Toward a New Dawn

An Epic Road Trip and Fantastical Semi-Memoir

Living life is nothing that any moron or better

couldn't accomplish, even without setting one's mind to it. The trick

is to do something with that life. Or live several at once, so that

one could at least be a success in one of them. 

Herbert, having endured his mid-life crisis with

all the aplomb possibly available to him, now was set on making a new

life for himself. This is his book. 

Such a book has parallels with our own. That is

life for you - it sneaks up on you and drops some odd segue or link

into some other person's scene and then just nips away, as if it was

mainlining pixie dust or some super-quantum Dune drug. Blue eyes and

all. 

You see, Herbert does live more than one

life at once. Shackled to the mundane world of the Midwest warehouse

laborer, he yet lives in worlds of extreme science, wild fantasy

environments and incredibly sensuous surroundings. For Herbert reads

books, surfs the Internet and has an overactive imagination. 

But let's meet our hero... 

- - - -

Excerpt:

Driving down Interstate 40 after leaving LA

was a bit of a non-scene. Desert and highway didn't change that much

after Barstow. Modern highways are built to be safe and wide in

America. Deserts were designed by God to be hostile and unforgiving

for any who broke down out there. Highways had the occasional

road-side phone and also Patrol coming along. Deserts had cacti, dust

and not much else. 

Herbert. That's me. There's about 5 or 6

variations of that name, but only one I would answer to. Comes from

being raised in a family of 10. You had to pick an identity and stick

with it, or drown in the uncertain melange of other lives around you.

This is my life, at least as I recall it. 40+ years old and leaving

the known for the formerly known in order to make some sense of my

life. Not that I was confused. But what I had been doing didn't make

sense anymore, so I was now driving from LA, away from the

nonsensical, toward the sensible. 

Barstow itself hadn't changed much since I had

been there some 20 years ago. I had gone to Vegas to get married and

found that Barstow was an interesting rest stop. I was the only one

with a license,and so was the elected driver. We took off late after

work - two couples in one car, both seeking an instant marriage and

abbreviated honeymoon on the way back. We had essentially 48 hours to

pull the whole thing off. So, with the late start and nerves keeping

me up the night before, lack of sleep started taking its toll after

midnight. Pulled over by a trooper, who noticed the car was weaving.

So we stopped in Barstow for a couple of hours - they went in and had

some food, I slept (but first my wife-to-be and I "made out"

in the front seat, just short of having s*x - which was forbidden as

part of the Center. 

A rise in the highway brought my attention back to

the current, swerving the heavy loaded rental truck to stay between

the lines. Topping the slight rise, I saw only the black parallel

bars of highway stretching again into the darkening desert, the sun

behind me along with a tail wind, pushing me ever home and away from

Center forever. 

Center had been something which promised answers

to all my many questions about how the universe operated. They said

that you just had to follow their exact path and keep studying the

books and lectures of their founder. One day, in an ever-increasing

but gentle gradient, you would know Truth and this hope kept you

going - along with the required annual celebrations you were required

to attend where the official PR was read out by executives...