The Impossible Dream (Part I)

Where were you when your dream died?  

All dreams must come to an end.  That's why they're called dreams; at some point you simply wake up to reality.  Thus, I sincerely ask again, when did your dream go from straddling between conscious will and subconscious wish... to the stark, wide-eyed, ever-present sobriety that it was never to be - just an elusive and quickly fading memory?  It dawned on me today when I was walking home...

I've written this particular chapter several times since being back home but I could never bring myself to publish.  I'd find it too hopeless to share even in my most hapless days.  Then during bouts of great promise, the thought of including an account of the abyss seemed unnecessary, if not just a silly nightmare best kept to myself as not to spoil good times.  

Forgive the current lack of eloquence that this tale had once been celebrated for but I'm feverishly writing this time and pressed to casting it off, once and for all, as quickly as possible in order to stay the tides of overwhelming grief and ultimately make peace with an uncertain future.

It's a curious thing to idolize a notoriously insane man of fiction.  I sewed the seeds of my own tragedy when first introduced to Don Quixote in high school, but no one had the heart to warn me of such damnable aspirations.  Perhaps they did and I simply took too quickly to the delusions of grandeur as something the world will, one day, find endearing.  After all, we're still reading about Cervantes' charming mad man over four hundred years later.  It sounded just like my kind of ticket to immortality that didn't involve the the oft-trodden progeny or namesake hall that tend to require a hefty institutional donation.  That, and there was something significant about uncovering the origin of my surname, Dorrell to mean "of Airel" which was a region in La Manche - albeit in France and not the arid plains of Spain from which the knight-errant hailed.  It seemed fateful that I'd make a name for myself as a modern day "knight of woeful countenance".  Oh, and how woeful it has been.

At first, when I was flown home with my mangled leg - tail tucked not far behind, I became acquainted with depression and lost all sense of duty or care, apathetically letting go of everything from my significant other, to financial responsibilities, to even Chance himself. One day, my dear friends in Minnesota looking after the motorcycle this journal was named after asked me to mail my spare keys as they supposedly lost the originals I left for safekeeping.  I was mailed back his license plate shortly thereafter.  The steed I more or less abandoned became someone else's wedding gift...  You can't break an already broken heart but some part of me clung to a notion of saving up, finding him and buying him back outright.  Yet over time there was no chance of being by Chance anymore, but rather goodbye, Chance forever.

My mother's home was foreclosed and father's cancer showed no sign of improvement.  Eventually jobs that I'd humor for the devil I knew with cooperate stability would see me bowed out for some fluttering glimmer of a past self with noble principles that likely fell on deaf ears. Gigs in the arts, history and wild lands initially pursued in honor of what I discovered were core to me from the road were often frustratingly dropped due to my lack of wheels. I made an effort to sell my blood for a time to cover cello lessons, but the varying levels of stress eventually disqualified me and the not-so-high-strung instrument hasn't seen a new melody for quite a while.  There was that fateful night I dashed away from my father, brother and his girlfriend at an impound after wrecking her car just feet from home while bringing Pa back from the hospital.  I sprinted towards a busy street impulsively to cease the hidden turmoil only to fall to my knees unleashing a pent up howl I had never known I was capable of.  I almost lost a new partner after abstaining from therapy for my newly-diagnosed guilt-complex out of paranoia and subsequently descended into an existential crisis.  Then, of course, the infuriating drama behind my choice in successor to my heart.  My deteriorating right hand had been on the losing end of one too many one-sided battles with inanimate objects, none of which have been with more-forgiving windmills. For better or worse, I could never strike a person for treading carelessly on my dreams.  Oh, so many destroyed phones to boot: a symbol, I suppose, of my love-hate relationship with company and solitude.  My inner circle of friends had their own meltdowns and have-since distanced themselves.  Parting with my four-legged, unconditional love, Zissou... I'll never get over him.  

I've been to prison, though only to assist in the disposal of old law books in their library as one of the many "chain gang" duties I tolerated to settle a hefty fine over the previous accident in addition to a long-sitting SAAB-story, Serendipity.  My far-from-new motorcycle has spent most of its life dismantled, awaiting week after to week, month after month for parts, wisdom and skill that don't come readily to one so poorly-resourced.  I've walked what seems like every street of this so-called City of Destiny with the resolve that "tonight will be the last night I walk home."  Every night was the same declaration until last week when all of my efforts, patience and budding hope finally kicked into gear for the first time in years.  

Meet Haphazard: my second Chance and the promise of a second sally.  I couldn't wait to reveal him to the world.  I wanted you to meet him from day one but not without a complete and proper narrative - not to mention his own, brand new journal.  However, never did I imagine my old boy's introduction to the saga would be in this old tale's epilogue as a eulogy.