Lonerism

Louisiana/Dreamland

A.N. To commend you all, all 2k of you. This account is growing more and more everyday. To thank every last one of you, I've written something a little whimsical, contemplative, and sweet. I think you'll be surprised, by this one. It's not my usual style, so tell me what you think.

Thanks again, and keep it together, xoxo, Clay.

Louisiana/Dreamland

[Dreamland - An imagined and unrealistically ideal world; a fantasy, hidden away in the folds of your own head. A paradise of the mind]

[Louisiana - Where I was born, where I fell in love, where I dreamed]

I hailed from the American South, a town embroiled in the smoking heartland of old Dixie. Shanty Creek, they called it. Half-submerged in the swamps and bayous of the molten marshlands of Louisiana. The summers there were red and long, spent perched underneath the trunks of willow trees that blew in the scorching air, or by the local swimming hole, green and squelchy and warm.

Louisiana was my dreamland, a place where my youth trickled through my fingers like rancid swamp water. The place I'd lie down in the grass, underneath the steaming southern sun, and fall asleep dreaming. I was a dreamer, lying under the tropical pink sky, one arm behind my head, and the other lightly rolling a cigarette between my fingers. I felt free, in my dreamland. I felt at peace there.

The green grass beneath my body was soft and fresh, filling my nose with the sickening smell of pollen, the fag hanging on the end of my fingers. I took it to my mouth and let it cling onto the edges of my lips, and the smoke went in.

"You really shouldn't smoke, Jackson." He towered over me, blocking the sun and casting a shadow over the front garden grass.

"I like the thrill," I told him, like I'd told him a thousand times before. I propped myself up on my elbows and watched him where he stood. Travis Rivard, an old time friend of mine. "You know, the rush, the adrenaline. It's sort of like taking in all of the world's toxicity, sucking it into yourself, and exhaling it out. Expelling it back into the world. It's like a release, I think."

"Climb out of your own head, Jackson, you're in there all day." He smiled as he said it, an appreciative smile. One I'd grown used to seeing, usually lined with his own air of unrelenting realism. Travis was one life-long existential crisis, a cynical cataclysm of teenage angst and chaotic sexuality. All in all, he was a bundle of crippling misguided anger, but he always had good intentions, and you couldn't fault him for it.

In a way, Travis and I were unusual friends. I was a dreamer, and he was a realist. I saw things for what they could become, and he saw them for what they would never be.

When we were younger, we used to roam down at the edge of the bayou together. It dribbled and drooped around the fringes of the town, sinking the land like soft marshmallows, hiding away the light of humanity. From there, we would follow it, and gaze at the midnight sky.

One night, not that long ago, we had found an old Mississippi steamboat half sinking in the murky water of the bayou. It looked decades old, CSS Louisiana Dreamboat, it was called, dating back to the Confederacy. We climbed on board and sat on its deck, looking up at the dead night sky, littered in stars and fireflies.

"What do you think's out there, Trav?" I'd asked.

"Nothing," he'd responded, his eyes closed, not even looking up, not even fully aware of the world around him. I think that's when I enjoyed watching people the most, when they were so unaware and hidden deeply within themselves, at the back of their own eyelids, in a whole other world. When they became lost, or when they escaped, maybe to a dreamland. To some place better. I was never sure which, but either were better than the real world.