly 7 Billion strong. She knew it was because she was awful. She knew. She just didn’t notice until now because she is very practiced at turning her head. But she’s forgetful and she’s forgotten how to care even about her torn, exposed rib cages and her gangrenous spirit. And she pulls herself forward. Her life a meaningless blur of bar-stools and economy-sedans, credit card debt and shoes. Of too-fast years and too-long days and too many drugs and too little ardor. Meaningless except, maybe, to have given birth to even less meaning somewhere along the way. Meaningless except to have finally, finally overcome her greatest fear of getting lost in a crowd of nothings. She doesn’t know when it happened, but she must have risen above it. Because even with all the blood-stains and tear-stains and shit-stains that she wears as everyday accessories you couldn’t pick the American Dream out of a line-up of one with six chances and some kind of color coding. A chart of some kind. She must have conquered her fear to be this ordinary. And she is not dead. And she has not lost a match in years because it has been years since she tried to do anything at all. It has been years since she turned the world, but the world spins on, and that, it seems, is good enough. Momentum is momentum and hell is maybe just a Sandals resort with a bad press agent. She pauses here and there to clutch the cavernous cavity that once meant something to someone, the chasm where her heart once was. And with a purely trivial interest she asks herself, for a moment, what is powering her circulatory system. Or if she even has one anymore. She’s given so much of herself away so often without thinking she might have left it behind any number of times. The American Dream, she probably wrote about this loss in her journal when she noticed it but she is forgetful and she has long since forgotten now. And it’s not as though she has the luxury of caring. God, no. If she even tried who knows what would happen. But she is not dead. And so she keeps moving, rolling, now, more than pulling herself which is just as well. It’s been downhill for a long, long time and she is tired. But she is not dead. And though she no longer remembers how to speak her mind, or if she left that on a nightstand, too, someone has written down some things for her to say and she is nothing if not well rehearsed. And the American Dream, she is not dead. As we, the few, the hard, the brilliant and unflinchingly brutal stare stone faced and feet-planted toward a new year, she is not dead.

 

And this is a time for heroes.

 

A time for clean hands to bring us clean art. A time for statesman and poets. A time for each of us to, with one voice, demand greatness of ourselves. A time for revolution.

 

This year, may your New Years resolution be resolve. May you wish on every falling star for a finer world. May you with clear heads and filled hearts go full tilt toward anything and refuse to apologize for your ambition, not to the Buddhists, not to the right side of the isle or the left, to ministers or mothers or boys or girls or even yourself. May you divine what you most want in this life and be sleepless until you find and grab it with both hands. And once you have whatever the fuck it is, may you give it away gleefully. May you be charitable and dogged. May you never tire and never ever be complacent. This year I hope “comfortable” is completely removed from your lexicon just as “sheepdip” was ripped from the dictionary all those years ago.

 

Thomas Carlyle told us that “The history of the world is but the biography of great men.” And just this past week Time magazine suggested that, with the advent of web 2.0 history may indeed become the biography of many ordinary ones.

 

And fuck both of you.

 

This is a time for heroes. Line up beside me this year and in all our years and show the world that history can be a record of both the many and the great.

 

Stand up. Stand out. Walk far and return unafraid.

 

This year and in all your years may you never succumb to an ordinary life.

 

This is a time for heroes.

 

Demand greatness, please. Demand truth and kindness. Demand that we all be better.

 

At your next high school reunion may you fit in not at all.

 

May you remember that tomorrow is an inherently good idea, that the American Dream is not dead, just a little fucked up. May you be her doctor and have her back on her feet in no time. May you reattach her arm.

 

May you be beautiful.

 

This year may you revive the spirit of all things awesome and fashion your own zeitgeist.

 

This is a time for heroes.

 

May 2007 be the year of 207 for each and every one of us.

 

Get a beverage of your choice and kick some ass all year long.

 

E

 

p.s. as a side note, my older sister got engaged last week and that event, most joyous, has absolutely nothing to do with the title of this blog (I swear) or my general outlook at the moment. Congratulations Erin, I love you a silly amount.

 

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