Attempting to find another place to creatively write, after sculpting coffee mugs out of clay, cussing up a blue streak about my lousy day, dinner and tea, crying and conversating over chocolate because that's what we girls do. I get better at keeping up the face when I need to, maintaining poise and smiling to hide the fury, but in the place where it's safe, with those where we've seen the worst and the best of each other, it all spills out. I talk my way into making sense. It's how I make sense of things.
And I'm driving down I-90 to some 1995 countdown on the local alt-rock station singing Garbage's 'I'm Only Happy When It Rains' and wondering why I still feel like I'm 16 when I'm ten years past that hurtling towards 30 and still called a child by the previous generation. I still go to the coffeeshop instead of the bar. Here I can be antisocial among other antisocialites and am not expected to be anything.
If 60 is the new 40, then that makes me 20 and you 14"
It probably does. They say "when you grow up" like we're not adults but we go to work and do the mundane life obligations just like everyone else. Some of us ride the bus, live in less desirable neighborhoods and pay rent instead of mortgages and who cares.
Like the teenage years we left behind, we still clique ourselves and find more socially acceptable ways to do so, judging by geography or education, by transportation and marital status, age and beauty, clothing and hair, gauging one's worth as a human by what bands they like or what books they read. We sequester ourselves in echo chambers of agreement. We talk trash about people we only know in the abstract, resenting and envying, looking up and looking down. Those of you who say we're the young ones don't always act so mature, sniping and gossiping just like they always have.
I can't plot anything so I'm at Common Grounds typing snippets of poorly written verse as the jukebox plays 'Pusherman' and the cigarette smoke fills the air. The caffeine has kicked in and I'll probably be up all night, relieved that the tempest has blown over and that I can finally relax.
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2 comments:
Thanks for not looking down upon me for my love of Where's Waldo books.
On a more/less serious note, we have a copy in the juve collection and some bastard circled all the Waldos. The poor teacher's aide who checks that out.
High school never ends, it just adds wrinkles.
you will be hard pressed to find any real grownups in the world, and even luckier to ever work for one, but they are out there so keep the faith
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