Kingdoms of the Mind

how many things have I forgotten? writimg can bring the past from the depths of forgetfulness to a new place. i am not always certain if it is remembering or returning. i see the dead end street where our house sat on the the west side of the street, facing east. at the end of the street was the prairie, the wide open spaces where the vast night sky was so bright that stars surrounded me on all sides like a dome. the prairie stretched endlessly toward the horizons like a still and silent sea.

at the end of the street were drain pipes that funnelled the overflow of rain into a ravine. way to the west toward the horizon was a windmill and a waterhole fed by the windmill bringing up the water through the desert-like terrain. we made sail boats for that pond, and our skills grew so that each generation of model sail boats boasted new features and new designs. We made rafts and explored the waterhole which mysteriously had cement pillars and walls sticking up out of the water as though this might have been the foundations of a building that never was... someone's failed dream on an empty, desolate prairie...

going to the end of our street was like going to the edge of the world. open adventure awaited us. grass that grew as high as six feet could be shaped into rooms by trampling the grass flat...we stomped hallways and rooms...palaces amidst the tall grass...with magnificent skies for ceilings...

and we had time... time to think, time to grow, time to discover, time to notice all the details without the clutter of so much modern media. our media were our ideas, the prairie, the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars, and all the creatures of the prairie. no electricity, no computers. only the wind across the prairie which we rode with our imaginations to the kingdoms of the mind...