Friday, May 22, 2009

Everything We Touch Turns to Discourse

So this piece lives on the walls of the apartment where I spent my last week in DC. It's a spontaneous stream-of-consciousness piece that I scrawled across the walls in what, so far, have been the happiest, most simple moments of my life.

I was a bit hesitant about taking it out of its original context because I was scared it would lose its meaning and its feeling, but lately I've been having a really difficult and terribly frustrating time conveying my college experience and my new-found identities and ideas to everyone around these parts, and I thought this might dip into the surface.

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So am I a beatnik or am I a sellout? Am I guilty of fraudulence? Does my fuck-what-you-want-ain't-got-nothin'-forget-my-possessions non-materialism truly mean anything if I've got a $200,000 education keeping me here just not to care? Can I really be free of my possessions and obsessions if mom and dad are still backing up that iPod and that computer and when the year's over, I go back to my house in the New York suburbs to drive my car (MY car) around suburban streets to the sounds of my motor and the empty satisfaction of the American dream?

What am I?

I am my own god.
In the beginning there was God, and Zie loved us so much and so well that Zie gave us the greatest gift of all: to, in turn, create Hir as we wished. And so I have made God into myself, for that is all I will ever control. And I am my experience, and I am yours, and everyone I've ever known. I am love in and of itself. I am human relation because if I can know that someone's life has been changed because of me, then I do not regret because I have lived.

What if you died tomorrow?
Would you be sorry or scared because knew not how to live?
I think that I would not. I may not wake up tomorrow or never again write or create or have my soul leak dark blue on to a page. I may never fall in love again or know everything or meet a beautiful girl be a beautiful girl or see the children of my friends. But today I sat on the floor of our apartment (OUR apartment) slicing a stolen apple with a clear plastic knife and felt complete among the beers and the boxes and the feeling that we were living it like we wanted. My best friend knocking back his second beer at 2 pm, and I felt infinitely happy.

We are everything.

We ourselves are individual microcosms, universes, worlds within ourselves. Eyes reflecting starlight are stars in themselves, bright thought glazed, leading our ways and revealing ancient secrets through mere glances. Passion is a tempest, violent in its beauty, tumultuous and turning, leaving ships in its wake, its sailors not destroyed, rather, changed.

We are the colliding of bodies.
We are the collapsing of bodies.

We are pressed hips and chapped lips and trembling fingers, shedding their regrets and hesitations and releasing all that words do not, cannot, say.

We are verbal intercourse producing birth, creation.

Revolution?

Revolution.
Don’t you go thinking that what we’re doing here isn’t revolution, because revolution is born every single day. It happens every time you change someone’s mind. It’s deconstruction. Every time someone questions who they are or what makes them that why or why they’re unhappy, that’s revolution. If even just one kid stops getting so goddamn down on themselves because they’re not “just like everyone else” because they realize that “just like everyone else” is a farce created by a system designed to tell us that we’re wrong, then that's revolution.

Why be "just like everyone else"if all that means is assimilating into this world full of –isms? Sexism, classism, racism, heterosexism. Why should we all strive to be white, rich, and upper class? Why is that what “equality” means, and why do we tolerate “tolerance?”

What if wealth became experience, not status? Because if that was the case, wouldn’t we already be prosperous in human connection?

We could all be wealthy in each other.

3 comments:

  1. Why be "just like everyone else"if all that means is assimilating into this world full of –isms? Sexism, classism, racism, heterosexism. Why should we all strive to be white, rich, and upper class? Why is that what “equality” means, and why do we tolerate “tolerance?”

    What if wealth became experience, not status? Because if that was the case, wouldn’t we already be prosperous in human connection?

    We could all be wealthy in each other.




    i had this exact argument with my mom the other night.

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  2. Hahaha, how'd that go?

    I don't think my parents are ready for this one yet. We still need to have the "So-I'm-noticing-that-my-grades-are-tanking-but-only-in-business-related-courses-so-maybe-I-should-drop-out-of-Kogod" discussing with them.

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  3. Ktrain, I think I get what you're trying to say here, 'cause it's how I've been feeling this year too (my first year of cegep (well, college for everyone who doesn't live where I do)). I, too have a hard time describing it, I've also probably tried to do it a couple of times in my blog. It's hard to put your finger on it, it's something better felt than described I guess. Anyways, I don't need to tell you to live it up, haha. And we're seeing each other this summer fo' realz.

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