When I Was 20, I Lived in a Living Room

And I wrote about all my present events as if they were in my past. It's a strange thing to do, but at the time it made sense.

See,

I felt bulletproof for a little while.

And then I realized I was wrong, but it only made me feel bulletproven, validated.

As in,

"No, I am not bulletproof, but here -

look at all this bullet-proof.

I have the wounds to show you.

I'll lift up my shirt;

you will see

I am riddled.

come, occupy my negative space."

And so,

we acted like happiness was a score to be settled

- a dual.

Pointed earned and lost through laughs and smiles, or...something like that.

- touche.

Score tied, zero-zero.

Sometimes they call that "love."

But in actuality, there is no winning or losing. There is only luck

, and inertia.

Keeping the planets lined up (in just the right way),

Keeping the stars saying yes (or no, sometimes),

Guaranteeing - at the very least - that any part of the dust in my lungs might find its way into yours

, or vice-versa.

And now, instead:

stick

tick

click

b o o mstayawhile

s t i c k a r o u n d.

(putmymouthonyours, the rest is easy [or so they say])

i'm just saying,

if you stayed in my living room,

i'd let you keep your clothes in my garage.

the shorter story

Things are tentative, and it's been a sad year. Or at least that's what the calendar says. Where did all that time go, mapping out the future, darting around the present: shifting, worrying, letting things go. Letting days turn to days, as if days were just days and nothing more.

--

Things that scare me:

(at the moment,) myself

(and as always,) the uncertainty of the future. Not having something to do with my hands

(and at the moment,)

, or any of my limbs, now that I think about it. Not having prepared adequately for the present, at least not this present, one that, at this point, is largely a museum (shockingly undusty) anyway. Leftovers from another lifetime. Things I've lost, resurfacing in daydreams.

oh, shit.

The things lost, not even countable. Not quantifiable, cannot be communicated. A whole life.

What I want: to be someone who is comfortable having everything.

Because I know I can have it, if I want it

Instead, what I am: someone who is comfortable only having nothing.

and I have it, because i want it.

I can't be so surprised.

How can you expect to build something when you only know self-destruction?

How can you build a home when all you know how to do is leave?

And who will you allow to be there when it finally gets hard, when you're only the shadow of a persona?

But just because it's not surprising, that doesn't mean it isn't sad.

I've never really just

listened

to someone cry. I've never just received someone's feelings. I don't know if I've given them in a way that's real.

Always the same: rationality, logistics. F e e l b e t t e r s o o n feelbettersooner.

These things are easy, yeah, everyone loves easy things. But these things aren't honest.

My life's been simple before, yeah, everyone loves a simple life. But this life hasn't been honest. This life hasn't been intimate. This body has been dependable, but the person who lives in it hasn't. I don't want to feel fine, because things aren't fine. It's as simple as that. Alone now, I answer only to myself. This can go one of two ways:

1) The way it always goes

2) The way it's going to go this time

It's time, finally, to grow up. What better time than the present. What better time to do something hard than when things are already so hard. Why bother to go easy on myself, when, all this time, life's been going so easy on me, and here I've been, just along for the ride.

But this is not a ride. This is real. No longer a game of winning or losing. This is decisions. These are ramifications. What you do is consequential. WHAT YOU DO IS CONSEQUENTIAL. What you do is consequential and this life is yours and what you do is yours and who you love is yours not to own but to care for and if you don't own up to these things, then these things will disappear from you, life will continue to happen to you, you will live, or you won't, but most likely you will live, you will live even if you hate it, and you will live because if you don't, then these grains, all these grains that were once so individually small, they will sift and switch and slip through your fingers and will never slip back, they will never un-fall, because

gravity

still

exists

, and suddenly - so suddenly - there is nothing in your hands.

--

I miss the future, the infinite possibilities, and I miss believing that things are good and that i am good and that it was so simple to live int he present tense, even though things are never really simple at all,

except for re-attaching laptop keys or taking out the recycling.

And the tragedy of growing up seems to be that growing up is only a tragedy.

And the truth is that the truth is maddening.

And in the tallest, widest windows - windows so large that they are only the dark - I catch glimpses of ghosts. But, no, it's only the light off the computer casting itself onto me in a reflection.

Just me, and I didn't want to lie anymore, so I told the truth.

And the truth was maddening.
Because I forgot - or i didn't consider - that it's not about the lies we don't tell, but about the things we do or don't do so that no one has to build their reality around them.

anachronistic heart

There is a girl in the Valley who grew up from the ground. I never knew her until now, but from what I felt, I could have guessed that her hair was scented with the orange groves she grew up on. Like nights spent building fires unsupervised on front lawns. Her hands smelled like dirt in the way it’s only understood by children, and they pointed straight up at the sky. Unmarred by industry or coldness of heart, the plain stretched uninterrupted, and in every direction, it came to meet the sky. We spoke for the first time; I asked if the stars could be mine. She didn’t speak, only looked into my childhood.

She smiled and pointed up.

She hadn’t given me the sky, she had simply introduced us.
-
There were reasons I never knew the sky. Mostly because in the depths of my own concrete jungle, she and I never chanced upon each other during any of the lives I had spent sprawled across asphalt greens.

But there were signs.
When I was 7 I raced the boys across the playground lined with wrought iron, blooming from the concrete, pointing to something that appeared to be hidden behind the silhouetted buildings. But it was above our heads. Sirens spinning crimson and the steadily frantic cadence of car alarms formed the susurrations that lulled me to sleep each night. They hinted at something more. Because everything where I’m from is jaded, even the sounds know they’ll dissolve into the wind.

In Another Life We Would Have Been Artists

An activist's manifesto.

I don't usually like cross-posting, but, prompted by Vashanti I've been meaning to write a blog post about what activism means to me/why I do it. This is my column that's running in today's issue of The Eagle. A little background:

• I a write biweekly column. About hipsters. I know, right?
• This happened. Campus politics exploded. Activists and journalists alike suspended the notions that cigarettes are not a food group and that drinking every night is socially unacceptable. It was a time of crisis, y'know? A list of demands was made by the campus community, and then this happened. I'm not sure if anyone knows what to do with themselves right now.

-----

Dissent: it’s a theme I’ve covered in this column all semester. I’ve discussed it in the context of hipster history (hipstory, I suppose) – bandanas, skinny jeans, flannel, they’ve all at some point been donned as signs of solidarity, as separation from and statement against the mainstream. But their meanings now have largely been stripped of significance and appropriated into the fashion of the contemporary hipster, leaving histories of rebellion in their wake hidden under the guise of – you guessed it – irony. And although individuals sporting this style may catch a lot of flack, hipsters are not what’s threatening our generation. Rather, they are indicative of a much bigger, much more harmful issue: complacency.

It is easy for us to take for granted the freedoms we enjoy as a result of our predecessors’ struggles. Because of this, it is even easier for us to assume that these struggles are over, that all those nasty “-isms” don’t exist, and that there is little to nothing left for us to fight or defend. We have watched the most radical generation in our nation’s history age into conservativism, and we have watched the generations after that follow their lead, assuming either that the fighting is done or that it is futile.

But there is a greater stirring in our lives. It is a wave of recognition that some things (many things) are still just not right. We are the most highly educated generation that our country has seen, and as a result, we recognize injustices – whether they be the inadvertent results of misinformation, or atrocities spurred by ignorance or motivated by hatred.

Our generation does not know exactly what it is fighting for; we do not have one single cause, but honestly, it’s nice to see someone care about anything anymore. The only thing worse than the passive aggressive Hobbesian nightmare that is Internet fighting is passive progressiveness – the ability to realize injustice but the inability to speak up or take action. Perhaps the dissident publication Adbusters said it best: “This is our decisive moment. Either we wallow in debt as passive observers of history and pray that technology will eventually solve all our problems or we actively seize power and deal with the consequences.”

Despite all the controversy we (as a community and a generation) have been experiencing (potentially the largest understatement of my AU career), I am more than proud to have participated in and witnessed the way that various communities have overcome their differences and united in response to that which they oppose.
We have realized that it is not about the differences in our personal solutions but about the greater problems that we all have in common.

No, it is not right that this unification happened at the personal expense of individuals, and no it is not right that anyone must feel responsible for cleaning up the mess that another person or another group has made, but the vigor of response has been simply admirable and nearly unprecedented. We have recognized that the solution is not to walk way from the problem, leaving it for someone else, the solution is to refuse to be silent until satisfied. Talk about “ideas into action,” eh – not bad, right, Kerwin?

We are recognizing that as long as there exists injustice for one, there is injustice for all of us – that once a group’s rights or ability to live safely are taken away, then all of ours are at stake. Yes, in fact, the dignity and safety of one is more important and more powerful than the hatred of others. This is an ideal, and we must fight to make it a reality, or else we are being irresponsible to ourselves.

We can borrow from feminist rhetoric – as long as we live in this world, we are survivors, not victims, of injustice, and we can either continue to live through it like nothing is wrong, or we can take action to correct it. We cannot ask to see our vision realized any longer – we must demand it.

Our rights, our beliefs and our ideologies are not something to be taken and twisted into dirty words used to shame us by those who feel threatened by our liberation. These are ours to value and keep and to empower us to achieve greater things. You cannot claim to know fully (and therefore claim the right to speak on behalf of or judge) the suffering or indignities experienced by an oppressed group unless you yourself are a part of that group, but we can all do our best to act as allies and recognize what is wrong and how to help.

So yes, injustice is everyone’s problem, but I’ll acknowledge that activism isn’t everyone’s solution. Thankfully, we have been given the gift of diversity, so that individuals may utilize their different talents to effect change. Activism takes many different forms – it is not limited to the picket-sign protest of yester-generation. Activism comes down to who you are on the day-to-day, if you are living what you believe in. The opposite of hate isn’t love – it is justice, fairness and respect.

So if we’re truly going to be defending all those abstract nouns that we believe in so strongly, then all of us – journalists and activists (we have more in common than you think) – must commit to achieving it, not just by discussing it but by owning up to our responsibilities and living it – and there’s nothing ironic about that.