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According to the poet, then, we are all behind bars —locked inside the jail of mortality. No matter how bitter his past, the prisoner must find a way to leave the personal desert for the world of common humanity. But how can one enter that world when there are no doors? How can one "praise" what one cannot understand?
"Surely I must be exaggerating," Rip thinks. "Why try to understand it all in one gulp? Why try to overtake history? Start slowly, read the leading fiction bestseller. Escape for a while." He picks up Jonathan Livingston Seagull. The story of a what? Of a goddam bird? His eye roves to the self-help books. Here's one: Primal Scream. He tries it...
The air is cool in the police car, and the cops, although jittery, relax when they see that their passenger is unarmed. They have their own stories to tell, of new ambush attacks, and of strong desires for shotguns to repel something they call the Black Liberation Army. But after they listen to their passenger's story, there is a quiet in the car, and there is no further attempt to educate the new Rip Van Winkle. There is no attempt to go to the station. Rip is, suddenly, a free man all over again, and stuttering, he tries to find praise. Praise for his country, for an America that, despite all the staggering changes, somehow is still America. There is, finally, only one way. "Where to?" asks the driver. Rip looks out the window for a long, lonely moment trying to remember something. "Home," he says. -Stefan Kanfer