Seldom Seen

Patrick Dobson
University of Nebraska Press
279 pages
$29.95

Patrick Dobson was a 31 year old single man, working in a local hotel’s engineering department doing a variety of jobs. He had a three year old daughter, and he felt trapped by his life. He has a feeling that there has to be more to life than working forty hours a week and coming home to an empty apartment to watch TV, then seeing his daughter on weekends. When he dreams, he dreams of the prairies of Kansas and Oklahoma; whereas as a child, his family spent time camping on weekends. He remembers long, never-ending vistas with waves of grass and cool crisp mornings that were heavy with dew, and somehow the idea of the prairie, the feelings of contentment that he felt when he was there, become the catalyst for him to try a different life. He takes a year to get ready. He knows that he must support his daughter, so he saves for a year, pays his bills, saves to care for Sydney, and he plans.

What he decides is that he’s never experienced the prairies, except as an ideal as he’s driven through them, so he decides to go on a walking trip. He decides that he’ll walk from his home in Kansas City, MO to Helena, MT. Helena being the “…the biggest town farthest across the Great Plains from Kansas City (5).” He states, “Taking off across the plains struck me as the right and proper thing to do. I would inundate myself in sky and land. Kansas, Nebraska, and Wyoming, I thought, would show me a way to find a new life (5).”

Seldom Seen is a book with two themes. The first theme is Dobson’s personal theme of quest; he’s determined to find himself, to find a better way to be, to live. The second theme of the book is the people that Dobson meets on the Great Plains. This book is a very personal revelation of this time in Dobson’s life. He does not sugar coat his emotions, his reasons, his intentions, and his realities of his day-to-day experiences. His first real emotion is fear. The fear is multifaceted. The first fear is can he do this? Can he walk across this great expanse of land safely, and can he accomplish this physically? His first decision is to walk, not hitchhike. If he’s offered a ride, he can choose to accept it, but only for as long a distance as he could walk in one day. His decision is based on his realization that “in all my travels, I had only ever seen the Great Plains from a car. . . I never knew what it was to be in the landscape, a part of it. What I knew of people and towns of the plains, I had gathered from rest stops and gas stations. I wanted to move slower, to feel the distance and lose myself in it” (5). He chooses to travel across the Great Plains on foot, with a back pack to carry his necessities. This is before reliable cell phones, so the only way that he will be able to contact his daughter or family is by pay phones, or phones that he uses in a hotel where he may stay. He acknowledges that it would probably be better if he would train for his trip, but he doesn’t, and he later calls that the worst decision that he could have made.

The other fear that attacks him is the unknown people who he will meet and the fear of being alone. The one fear, the one of the unknown people, he realizes from the beginning. When he tells his friends of his impending journey, more than one suggests that he take a gun for protection. Dobson states, “…I want to meet people, not shoot them” (7). Dobson states that this was the most frequent question that people asked him, even before they asked him why he was going. He states, “Abstract criminal hordes, lone stranglers, and sex fiends came to my friends’ minds before wild nature, wild weather, or wildlife” (7). Dobson again acknowledges that he had many fears, many of them deep-seated, but he was determined to go, determined to put one foot in front of the other, determined to cross the Great Plains and hopefully reach the goal or ideal that he was searching for.

The fear of being alone almost crippled him the first day that he left Kansas City, in fact he ends up returning home, enmeshed in “what if” fears. What if someone attacked him? What if the rigor of the journey  was too much? What if his daughter needed him? What if he got lost? What if someone stole his pack? This fear drives him back to his home in the first night. The next morning, he begins again. He enlists the help of a family member to drive him out of town, where he can begin his journey with a pep talk, and open sky vistas.

Each chapter moves Dobson along geographically towards his goal of Helena, MT. He meets lots of people, some people that are memorable, some that are a little off kilter, some that are a little scary, but there’s no one who threatens him enough to need a gun Each step along his journey also loosens Dobson up enough to confront his inner demons and help him to sift out what it is that he is looking for. There is a lot of personal philosophy within the retelling. His daughter Sydney features prominently. She is always on his mind, and he frequently wonders if she is missing him, or if she even realizes that he’s not there. He worries about having left her and if that defines him as a bad parent. He calls her every chance that he gets, but Sydney is three at the time of his journey, and he realizes that a phone call to a three year old is not the same as being there. Does the cost of not being there now outweigh the long-term benefits of what he is trying to accomplish?

The answers that Dobson comes to are neither crystal clear, black and white, nor do they arrive with bright shining illumination. The answers are more a gradual realization of what is right for Dobson. Dobson comes to understand, that by making the journey and asking the questions, he is already parenting Sydney better than he was parented, and it keeps him moving forward on his journey.

I think that’s what I like best about Seldom Seen; it is not a proselytizing epic for leaving his family, quitting his job, and going out into the wilderness to find himself. Rather it is a very personal, thought provoking retelling of his journey. It does a lovely retelling of some rather diverse characters, but he does it without judgment. These are people that we encounter every day. Some are happy. Some are sad. Some are welcoming. Some are not. Some are judgmental. Some are bible thumpers. Some are alcoholics. Some work hard every day. Some are black. Some are white. Some are Indian. Some are female. Some are male. Every person that he met, every mile that he walked, taught him. The lessons that he learned were not static. They were not learned once, then never to be used again. Every day he learned that he needed to weed out the things that were important to him. He states, at the end of the book:

That the journey so far had not been a vacation from left but a passage into it. In seeking escape from restlessness and fear, I’d found mentors who faced ordinary struggles and felt their honesty unfold in possibilities. They had taught me that fear of uncertainty, risk, and failure was our lot, but these had no place in governing a life. Instead fear was best faced, walked through, and used a motivation to move forward, look deeper, and to admit what I wanted to deny. I need not feel trapped or act out on my suffering.  (278)

This is Mr. Dobson’s first published work. He is currently living in Kansas City, MO with his family, and he works in the iron industry. He continues to pursue his education. He has a Facebook site to discuss the book, which came out in September 2009. I think that he did a very good job of displaying the restless of early adulthood and attempting to establish personal priorities in life. In comparison to other nonfiction coming of age books, his portrayal of himself, his family and their responses, and the people that he met on his journey was refreshing in his honesty. He didn’t vilify himself or the people that he met. He made an honest attempt, not only to decipher his own motivations, but those of the people that he met. The story was easy to read and to follow, and the places he travelled to, particularly the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, were a beautiful backdrop to his journey.

Jan Hansen

This is the second podcast Straylight has put out. This interview, with local poet Nick Demske, runs for about forty minutes. Nick Demske discusses his work as a poet and the writing process, the importance of community, an award he recently won, and  projects he has been busying himself with.

To Listen to the Nick Demske Podcast, click the link.

Nick mentions Bonk, a monthly performance series that he hosts in downtown Racine.

Check out Nick’s journal, Boo, which is a bi-yearly publication of offensively great contents.

The Journal Times article about Nick, the 2010 Fence Modern Poet Series Winner.

Fence is a biannual journal of poetry, fiction, art, and criticism.

Nick’s first book will be published by Fence Books, an extension of Fence.

Nick mentions Johannes Göransson’s blog in the discussion of community.

Action Yes, online quarterly.

See what Nick has been doing at NickiPoo, Nick’s online blog.

Nick also did a spoken word of one of his poems for us: The First Stage of Rubble

THE FIRST STAGE OF RUBBLE

Coach class.  The only way to go is up

Until you’re there

And tonight, from God’s basement, sunless Denver, city of wide

Lanes, sparkles like

The computer chip in my brain.  Up here a gaggle of little unintelligent designs

Huddle in the shaft of one hulking one.

After the first heave, stewardi poke in each

Row: “TV?  TV

Anyone?”  Idiot boxes surgically crammed into the soft

Spot of every head rest’s

Skull, including mine.  They’re on by default, requiring

Effort to be offed.  For Your

Convenience.

“For a nominal fee of five

dollars…”

Direct TV.  “For a nominal fee of eight

Dollars…”  My neighbors

Swipe their credit cards before the voice

Can finish—skillfully

Lengthwise like varicose

Suicide.  Life

Is practice for the afterlife, which is to say

Hell. This is your captain

Speaking.  We might be experiencing a little patch

Of turbulence, but I’m not worried.

In case of emergency, my seat cushion doubles as flotation

Device, what does

Yours do?        O Denver, goodbye, you glitter like

Troy, I enjoyed

The layover like an extra marital affair.  Nice

To make your acquaintance

And see your face upon leaving.  They’re

Serving drinks now, I’ve

Got to go.  The pilot claims we’re finished

With our ascent,

But only his idiot box is listening.

by Randall Brown

He meets me at the gate. He wants to know if I am the writer, and I tell him yes, that would be I. He wants to know what I expect, and I say what the ad said, good pay, a place to live. He shakes my hand. As we walk, he whittles his nails with a penknife. He’s become ungainly and sad and can no longer land the roles he once had.

My son used to tell me this joke, about a mouse who snuck into a house, drank all the wine, ate all the baked beans, listened to Elvis until the people came home. They’re angry, the people, about the wine, the baked beans, the messed-up Elvis records. Who did this? The mouse stumbles out of his hole, hiccups, farts, mumbles, “I’m all shook up.”

I will live in his house, drink his Chianti, and inhabit his life, this man who hadn’t fallen asleep under the umbrella while his son circled the bottom of the spa, in that endless way that kids drown and tell jokes and laugh at things long after they are funny.

Randall Brown teaches at and directs Rosemont College’s MFA in Creative Writing and Graduate English programs. He’s been published widely and blogs at FlashFiction.Net and blogspot.

by Philip Alphonse Haebig

The black strands of his hair flowed a stride ahead of his heavy, sleepy, gait.  In cadaverous steps, his thinning soles never left the pavement. The wind-tunnel dragged him forward by the scalp as drapes of water swayed down from the sky. Pedestrians swerved around him, beneath the canopies of their umbrellas, carried by the wind pushing their convex sails. Some quickened their pace, feeling aversion from someone who appeared to be so aimless.

His body elongated in the widening distance between his head and feet: his hair blew forward as his legs lagged in reluctance. He was too weak to lift his head. He meandered past his reflection in puddles. Aware that the image he saw in them was an illusion, he further contemplated the real object before him that shaped his relation to his own reflection. Thinking of the puddle’s ephemeral stain on the pavement, a smirk condensed on his face.

He walked past his destination and turned a corner into a fierce opposing wind. The muscles in his neck strengthened as he forced his head down, staying within the void of a constant state of travel.

To listen to a reading of “Wandering Utopia,” Click Here.

Phillip is majoring in English and Journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  He writes because language is a vehicle that enables us to understand each other and our own existence.

by Phil Lane

Hellborn, and like a Sioux,
every sunrise is a vice
to contend with,
a white man’s worst
enemies—alcohol,
tobacco, tents where no thieves
can break in, coyote runs
wild again, a child
grown so old, so
loveless, so thin,
on this postmodern frontier,
there is only one desk,
one chair. I escape and
trace a Marsh Hawk
above the water gap
where she turns a circle
and laughs
because a motel room
is a poor excuse for nature,
Budweiser, a poorer excuse
for whiskey, the tongue
does not burn, the heart
doesn’t jump,
it’s one thing to be lost
in the wild, but to be lost
at Exit 45 is neither heroic
nor romantic. Either way,
I am alone with my own blood,
carry my own history like a skull,
every past is symmetrical, intact,
ready for exposition,
even explication, if only
I had a brown-skinned woman
rather than a white-washed
imagination. Instead,
I fantasize where
a thousand others have before,
a cumcloud hung in the air
over the interstate.
When it all come down
to bones, to dust,
I hate to admit
that this is not Pocahontas,
and this is not Potomac,
this is the middle of nowhere
and it is now—

To listen to a spoken word version of this poem, click on the link below.

Hellborn

Phil Lane’s poems have been published in various small magazines over the past five years.  He lives in Northern New Jersey with his dog and teaches English for a tutoring company.