The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland 66: Rhyolite, Nevada and a Life-Transforming Question

Cook Bank Building, Rhyolite, Nevada, Steve Brown 2026 

9:06 a.m.

I sit on a bench across from the old Cook Bank Building in Rhyolite, Nevada.  Once a grand monument to the sums of money that could be made in a Nevada boomtown, it's now a Parthenon to the past and a stark concrete reminder of the temporal nature of civilization.  There is a set of steps that now goes nowhere, and the once luxurious interior is completely hollowed out by only 118 years of existence, way less than the span of two lifetimes.    Once something no longer receives care, it quickly crumbles.  A wooden structure that is loved and maintained, like Kondo at Hōryū-ji in Japan, can last over 1,300 years, while a concrete building abandoned can crumble in shockingly little time.  Once there is no lifeforce within or without attending to something, it quickly returns to the dust from which it comes.  Even more important than how durable something is intrinsically is how durable is the love that maintains it.  Recognizing this should completely change our lives.  I just realized that now, writing this.  I will do my best to make this new personal knowledge have the impact that it should.  Everything we do should be prefaced with this question:  Am I giving this person, this animal, this plant, this project, this task the attention and love that fosters the will to grow and flourish, or am I giving it the neglect that fosters the desire to return to the dust from which it came?  Although I just realized that myself, I'm positive just asking that one question before every act would completely change life as we know it.  

It even works with something you want to die, like hate or fear or anxiety.  Starve it of attention and it will disintegrate.  Feed it your obsession and it will flourish.  

To get the world we want, we must feed those things we want to flourish and starve those things we wish to vanish.  Attention and neglect are the center of all things.  If things fall apart and the center will not hold, as William Butler Yeats wrote, it is not the nature of things, but rather the nature of our love.  You might say you can't love someone enough to make them immortal.  That may or may not be true.  Christ might have done exactly that.  But without a doubt, you can love someone enough to make them want to live through at least this one day, and you can love them again that same way tomorrow.  And you can do the same with your dog, your cat, your goldfish, your fern, your dreams, and most important of all, yourself.  

Am I giving this the attention and love that fosters growth or the neglect that fosters death?

I did not have this realization sitting on a bench across from the old Cook Bank Building in Rhyolite, Nevada at 9:06 a.m.  I had it now, writing in this moment.  But that wouldn't have happened if I didn't sit on that bench in Rhyolite and fully absorb that moment in time.  And it wouldn't have happened if I didn't sit in this moment now and revisit that moment then as if it were the present.  If I didn't give these nows the attention they deserve, that thought would not have come to me at this moment and perhaps not ever.  And if I do not give this singular sentence the daily attention it deserves--Am I giving this the attention and love that fosters growth or the neglect that fosters death?--it will have very little impact on my life.  But if I do, it cannot be anything other than transformative.  

Now gives us that if we let the moment work for us.