See you later, I’m moving to Nebraska. Canada has been good to me, but it’s time for bigger and better things.

I say “see you later” (though I really mean “see you never again”) because this is the final entry I will write on Scrimisms. I’m moving to Nebraska illegally, and now that I’ve admitted that here on the public record I need to change my identity. I’ve always liked the name Rufus. Or maybe Adelaide. Can you see me as an Adelaide? You won’t see me as an Adelaide though, for once I become he, I’ll be gone from my old life and from you. So long and thanks for all the biscuits.

I’m going to drive out to the prairies in a rented car, perhaps a large black ford SUV, and then abandon it with the keys inside in a bad neighbourhood of Winnepeg, I will walk across an undefended stretch of the American border, an illegal immigrant. We got William Gibson in much the same way, it’s time for Canada to give something back.

I shall enter America on foot, just as the founding fathers did, and then hitch-hike to my ultimate destination. Maybe I will meet a stray dog and share my lunch with him and we will become friends. I will name him Washington and we’ll travel the dusty American highways together. If I’m really lucky we will find a freight train and jump on board, two hobos.

I confess that I don’t really know where Nebraska is. I can’t find it on a blank map. It is the very unknown quality of Nebraska that draws me there. It is a blank place in my head, a void, an emptiness. The Nebraska border is, to me, an undiscovered frontier, beyond which anything is possible. Novelty lurks in the lakes and deserts of Nebraska. Nebraska is the source of all new things, and I must go to that source.

I wonder if Nebraska has a baseball team…

Feed on comments to this Post