SAM SHEPARD from “Dust”

He thought if he wandered long enough, he’d get good and lost. He’d get so hopelessly lost that he’d be forced into some part of himself that he’d never known before. Some part he’d be forced to meet up with. The proposition thrilled and terrified him. It was the mind that wouldn’t cooperate. He couldn’t control the picturings. There was no rhyme or reason to their appearance. He watched them pop up in his head as though he were sitting in a Wednesday matinee from long ago, with no one else in the theater.

He saw John Wayne wearing a buffalo coat. President Bush in a baseball cap, with a tie on. Bombs falling on Baghdad. Bombs seen from high above as though he were looking straight down through the hatch. The fat, self-satisfied face of General Schwarzkopf. A boy swinging a sledgehammer at the Berlin Wall and not making a dent. Pictures of news. Pictures of faces making news. Pictures of crows and hawks. A dead rabbit’s head.

Then Madilia. Her eyes. Her violent, magnificent eyes.