generations

My older brother was born in the early 80’s like the guy who invented Facebook. The tail end of the grunge era, we’ll call this Generation Y.

I was born in the later part of the mid eighties. My generation gave Facebook our stamp of approval – we dictated how to use the internet; we are responsible for the evolution of cellular phones. So we’re Generation Z.

My little brother was born in 1990. He probably doesn’t even remember a time without the internet or cell phones. His generation invented texting while driving and cyber bullying and all-caps abbreviations of the English language.

At a loss for letters, how about we call him Generation Question Mark.

the modern feminist

Young girls are socio-culturally predestined to rebel. So oppressed and protected and restricted -- by the time we blossom as young women and learn the infinite power of femininity, we cannot wait to exercise it, to abuse it even. Once out from under the thumb of naivety, we are hungry for liberation.

And we all rebel, every last one of us. We like the feeling of our breasts as currency. It's no big deal to us at all -- our breasts are perhaps our freedom, and we've been waiting to be free for much longer than we've been aware of independence's existence.

Yet perhaps this too is part of society's plot to turn us into the ideal counterpart for male, according to his preferences and alleged convenience. We are led to believe that our breasts, uninhibited from the naked eye, are the key to our salvation from the global tradition of misogyny; but thinking back, now on the other side of the teenage trenches, I suppose we did not expose them because we were intoxicated and frivolous, we did it because we thought we could control him. We were not free at all, but grasping at straws of power to no avail. It was all a false inkling -- we were playing right in to society's clutches all along, figuratively lying on our backs without even knowing it. Perhaps we will always be prisoners of man's desire, so innately tickled by the audacity of his roving eye. Maybe we were indeed made secondary and for that very purpose.

The sociocultural weaponry is revealed in the fact that I even have to wonder.

"Slapstick or Lonesome No More!"

Steady now
under the weight of decay
Don't let the debris keep you down!
Come back to the light,
the spring where the sun stays
lingering in the foyer, tentative
then smoothly sliding coat from shoulders
headed back to the bar.
Remember your voice on high
appreciate the volume, the mass, the frequency
Let it break glass
Leave a trail of shards.

Chin up,
a silent moment to mourn wasted time
is still wasted time -
Perfection knows not to be born
on its own.

"target practice"

Return to life now -
open your eyes, grip your pen;
document your fear.

Summer of Interlochen

We were confined to four invisible walls: nature, creativity, nurturance of ability, and mandatory knee socks. These walls were called Interlochen, Center for the Arts, and within resided a cornucopia of culture, passion, and imagination. We came from all over the world: from Namibia to Iceland, California, Australia... yet despite the differences - as a cabin-mate from Poland turns to me, eyebrow raised, and inquires: "What means pee-pee?" - we shared a common goal. We all possessed a certain drive toward cultivating talent, whether we worked with our hands, our bodies, or our minds. Despite four walls confining us, we gamboled from hall to hall, through the forest, by the lakes, searching for a sense of self, for meaning in our art, for perfection in our work. We had dreams. Big dreams. In a place where everyone was so different, where there existed abound individualism, we were uninhibited. We all possessed that same passion.

Music wafts through the air from morning until night, as if an opus has replaced the singing of the birds. On my way to class, my shoulder bag beats out time against my hip. There are watercolor paints in the grass, and at lunchtime, the musical theatre majors burst into an impromptu performance of Orphan Annie’s "Hard Knock Life." I lie supine in the grass, laptop propped on my stomach. A Macedonian cellist croons in a language that I do not understand. I stare directly into the sun and listen. I am inspired.

the warrior and the snake

There was a serpent that hissed and danced as the warrior struck him to the earth. Thumbs poised upon his weapon, his feet were parted and planted on the ground as he watched the asp trickle to the grass in fragments that were like droplets of dawn. He smirked as the sensation of victory and relief flooded over him, inhaling the stench of death suspended in the air.

The strands of gold fell cater-corner into the crabgrass blooming at the edge of the lot where litter decayed to dirt. The warrior did not qualm about the murder he was so carelessly committing; he did not think about those who may have watched him in the midst of battle -- he maintained his focus, watching this beast crumble with the majesty of all other myths that had transpired epochs ago.  In his awe, the warrior cocked his head to a slight angle as if to cogitate the meaning of his life and other such questions that asked more of him than knew he had to muster.

Then, in a display of sunset perhaps, the serpent released a final whisper of defeat and was gone, leaving behind only the stench of his demise. The warrior bucked his hips with finality, hands trembling over his weapon as he replaced it behind the button and zipper along the front of his jeans. He looked to her where she sat watching all of this occur, her legs sprawled in a drug-crash around her and her eyes gaping at where his sword of flesh once hung from his grip.

"Wanted to see the show?" he asked, perking just one eyebrow as his zipper whined into place. He smirked then turned and walked away, leaving her there to question the phenomenon she had just witnessed.

alter ego

I searched for the diction, the exact words to convey the dynamic in my head:

I turned to him and said:  "There's another person who lives inside of me.  Those words -- those words I used to think were from God -- are hers, not mine.  She's the one who writes..."

My brow involuntarily chased the other one for comfort in the face of this conundrum.

"... And I think that she's the one who cries too."

Rumination

Stream of consci'sness --
tuck'd back in Pandora's Box
Ink bleeds catharsis.

life advice to my junior cousin begets a quarter life crisis

I am NOT getting old Missy -- your early to mid-20's are where it's at.

you finally shed the highschool bullshit that inevitably follows you halfway through college... and you start hitting those milestones like buying alcohol legally, choosing a spouse, starting to make real money, and tossing around baby names to entertain yourself in traffic. 

Then again, I'm 23 - i just finished college and am taking a year off to "find myself"... old will be when I look back on this year of my life and shake my head at my naively idealistic and overly capricious attempts to change the world. Either that, or old will be when I have changed the world and am laughing about my yuppie years all the way to the bank. 

Is my present youth exemplified by the fact that I still believe in the "OR" part of the scenario? Or by the palpable truth that I wax existentially philosophical about everything?

walk like you mean it

walk like you mean it.
legs first, use your core to bring the rest along,
your arms the counterbalance hinged upon
two level and regally pinned back shoulders.
slink.
you are a lioness on the prowl.
commandeer the operation.
feel your spine arch like a bow
prepared to shoot the arrow that is your chin
aimed toward the sun.
pull your abdominal muscles so taut
they vibrate in the ecstasy of purposeful motion
like the strings of a viola.
roll your hips in their sockets with each stride,
your thighs burning in anticipation
of getting somewhere.
Go.
your knees are well-oiled,
self assuredly thrusting forth.
let your ankles leverage
the power-stroke of your step,
each toe lifting off the ground in turn.
Feel your breath catch in your throat
because you are walking too fast.
too fast is for the passionate.
You are passionate.
You do not walk,
you chase.