L.C. stopped off for a visit here at the D&E not long ago.  He didn't stay long this time, just one night but long enough for us to have a talk about what he's been doing with himself.  He's working on a new book, he says, called Riding Shotgun on the Trail to Utopia - a collection of poems and short stories.  Maybe I haven't mentioned this before, but L.C. is a big time political pundit and social commentator.  That figures, being as how he's a former political science and sociology professor. 

Reading L.C. poetry is an exercise in restraint for me.  It's not that I don't  understand it, and I'm not saying that I don't like it.  I'm not much of a poetry critic because I'm not qualified to be, but that boy can sure write some weird stuff.  Getting nailed down to a deep discussion with him makes me feel like . . . like . . . well, like I'm not up to the task.  Either he knows to much, or I know to little, but somehow my mind just doesn't grab hold of what he's thinking and saying.  I'm practical, more your common sense guy, and he's more of a dreamer and a schemer.  And he's in command of lots of words I'm not easy with.

But . . . I love listening to him talk about history and philosophy and things like that.  His new book, he says, is about what we dream about, what we'd like for the world around us to be like.  And the poems and stories in the book are about people who tried to make a dream come true . . . meaning, it's about struggle and sacrifice . . . and hope.  We all need that, he says - the hope of a better life.  But he says the book is also about people who wanted the wrong things, that it points out the difference between a dream that's fulfilling in spiritual ways and those that are simple for self-gratification that comes from ownership.  Man's desire to possess, to have, is at the heart of much of his dispair, L.C. says.

One of the stories in the book is about a young man who is heir to a massive ranch.  As a boy just belt high to his grandpa, he stands on a mesa with the old man, gazing out over and endless sea of prairie.  "How far does our land go, grandpa?" the boy asks.

The old man smiles down at the kid, then says, "Hold your arm out in front of you and then point with your index finger at yonder horizon." 

The boy did this, held his arm straight out in front of him and sighted down it, using his finger as a sight.  "Is that how far we own?" he asks.

"Yes, just as far as what you see at the end of your finger," he said, then gave the kid another big smile. 

Twenty years later, after the grandfather had passed away, that same young man stood on the same mesa with his ageing father and related the story to him, telling him of how his grandpa had him point his finger at the distant horizon.  His dad laughed, then said, "Yeah, he did the same thing with me when I was a kid.  Do you understand now what he was telling you then?"

"Yes, I think so.  I think he was telling me that all I really own or can hope to own stops at the end of my finger.  I didn't understand his words at first, but I figured it out when I got older," the young cowboy said.

"Me too," his dad said, then added, "Maybe it's time I rode up here with my grandson."

Yeah, L.C.'s a strange feller for sure . . . but damn, he comes up with a good one once in a while.  I look forward to his visits.

C. Duhon, 4/16/08