Dreams
by David James
"Is a dream a lie if it don't come true,
or is it something worse?"
Bruce Springsteen - "The River"
I always wanted to head on up to New York City and be taught by a decent painter, but as time kept on trucking, it became clear that that was just a big dream that would not shake out. Didn't even make it up there to New York. So, it was with a pronounced bitterness that I knuckled under to reality and went back to work at the plant like every other loser son-of-a-bitch in town.
My girl all through high school, Mary Louise, wanted to be an actress. We all thought she had a chance to capture hearts in Hollywood. Goddamn it, she was great in our senior high school play, “It's Not You, It's Me”, but grabbing that brass ring proved elusive for her, too. Last I heard, she was selling cigars at the poker tables in Vegas.
Birthing dreams of fame enter our lives early down here in our shrinking, little town down here on the edge of the Bogue Chitto swamp. I think they are really dreams of escape. I caution youngsters to be careful. Unrealized dreams die hard.
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David, this states plainly and painfully what lost dreams, failure of will, feels like. Honest to the bone.*
I love the voice here, the vernacular, I think that this is the way I talk. Gotta confess though, it makes me itchy for New York, LA, even Vegas, I suppose.
Ain't a person alive can't relate to those dreams of youth, eh.
Nice one, David.
I love this. It's seriously good. *
I'm still dreaming.
John, Steven, Sally and John, thanks for reading my tidbit of a story here.
Great voice, David. That wide-open space of possibility all around us constricts year after year until it's almost just a pinhole of light, taunting us because our lives have grown too large to ever fit into our dreams.*
Thanks, Joani. I appreciate your comment which is a prose poem in itself.
You capture the rankling angst of regret so well it brings an ache to these old bones with each reading. *
Thanks for reading and commenting so kindly, Mathew. As I compare our profile pictures, I expect that over time we have each had dreams that got kicked to the curb.
Spare, taut and poignant piece here, with a great reference to the Springsteen line. Lots of power in the brevity of this piece David. Very evocative. *
Really well done. I guess there was a time we all thought we had a line on something no one else could see.