The neighbors have been firing guns all day long. Crack crack crack from noon until six o’clock. Occasionally there’s a triumphant shout. We can barely see the top of their cabin through the trees beyond the ridge but it’s close enough. I hope they’re good shots by now. How far can a bullet travel? (Approximately 1.2 miles says the internet.)
Last night I dreamt I was walking the aisles of a vast storage facility, a dim and musty place like where they archive the criminal evidence in police shows. Lumpy black trash bags lined the shelves. I pulled one down. As I began to undo the twist-tie, a woman’s voice on an intercom said this was the place where my dreams were stored, all the ones that I’ve forgotten. I woke up.
From an interview with J.G. Ballard in 1983: “The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It’s over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now.”
Three days without television or constant internet access—unless I drive twenty minutes to sit in the parking lot of a Speedway gas station. There’s still a low-level thrum in my nerves, the worry that I’m missing important news or being negligent. But I think it’s beginning to subside.
The days feel much longer than they did before. Perhaps it’s the intentional and partitioned use of the internet. Maybe it’s the gunfire next door.
