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A record of the adventures of James, who in his 31st year left the human world and came to the desert.
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9.27.2002
Answers arrived in dreams. Nearly twenty years had passed since James had been to New Mexico and beyond, in the fringes of the desert. His dad had taken him hiking with a group of fathers and sons, largely as a way to encourage campfire talk and perseverance in the boys. The other boys, though, were aggressive and malicious, and had preyed upon James' quiet nature. They hounded him recklessly, snakes snapping at his heels; the fathers were unanimously amused. The exercise in character-building became a wound, a scar. Beautiful boy, they called him. Beautiful boy, can't you take the trail? The landscapes of his dreams at night appropriated the landscapes of the trail for years afterward.
So the night after leaving the cube farm behind, he dreamed himself walking the scrubby trails again, no longer a youth, but still the beautiful boy. Past the Ponderosa Pine and around the granite peaks he wandered, to a cracked white land beneath a blue sky. Though a sun hung heavy in the sky, it showed no compass; no trail guided him from an A to a B. He sat cross-legged in the sun and dull flowers sprang up around him. The mountains in the distance melted away, and at its zenith, the sun shined straight down on him. The reptiles crawled into their holes, and the cacti swayed to an unheard tune, beyond his ears.
posted by Sam at 4:23:00 PM
9.26.2002
He was in the middle of proofreading a small correction in the punctuation of a memo that had no bearing on his professional career. "Should we use a serial comma or not?" read the red ink at the top of the page. In the printed text, the same smooth red line circled two words, "staples" and "and". A wisp of dust rolled across his grey pressboard desk until it stopped against a discarded black pen. All human voices seemed sucked from the air and replaced with the click of computer keys on all sides. The low buzz of fluorescent lights pressed down from overhead.
A little bell sound came out of his computer when an email appeared on his screen, asking him if he'd seen the new style of letterhead.
Then the computer froze, gone dark and blue, flushed down. The only explanation was the clatter of computer keys on all sides. Someone in a cube several rows over, a woman, laughed out loud then stifled it with a hand. He got up from his chair, walked past the blue faces in the grey cubes, and was already taking a peppermint candy from the receptionist's glass candy jar on the big brown desk when he realized he would be leaving the building for the last time.
"Are you going out for the afternoon?" she asked, with that pleasant, rehearsed smile. James unrolled the loud cellophane wrapper and popped the red and white candy between his cheek and teeth.
"I'm never coming back," he said. "It's been okay knowing you." With that, he got in his car and drove away.
posted by Sam at 1:21:00 PM
9.25.2002
Though more would come to be involved in his decision - cause and consequence being what they are in this world - he first made it on a particular moment that laid bare the contents and composition of his life.
posted by Sam at 9:45:00 AM
In his 31st year, James left the human world and came to the desert.
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