Our sleekest wisdoms will not escape the hackneyed conclusion rooted in our spastic lives. Our captive lives. Sing your song, sing your song, bird in the net.
Taken from Avraham Huss's poem The Green Refrain
I WAS YOUNG ONCE, TOO
If I was a twenty-something today, I would be the kind of angry that seethes with blindness, a sort of shapeless, concrete indignation.
I recently attended my own commencement ceremony to receive my B.A. in Humanities.
A feat that many others before me have accomplished much more easily and certainly more swiftly---as it took me 23 years and 6 institutions to finally claim it.
So yes, I bought that hat and tassel and joined the procession.
As I stood in line amongst hundreds of other graduates (mostly in their twenties) I thought about our tomorrows.
How different they would be.
I have done much of the tactical, logistical work of becoming "an adult."
Scores of jobs and bosses, danger and excitement.
The kind of wins that make your heart race like you're in love. The kind of losses that swallow you into the floor for months.
Too much tobacco and not enough water.
Standing in line, hot in my black gown, I knew my tomorrow would be a simple Sunday: taking my kid to story time, a nap in the afternoon, and meal prepping for the work week.
A terribly adult tomorrow.
There was a young graduate in front of me.
She had decorated her hat with a sharpie, her message to the world:
IDK WHAT I LEARNED BUT I KNOW I'M DONE LEARNING!
We old folks have an insidious tendency to generalize, to put the youth into one of two camps:
Idiots
-or-
Naïve Idiots
With little room for the word of the moment: "nuance."
As I get older, I see myself crouching down and decaying in this way more and more.
I read that young woman's bubbly handwriting and thought, "we're fucked."
Then I remembered that I too, was young once.
My anger was different back then. It hadn't trudged the long path towards apathy.
My youthful anger benefitted from a blooming long before 9/11, before the Great Recession, a global pandemic, an insurrection, long before brutal wars that slotted barbed wires between friends.
I don't know if that young woman is naïve, apathetic, or even serious about her done-ness (I hope not and in fact I choose to believe she's just funnier than I am and I'm too old to get it.)
What I do know is that the majority of the young people who endured a three hour pomp and circumstance with me have much, much more difficult tomorrows than I will.
That on days when I read the news, follow the weather, and stroke the forehead of my tiny daughter, I too feel like IDK!! And I want to be done learning!!!
Because I can hardly bear any of it, much less make sense of it enough to chide the shallow chill of humanity scrolling into oblivion.
And yet.
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The sun will come out.
✌️ Kristy
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Some good things are happening:
Yoav Horesh: MONUMENT
My ❤️partner and favorite artist is releasing his latest book compiling a journey to VA during the 2020 uprising and I believe EVERYONE needs to see it
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Alexandra Chan: In The Garden Behind The Moon
My dear friend Alexka has put something truly beautiful out into the world that can be a source of healing for all of us
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