Old Sentences: From Braid’s “East End Hollows”

What dreams do you have? Are they electric, coursing your mind and body until you achieve them? Or are they alive, pulsing gently in the background to the beat of your heart?

The longest dream I can remember calling my own is to live in the mountains and write novels and have lots of dogs. Though, to be fair, that's just a dream that's cribbed from the lives of many other writers. Not visionary, by any means, but it's still one I like to call my own.

But it's the kind of dream that I think I'll be disappointed if I don't achieve exactly by some point in my life. It's more like a sketch of a lifestyle that I hope my future adheres to in a rough way. The elements of the image I hold in my mind's eye when I think about this dream are physical manifestations (or at the least signs of physical manifestations for all the semiotics nerds out there) of elements of a lifestyle I want to be leading. The freedom of working independently, a piece of land and a home to call my own, a way to adopt and foster a lot of dogs.

It's definitely the kind of dream that's a little more aspirational north star than it is mission-critical to my happiness. It's always there, and I can always look to it when I'm thinking about big decisions in my life. I can always ask myself, does this take me closer to or further away from that platonic ideal of a lifestyle?

Dreams are a funny thing. When we're kids, we dream of all sorts of things. But in adulthood, when was the last time you were encouraged to dream about something?

I'd bet that house on the mountain and all those dogs along with it that as adults, we're discouraged from dreaming more than we're encouraged...

"Yeah you take those dreams and throw them out the window."

…and I’m guessing that was on the writer’s mind when they penned those lyrics.