I Liked It

A long time ago, when I was a kid (because I’m like forty years old), my best friend and I would walk barefoot through alleyways after a rain. We squashed the mud through our toes and didn’t worry about broken glass or sharp rocks cutting our feet. We were pretty much savages. We called the alleyways the wasteland, and made up comic book plots as we covered ground. Lightening struck a telephone pole once. I was no more than forty feet from it. This is a true story.

Wordsworth’s Prelude reminds me of these memories. Brace yourself for the startling revelation that I actually really liked the poem, A LOT. At times it reminded me of Kerouac, with its kind of schmaltzy romancing of youth, the kind of stuff I really liked a few years back. And like most things that remind me of Kerouac, I was also reminded of Thomas Wolfe, especially You Can’t Go Home Again.

On a philosophical note, I really like how Wordsworth presented the reciprocity between the environment and morality. We see this most in the development of Wordsworth’s sense of humanity in natural settings—I know I feel like some part of my morality was undoubtedly forged walking through those alleyways as a kid. In fact, my friend and I have a tacit understanding of West Texas as a place unequivocally tied to our sense of moral integrity.  

Red Dirt. Oil Fields. And Gas Stations 4 life.