Basement Dreams 308 words published on February 16, 2018.

Sometimes I like to pretend I was around for the settlement of the West. Much wonder and excitement must have been felt for the new frontier, and unlike the “final” frontier of space, I would have felt a part of the expansion. I’d dawn a cowboy hat, and with a unmistakable confidence I’d expand myself out towards riches and new land. Never again would a frontier feel so real.

Today I settle the postfinal, information frontier. Each post, tweet, message, and email is a stake in the ground marking my claim. My domain is free to exist on it’s own, though I rarely need to equip my cowboy hat to maintain it. I instead look through the glass of carefully built spectacles.

Was this not the basement dream?

As the era of expansion ended the original settlers of the west would see it morph. The place they once lived would become the Old West, and a new era of trains and populous would begin. The original Homestead Acts would fade into the history books, as the people slowly became civilized.

Today I feel like a cowboy in the city, though I’m still only pretending to know how a cowboy should be. Where I once felt the weight of the world at my feet, now I feel lost. Papers which once guided ourselves fade as quickly as they were written.

In reality, I yearn for a new dream. Not one of land, planets or stars. I demand more. We still haven’t seen the final form of this information era, and the revolution is taking place on unusual turf. In this new basement dream I see a community of faceless identities. An era of masquerade and action. We separate from ourselves, and look outwards. We forget the masks we wear after a while, and all that remains is real.

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