Barstow.

They say that god built the world in seven days—and looking around, I think it shows. But seriously (I love it when people say that, like they just said something funny), have you ever been to Barstow? I’m sitting here now, at Carrows, having breakfast, waiting for my “friend” to get ready (only gay men take longer than women to get ready, and that be a long, long time), so I thought I’d write another little entry into my would-be-blog. I love it when people say “friend” like we don’t all know just what that means.

Barstow is a town stuck in the 50’s, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. I mean that it looks like the last new construction was supervised by Truman. Even new buildings look aged. The air is dry, the horizon impossibly far away, the roofs are scratched as though by the sandy claws of desert life’s long neglect. Only the cars show any change from my grandma’s time. Great-grandma, really, who drove by here in the 30’s on her trip from nowhere to a nowhere farther still. I wonder how she saw it then. Was it already tired of living, going through the day under the heat of the sun—every day with no greater purpose than to reach tomorrow?

Was it already beaten?

I’m sure there are plenty of numbers to show how wrong I am, numbers that show increase in industry, new construction, the lively exchange of on-going commerce. I’m sure there are numbers to show why this is a vibrant little town all on its own. But I speak not of numbers, but the dragging feet of people walking slowly and aimlessly on the street, the fact that all the energy one sees is only transitory. It seems the median age is in the upper 40’s, not a problem in and of itself, but where are the young ones?

When did these people lose their hope?

Even in other dilapidated towns I’ve felt a sense of struggle in the face of adversity. Here, there’s a resignation with their fate, like the drowning man who, tired to the end of his breaths, gives up and sees the light grow dimmer as he sinks. One cannot help but wonder what they’re doing to change this. What’s next? How can they just sit here and let the desert swallow them?

I, too, am only going through. On the way to Victorville. Now there’s a town that will grow to engulf this town. Only 35 miles or so away, it is on the move. There’s construction everywhere, new people, fresh paint, newly-paved roads. And a million miles of desert for them to grow into. Perhaps that was Barstow way back when. And when I leave, it will still be here, waiting to one day become a tiny little piece of the new, great metropolis in the desert. Perhaps the future is not in growing, but merely surviving, and what shape such survival takes is immaterial when compared to the oblivion of disappearance. Perhaps just living is enough.

But not to me.