The American Dream: By Jimmy Petrol

Ask anybody what they would do if they won the lottery.

Chances are the answers you get will be variations on the same theme: not much, as little as possible and nothing.

The American dream has morphed from freedom to do whatever one wants to getting to do nothing. The people who "have" to do the least are considered the most successful.

There was a time when it meant that you could follow your dreams, make your own way and have an interesting and inventive life. People dreamed of airplanes, rockets, presidencies, light bulbs and all sorts of improbable things and then they tried to make them, live them.

The problem with dreams that is tough to get around is that they sound like dreams. It is easy for other people to make dreams sound silly, unrealistic, too little, too big, impossible and so on, simply because dreams are what they are. They are things that don't exist in the real world. Often, they sound absurd.

Dreams are often not big enough. Taught, as the Western child is, to honor only the most grand schemes, little dreams of commoners (like JP and maybe you) are easily sneered at. Of course, the sneering usually aspire to the Great Nothing. They want to Travel, See Shows, etc....generally things that are simply entertaining, but not accomplishing. These are the Dead. They died long ago and want everything else dead, so they sneer at little ideas, and laugh at grand ones as well. After all, who do you think you are, to do something grand?

So we retreat, join the ranks of the Living Dead, and long for the day when we can do nothing much. We become what the British call Wankers.

Crude, these Brits, but telling.

So what?

Well....here is a little thing I want to share.....I have lots of dreams. Most.... I will probably run out of time before I get to them. Some will be started but not come to fruition. All are fun, or hard, or impossible.

I thought that there had to be a litmus test, that a dream had to be "worthy" before I could allow myself to spend time on it. I also thought that I had to be reasonably sure of being able to do "it" well.

Now I am sure it is exactly otherwise. It is not the thing itself, but the journey, and once started, we will go where we go and end up wherever we end up...the "thing" we try is just an avenue, a catalyst. It is the bridge to what we can never guess without the going.

I want to say that I am doing a lot of things that I want to do.....this is just one that I cannot justify; it isn't properly constructive, safe or worhwhile. In fact, it may be another kind of "wankerism". I can't tell. All I know is I really, really want to do it.

So, I am going to do something that appears frivolous. Something that appears silly, dangerous and pointless. Just because I want to.

Here it is.

The chicken coop was moved to make way for my own little boatyard.

The usual boat didn't make the cut; I am ordering materials to build a little "torpedo" with a flexible steel sail the size of a small umbrella. The seas it is going to sail in are the seas that sink boats. It is a storm sailer.

I thought I was designing a lifeboat. Really. But then, I forget who I am.

So begins a long, silly project, one that will be popular with young men and women who need to do things like climb mountains and jump out of airplanes. Extreme wankers, perhaps...perhaps not.

It will take at least a year. It may be a waste of time and money. Then again, it is a dream....just one of those shapeless, formless, meaningless things that populate the minds of the living.

Imagine; fifty foot waves, sixty knot winds, dark green seas boiling all around you, flying off the tops of waves in a little torpedo on your way to nowhere. Just alive, in a place that under most other circumstances is deadly. Why? I don't know, really....and I don't care. I'll keep you posted.

What are you doing this summer?