So much has happened in 2019—historic climate events, gun violence epidemic in my country, troubling shifts of politics and populism around the world, my own wavering sense of well-being along with that of every other human on the planet. Like many of you, I’ve felt spiritually and emotionally bankrupt from all of it.
I don’t take very good pictures these days, so I don’t take many. Perhaps, it’s the sadness in my eyes or the greying of my hair, or the fact that I look too much like my late mother. The last two years have been hard on my body, hard on my soul, just hard. I’m glad to get out—grateful to hear the wind and feel it blow through my hair and let the sun touch my face for several hours.
Walking the trails behind William S. Hart Museum—Newhall, California • Oct 5, 2019
Today, I gave myself a long overdue outing and attended the 26th Annual Hart of the West Pow Wow. I saw children playing, chihuahuas, elders, a Vietnam veteran, a homeless man who crouched down nearby taking in every drumbeat into his troubled soul, beautiful muscular bodies waving feathers and wearing colors so luscious that it makes one salivate to look at them, circles of drummers singing in swelling voices that rose up over the hill of the old estate where 1920s western film star, William Hart, once lived. I was overcome with emotion and a deep sense of familial loss. I had to walk away.
I walked up the hill and explored through little pathways lined with railroad ties, cactus, fallen trees, and the grounds of Hart mansion. I took photos up there, but put my camera away when I descended back down toward the Pow Wow and the tents with families gathered underneath in a large crescent shape around the center of the park. I could not bring myself to take photos. I felt it wrong as a non-native person. Although California born, I can not claim my ancestors were from this place beyond 300 years—so… I tread lightly, walk silently, approach with respect, and hope that one day we can all heal from the terrible burden of a painful past.
I watch the Aztecs perform. I melt into the drums and shifting feathers. Afterwards, everyone was invited to come join in a community dance—the moment I was waiting for. I’ve been to a few Pow Wows in my time and always felt a great release in these shared dances.
We formed a circle and held hands. Some of us grew tired as the drum beat went faster, but we all did our best. We held onto one another, even when our arms grew tired and our hands were sweaty and we had to expand and contract as the snakelike chain wrapped around wide and then in close until the faces of young and old, large and small, faces going by—all bright and focused and smiling—all working together in harmony. The feeling was tremendous and uplifting and I told the man I was holding hands with that the whole world needs to do this.
I thought about climate change and the great challenge we are facing and how the entire human species must rally together to solve it. This is how it will feel—all of us in motion, keeping the line going, holding on tight, moving together in unison.
I recently began watching the Netflix series, Black Mirror. The first season, episode three, The Entire History of You struck me on many levels. As part of the last generation to experience a full childhood before the Internet, I could not help but think of movies throughout my life that hit on similar themes. Often, these movies coupled with my reading of dystopian novels and intersected real life, affirming my darkest suspicions and creating a mantra: That’s not going anywhere good.
…buckle your seatbelt, Dorothy because Kansas is going bye bye. ~ The Matrix
We’ll start with The Matrix. It’s a big one. It threaded together a cohesive realization that the world was transitioning into the unknown territory of virtual reality, surgical cognitive manipulation, and the impending death throws of a fading private life. Released in 1999, through the main character, Neo we experience an awakening that the world is not what it appears. The people glom onto consumerism and creature comforts absorbed in daily routine, oblivious or willfully ignorant to the proverbial man behind the curtain. Food, sex, and entertainment are the default control mechanism for those in power. Our human compulsion evokes another dystopian nightmare in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
Throughout my own life, I recall particular moments of existential hyperventilation. That is to say, certain shifts in society that I balk in horror—an Orwellian realization of humanity cannibalizing itself, dumb and blind walking through minefields of conformity. The masses deprived of critical thinking. A world where facts are turned upside down by those in power. Sound familiar? We’ve been here before.
Viagra For Everyone
I saw the first pharmaceutical advertisement sometime in the last few years of the 20th Century and the Y2K panic. That’s not a good idea. That’s not ethical. Someone is really going to screw that up, I thought. The fact that one of the first drugs advertised was Viagra just made it even more sinister. No lifesaving medication? Nothing that would help depression or help someone with diabetes? No. Just the welfare of post-retirement dicks.
Today, like Huxley’s novel, we take pills for everything. The pharmaceutical companies market to the populous with endless commercials presenting idealized scenes of perfect life moments rattling off a long list of disclaimers and threatening side-effects as pretty people take their golden retriever out for a walk on their pristine, richly landscaped backyard patio holding hands, as if everyone who takes the pill will never suffer alone, without a dog, without a patio and nothing peripheral to worry about other than taking those pills and avoid vomiting blood or experience hallucinations while shopping for turquoise jewelry.
There are more drug advertisements than any other product. In March 2017, spending on advertising grew by 62% since 2012. You get caught up in them—always the same perfect people, careful to include diverse ethnic backgrounds. You want to have their experiences. Their life looks so much better than yours even though they have fibromyalgia or cancer. If you watch too many at once, you can feel the manipulation on your brain. Constant advertising and promotion, samples from your doctor you can ask for. Drugs for the masses to keep us at a comfortable notch below revolt levels. Who wants to revolt when you can have opioids?
The world forgetting, by the world forgot. ~ Alexander Pope
Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, another movie that hit me while watching Black Mirror—the idea that we could erase our memories and become blissfully happy, which in the bigger picture would destroy any democracy. The sober, resisting sort of humanity declares, Oh, HELL NO!
Joel (Jim Carrey) erasing his memory of Clementine (Kate Winslet). source: screenprism.com
In the movie, James Carrey and Kate Winslet star as a distraught couple who choose to erase the other from memory and subsequently fall in love again. The harrowing nightmare that unfolds takes you through a psychological landscape that would make Salvador Dalí a nervous wreck.
Given the choice, I’d rather stay grounded in layers of collective knowledge gleaned over years of experience, world events, bad choices, and yes, even my most painful moments. I refuse to let that go for in so doing, I will invalidate my own existence. Those of us who care to leave behind a roadmap for others battle against the ease of consumerism and fight to stay relevant, stay authentic, resist against apathy of the citizen to hold the government in check. That leads me to another dystopian future—my past.
Windows 95
I remember using the Internet for the first time in the mid-1990s. Newspapers had few articles online. Most people read printed newspapers and checked the Classifieds for jobs. The O.J. Simpson trial was on every television in every break room in America and the housing market was experiencing a meltdown.
A few years later just before the President Clinton/Monica Lewinsky controversy, we searched for college paper topics on Yahoo search engine using NetScape Navigator, listened to the “Bing-Ding-Bong” of the connection, hypnotized by Flying Toasters and Bad Dog screen savers, learned how to create rudimentary webpages in HTML, scanned through websites with simple layouts and Comic Sans typeface, emailed jokes, played solitaire, and sent college applications through fax machines.
Windows 98
I began college in 1997 and tutored in the computer lab with apple crate sized monitors the color of bleached sandstone, 3-inch 1.44MB floppies or zip disks that stored a whopping 250MB. HP printers were the best on the market and checking your email between classes was the thing on every student’s mind. I would email back and forth to my boyfriend. We sent a lot of jokes and chain letters through email. It was fun and something you looked forward to: You’ve got mail. This was pre-9/11. Most people read the same news and nothing felt menacing in the world except for Comic Sans. We left the computer lab with our printed emails stuffed in spiral bound notebooks, called home on pay phones, hung out at Blockbuster Video, used Thomas Guides to find street addresses, and had coffee in places with people having face-to-face conversations. There were no cell phones except for yuppies with Nokias in slick, leather-seated Infiniti J30s, invested in Enron and dot-com stocks.
iPhone Killed the BlackBerry Star
After college, I worked for several years at a bookstore during the most volatile technological shifts of my time. One day I saw this book in the bargain section entitled, Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit? written by two notably annoyed GenXers. I stared down at the book cover. A man pointing his index finger at me while holding an ear to his cell phone.
Is it just me or is everything shit? book cover (source: amazon.com)
We were in that pre-zombie phase when everyone was just beginning to expose their private phone conversations in public spaces, eyes were still making eye-contact (which later, whole faces would never be seen again upon arrival of the iPhone in 2007) but the non-verbal and oh, so courteous index finger ‘hang-on-I’ve-gotta-take-this-call’ gesture began to happen. I had noticed it in the bookstore and in other public spaces.
Just for the record, I took the plunge in 2006 and purchased my first cell phone, a Motorola flip phone for $12. Still in use, it is the first and only cell phone I’ve purchased to date. I witnessed people dangling their elbow out the window, one hand holding the phone yapping one-dimensionally audible conversation at stoplights, everyone within range now privy to where they go for family vacation or an epic business deal with a reluctant client or their worried the stock market might take a dump, all the while waiting for traffic to move and when the light turns green, they forget they are engaged in this driving thing and someone behind honks a “dude, get off your BLEEPing phone” sense of urgency. Soon, texting while driving would render the freeway as lethal as the scenes in The Matrix Reloaded.
Opt In/Opt Out—Reality is the Same
The consequences of this age, though intriguing and useful in the way of information, one cannot help but see the darker realities of life inside the matrix of our own making, the endless newsfeed of Facebook, impending cyber warfare, dwindling privacy, and future generations growing up dependent on technology. Mind control and submission of critical thinking is a pioneering feature in the coming years. Of course, this is nothing new, just better tools for future dictators. By the way, I’ve added some flowery language to my original mantra.
(Revised and Edited for better accuracy on 08 Apr 2018)
You are a dying breed… It’s the angry white guy. Total number of white guys over the age of 35 now in the United States… 19 percent. That’s all we are guys… that whether cheery our demise, our extinction, that’s what’s going on you know… we know it’s over for us. We had a good run. 10,000 years wasn’t bad. – Michael Moore Trumpland
As a single, white, college educated, middle-aged Gen-X woman, I know despair so well, ‘I’m in love with my sadness’ as the song goes. It is not because I am trying to be dramatic; it’s part of my generational landscape. I am one of the average Americans who suffer from depression living in a world I have never been able to fit into the general societal mold.
I’ve always been ambitious, not in the way that success means to people like Donald Trump. I’m not interested in money or things, with the exception of books and archival boxes. My income is just below poverty level and I am lucky to live with a family member, despite my education and coastal elite zip code.
My despair is more existential. It has nothing to do with a desire to preserve whiteness or bring back anything from the 1950s, with the exception of Chuck Berry. In my opinion, the planet needs color in humanity and if this is part of our evolution, then I am all for it. But, for many in my generation, there is a primal fear coated in thick nihilism that has grown into a populist movement the country has witnessed, but not quite the same as present day. There is a deep isolation and palpable anger that is festering from years of societal deterioration, often of their own making.
Two angry white men, Gen-X rappers Kid Rock and Eminem, represent a small cross-section of Middle America in the Trump era.
According to the Huffington Post, “Kid Rock’s rural hometown of Romeo, located in 82-percent white Macomb County, voted Trump in the election; Eminem’s home base of Wayne Country, the 55-percent white area where the city of Detroit is located, voted for Clinton.”
Source: Kid Rock/Twitter 05 Dec 2016
Source: Eminem/Facebook
Fans of both musicians may listen to one or the other and not share the strong political views of the musicians themselves, but it is clear that this tearing apart of country is further pulling apart rural whites and urban whites. White families across the country are engaged in heated political debates at the dinner table or in my case, stopped talking altogether.
According to a Washington Post article in late 2015, “The mortality rate for white men and women ages 45-54 with less than a college education increased markedly between 1999 and 2013, most likely because of problems with legal and illegal drugs, alcohol and suicide, the researchers concluded. Before then, death rates for that group dropped steadily, and at a faster pace.”
Growing up in a white middle-class mountain community, I never lacked food, clothing and shelter, but my family was not a close one and rarely made the effort to connect beyond my father’s sister’s family and my mother’s older brother’s family. I have attended more family funerals than weddings and as each elder passed on, we became further isolated.
Most of my cousins on my mom’s side are spread out geographically and we saw each other a handful of times growing up. When my grandfather died, all of us breathed a sigh of relief, not because we didn’t love him, but because the world was more peaceful without him.
My older brother had three marriages and 4 children, all who live in different states. I never had the opportunity to truly bond with them as their parents went through bitter divorce, custody battles and moved far away.
I’ve often witnessed many white families are less unified than non-white families, at least from my perspective. My Armenian friend has 3 children with a large extended family who all live in the same city. My Hispanic co-worker has 4 grown up children and posts photos of beach outings and parties and dinners with her siblings and many aunts and uncles. My African-American co-worker has several children and runs a barbecue grill restaurant with his extended family. They are all in my generation and are devoted to family despite our shared struggles in the economy and current political environment.
Whether we like it or not, the future is not predominately white, and that is okay and all those jobs in the past are not good for our future. In my life, I won’t be having children. I’m content to see my non-white friends raising their children and I hope that one day, our future leaders will work harder to ensure that no one is left behind, that no one is forgotten or dying of despair and that we all rise together.
TETBURY, UNITED KINGDOM – JULY 18: Princess Diana Resting Her Head In Her Hands Whilst Sitting On The Steps Of Her Home At Highgrove, Gloucestershire. (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images)
20 years after her tragic death in an automobile accident in Paris, Princess Diana remains an important historical figure. The wounds for all of us are still fresh from that fateful day. Diana embodied the seismic shift of a world coming apart. She represented everything the world needed: love, compassion, grace, and humility.
As beautiful as she was, Diana was also imperfect. She had an eating disorder, was needy, and desperately wanted someone to truly love her often straining those around her in her pursuits. A shy daughter of an English Earl, the dreamy 19-year-old Lady Diana Spencer married unwittingly to a man who was forced to give up his own true love for a more suitable match as dictated by the Monarchy. Love and feelings had nothing to do with it. Though Charles and Diana’s circumstances were tame by comparison with past Royal coupling arrangements, nonetheless, their experience was a painful situation in any time.
At first, Diana Spencer found the attention of the press amusing and even liked it. But that soon wore off as she was thrust into the public eye becoming a prisoner, a passionate young woman suffocated by the heavy expectations of a fusty, royal family born into privilege, resolute in the knowledge that all they are cannot be destroyed.
I remember Princess Diana, growing up. Her short, feathered hair and bright, blue eyes exposed the goodness of her soul and the pain inside her heart. In the summer of 1984, my mother and I cut our hair off just like the Princess. My father wasn’t happy because he liked his wife to have long locks. It was a moment I shared with my mother when we both felt the same giddy excitement as mother and daughter going to the salon to have our hair cut like Princess Diana.
I suppose my mother saw her own feelings reflected through Diana’s simmering blue eyes. Like Diana, my mother was unhappy in her marriage and didn’t show it but through tears that would escape her now and then. I had other reasons for cutting my hair just like Diana. I loved who she was, trying to make things work as best as she could, through tears. Sure, she had everything. Sure, she was beautiful. But I saw something inside her that was raging. I would not have been able to express these words at 9-years-old, but years later I understood that rage. What was not known or said in public spoke volumes to women everywhere.
Counter to the typical Monarchy’s raising of children, Diana showed the world how devoted she was when she became a mother to two beautiful boys, openly displaying her affection, taking them to school, and constantly playing with them. In high school, I fell in love with the Princess all over again as she went out on her own and began her charity work. There is no one that could quite replicate the conviction Diana had in her voice underneath the soft British accent as she spoke on behalf of AIDS’ victims. Princess Diana was never afraid to touch and hold and console and love on anyone who was suffering. That is why she became the ‘People’s Princess’.
Diana Spencer shares the same birth year (1961) with many other notable members of Generation X; Peter Jackson, Michael J. Fox, Brent Eastwood Ellis, Douglas Coupland, Enya, Martin Gore, Henry Rollins, Boy George, Julia Gillard, and Barack Obama. 1961 marks not only the beginning of what most historians agree as the beginning of Generation X, but a watershed year of political and cultural changes that correspond with this particular generation: the rising of a great wall that divided Germany into east and west, the introduction of the birth control pill which would lead to sexual revolution, the Cuban missile crisis and an accelerated shift away from post-World War II prosperity into the Cold War, the moon landing, the environmental crisis of the 1970s, and the free-wheeling decadence of the colorful, synthesized 1980s.
Diana was special because she had a relentless heart. She changed everything because it had to be done and she had to do it, her way. Her life force was captured in the hearts and souls of the people. Perhaps it was this reality that would eventually lead to her untimely death. I remember seeing Diana on television and in my mother’s People magazines. I watched a 19-year-old girl grow up and become a figure that eclipsed the grounds of Buckingham Palace and the British Monarchy and ultimately, inspire the people of the world to make it better.
Princess Diana, Princess of Wales cradles a young child stricken with cancer at the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital in Lahore in this February 22, 1997 file photo. August 31 marks the fifth anniversary of her death in a high-speed car crash in Paris. REUTERS/John Pryke
‘Baby Machine’ Stone Lithograph Print (2008) Courtesy of Leta Gray with permission.
I never wanted to bring a child into the world – in my time.
I’ve seen too much heartache, gross negligence and repulsive events. I live in a world of certain horrid creatures that care nothing for their own kind. Why would I labor to bring an innocent being into a world of rabid destruction?
Why would I, in my right mind bring a babe into the world where the prospects of any kind of life is destined to be grim at best, more violent, more competitive, more people? Maybe I didn’t read enough ‘learn how to be happy’ books in my youth because the reality of the world jockeyed for my attention first.
I am tormented by a belief in good things, in an ideal world where humankind takes great care of humankind, that all children never really grow up because their world is more relevant. I wrap my own placental blanket around my vessel, safe and warm from the disintegration all around.
Am I selfish for not wanting to continue my bloodline, a bloodline that feels too deeply and lives too long? Why should I bring a profound and emotional creature into the world with those who use human beings for their own selfish purpose – money and power? To plant a lovely soul into a world where women are shoved aside, women are irrelevant, just to be incubators to breed more armies of men?
NO, I will not. I have no good reason to bring a child in the world. The world does not deserve my beautiful child. The world will get my words instead.
“Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.” ― Henry Rollins
Today is the day before that revolting holiday that makes single people want to vomit a box of chocolates onto a bouquet of black roses before ingesting a lethal dose of cyanide.
With that disclaimer out of the way, in lieu of tomorrow’s twerpy twitterpated, chocolates for sex love fest, I am celebrating Henry Rollins birthdate 2.13.1961, the day the Soviet Union fired a rocket from Sputnik V to Venus. Romantic, isn’t it?
Henry is unique in many ways among his contemporaries. He understands America and the globe more profoundly than most Americans. He has been to damn near every major and minor city all over the U.S. and abroad thousands of times over throughout the years of his spoken word tours and intense gigs with Black Flag and Rollins Band.
He knows the streets, the crowds, the unique culture of every place he has been, spending long nights drinking black coffee and writing in dingy hotels, reflecting on everything he sees and feels and hears. A true solipsist, he is a master of himself and a friend of no one in particular. He is a productive, sober, and explosive voice of our time, kicking his ego to the curb with genuine and excruciating self-reflective truth. His razor sharp insight cuts deep into the corpse of the Gen-X zeitgeist.
Solipsist by Henry Rollins – signed at Spoken Word Tour at McDonald Theater • March 6, 2003
I met Henry the first time in March of 2003 in Eugene, Oregon after a spoken word show. I have never witnessed anyone blister through a performance with the same elevated composure, perfect articulation, biting commentary, and thundering voice raking the audience into bleeding stitches for two hours without a pause or drink from the unopened water bottle on his stool. I was impressed by his intelligence and unique perspective on politics and relationships.
Five years later on another day in March of 2007, I found myself driving to Book Soup on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood to attend the book signing of Punk Love. Henry had co-authored the book with an old friend, Susie J Horgan, a photography student and co-worker with Henry at Häagen-Dazs ice cream shop, who unknowingly photographed the emerging punk movement in the late 1970s in DC. This time I brought a personal letter to give to Henry.
Driving down the 101 to Laurel Canyon was like cutting through a crack in the pavement; windy and craggy, down into the bowels of the places cockroaches live and rock stars overdose on heroin. A meandering, overused road, dizzying homes of celebrities past, and suddenly, after several turns I was quickly approaching Sunset Boulevard.
I stopped at a light and viewed a man, looking older than he likely was with a creeping beard and red eyes holding a cardboard sign ‘NEED BEER.’ He posed with the sign next to his head, did a little hop and transferred the sign switching it like an old flip clock radio. He hopped again and rotated the sign in an upside down arch to read ‘FREE PIZZA BOWL,” his eyebrows twitching.
I couldn’t help but think of Vanna White turning the letters around on the Wheel of Fortune. The man grinned, showing his yellowed-teeth standing outside a small shack with a broken door hopping from side-to-side and assuring me that I didn’t need beer or a free pizza bowl.
My whole life living in Southern California, I rarely came to Hollywood. Sunset Boulevard was more like a gaunt figure in an outdated, oversized designer suit: colorful and small with bold billboards jutting out like rusty railroad spikes half jammed in the ground. I wondered what other burned out creature with yellowing teeth might want to have their way with me, stick a knife in me, stick a cock in me just because I’m walking around with this hole. I turned on Sunset Boulevard, then made a left on the side street adjacent to the Viper Room where River Phoenix overdosed on a speedball in 1993, an event I remember shedding tears over.
I pulled around the back of the bookstore where Henry’s website instructed to park in a tiny lot, where I found a space. Thank goodness I showed up an hour early.
I walked from the minuscule back parking lot around to the front. The sun was low in the sky and the orange of it saturated the streets. Long, jagged shadows haunted the sidewalk. Outside of the bookstore, magazine racks lined the small entrance of Book Soup. Everything on Sunset Boulevard seemed like a small rabbit hole into a perceived illusion of space, oddly private and strangely decadent. Inside, I was bombarded by towering vertical shelves of books – the opposite of the sprawling big-box bookstores I was used to. There was no room to walk, claustrophobic corners with no place to sit, like a cat in an undersized box.
A tall man with greenish eyelids was sitting behind a cramped counter like a morbid doll stuffed inside a child’s closet. I landed on an oversized art book at the front entrance; the largest book I’d ever seen. It was the size and thickness of the Ten Commandments, or so I speculated. I opened each page and watched it fall like an enormous leaf: a collage of handwritten journals, splattered with color and images cut and clipped in strange juxtapositions. I felt a nagging for a design project, the excitement of creating something new, washing over in smooth overlapping layers. As I was feasting on this wondrous book, just to my right, I see Henry Rollins walk through the door. I continued turning pages as his eyes looked in my direction and scanned the perimeter like a cyborg.
“Hey, Henry,” said the man behind the counter in a familiar tone.
“How’s it going,” Henry Rollins replied, disappearing into the meandering cavern of the bookstore. I was glad he was here. Like me, I suspected, he wanted to show up early and hang out browsing books, taking in the scene before the throng of strange creatures showed up.
I decided to explore, passing through the fiction aisle and up to the information desk. I wanted to know where the science and technology section was located. A girl with blonde hair and smudgy black eyes took me to the spot. I found Richard Dawkins’ books and looked through titles I hadn’t seen before. After a few minutes, I made my way to the entertainment and music books, knowing I would find Henry there. I shuffled into the little room.
Standing with his back to me, he was wearing his usual plain black t-shirt. I could see his tattoos poking out underneath, a skull and snake and the word ‘Damage.’ I stared at the Black Flag logo on the back of his neck just under his hairline. It reminded me of a barcode label. His long dark brown wavy hair from his Black Flag days was now short with flecks of grey; his face unchanged, still severe and handsome.
I walked across from where he stood to a large section of music biographies and saw The Lady Sings the Blues, the story of Billie Holiday and smiled at her solemn gaze. I found a book on the Pixies, and remembered seeing them at the Hollywood Palladium in 1991. I almost turned around to ask Henry if he happened upon a band that merged jazz and punk together, but decided against it. I didn’t want to bother him while he was immersed in books. So I just looked through mine enjoying the moment of sharing the space with him knowing that I was standing next to this amazing person who rages inside like me. I felt calm and content as two lonely birds on a rusted wire sit, lost in thought, sharing a moment of serenity between storms before flying away to another experience.
Book Soup “Punk Love” Book Signing • West Hollywood, March 2007 L to R: Henry Rollins, Lisa M. McDougald, Susie J. Horgan
The bookstore began to fill up and Henry stole away and met up with a tall woman in a black dress in boots with long curly brown hair. It was Susie. She and Henry chatted while they hung Susie’s historic photographs for the presentation. Since I was there first, I stood nearby to make sure I could be up close. When most everyone filed in and we were all crowded around the back of the store, Henry and Susie introduced themselves and told us stories of how they met, the ice cream shop, and the infamous photo of Ian MacKaye’s brother, Alec that ended up becoming the icon of the American punk movement.
Susie continued her career as a photographer. Just like any movement, she and Henry were caught up in the swirl of a youth rebellion against a world that seemingly felt ineffectual. The moments they shared with us were precious moments of the spirit of youth in a collective expression of music and primal connection in a world that was indifferent to their lives, their hopes, their pain, and their future.
I couldn’t help but feel a deep sadness that I couldn’t be a part of this moment in time, with all of these young and beautiful faces full of life and energy and angst creating something new in a worn out world. I was only 4-years-old when Susie snapped these photos. My own experience with hardcore punk came much later after the core of the movement had merged into New Wave. Sometime in high school in the early 1990s, that’s when I discovered Black Flag, Rollins Band, Fugazi, and Minor Threat. It was fresh to me, but the ice cream had already melted by then and Nirvana was the new youth movement.
I remember giving my letter to Henry and shaking his hand again. I asked him if he had any career advice as a writer. I was immediately embarrassed after I said it. He laughed and tweaked his face.
“Career? Career?! What I do… it’s not a career. It’s painful.”
Henry was right. Writing is painful. And I’m sure he would agree that writing, just like music is also cathartic and healing and necessary.
Whenever I am in doubt and feel terrible about anything, I retreat to Henry’s collected work. He makes the most sense, speaks to the darkness inside all of us more than any person I know. When I am depressed and angry, I know that he is also depressed and angry. Whether he realizes it or not, I have him to thank in many moments in my life because he is a stubborn rocket burning on in a futile universe.
Woman Reading (c.1900). Paul Barthel (German, 1862-1933)
In 2017, there are far more reasons for having fewer children than at any other time in history. The battles I see parents go through today are disturbing. I can’t imagine the world being better off in 10-20 years by the time their kids are old enough to reach college age.
I have never wanted to have kids, something I am not ashamed of. My parents fought over ridiculous things, things that didn’t matter, things that only pushed buttons and hurt one another. My brother had multiple marriages, four children, spending an exhaustive amount of his life fighting in family courts over visitations rights, dental appointments, and alimony. I never wanted that for myself.
As a member of Generation X, I don’t have the means to purchase a home. I live with a family member; hold $40,000 in student loan debt, just over a third of that in retirement savings. I rarely date. I have other things I’d rather do with my life. I find it refreshing to know that many women today are voluntarily not having kids. Many of my friends that do have kids (with a few exceptions) have gone through bitter divorce, navigate unstable family circumstances, and have children who are depressed and fighting an uphill battle just to exist.
I’ve had countless conversations, where someone will ask if I want kids and when I tell them I am single and childless by choice – I might as well have told them I just flew in from the Butterfly Nebula. Some responses range from “Isn’t that selfish?” or “That’s what women do,” or “the people who should have kids, don’t.”
First, it is not selfish to choose a childless life. It is a well-thought out and sound decision in an unstable environment. I would rather completely provide for a child’s needs and if things are not to my liking, then I’d rather not. It’s that simple. If that is selfish, well, I could introduce you to a lot of people who would prefer they were never born. So what is selfish? – Parents who thoughtlessly have children and do little to raise them to be good people for the planet.
Second, not all women are interested in having kids. It’s not that we don’t like kids; it’s a bigger issue. Many of us care deeply for humanity. The prospect of raising a child in broken families, fleeting relationships and financial burdens makes my ovaries want to shrivel up and dissolve.
Third, “people who should have kids don’t,” is the worst statement of all. It suggests that you are withholding a human being that should be in the world, that it is your duty to leave this special heir. It may sound flattering, but people fail to realize that there are no guarantees you will have a healthy, well-adjusted kid or the sustained resources to adequately prepare them for the future. This is especially true for those without sufficient family and financial support. These are not excuses. These are sound, well thought out assessments and in an overpopulated planet, a responsible choice.
Society needs to support women and men who choose a childless lifestyle. I take ownership to the choices I’ve made. I care about the planet. I care about all innocent children born after me and desperately hope they will have a better world to live in. Society needs to back off and support the idea that less is more and better for everyone and be OKAY with this trend.
I’ve read many articles about women who choose a childless life. I am greatly disappointed that the reasons they give are only based on micro-societal pressures. It is a much bigger picture. My pressures come from within. My pressures are a result of seeing a world unfit for child raising, a world that is hot, flat, and crowded, a world whose principles are so completely unaligned with my own that I feel raising a child to be futile.
We don’t talk about population as a key factor that impacts our planet or how it correlates to the dwindling natural resources, the lack of jobs, the struggle of governments to manage the numbers, the plight of families to deal with the competition to ensure the welfare of their children when classrooms are overcrowded and the cost of everything is rising beyond a live able wage.
In my time, I had my own problems trying to survive without being a burden on my parents or anyone. My own experience while fascinating and good storytelling is not gratifying and mostly depressing. Imagining the world my child would inhabit with 7 billion + other souls all competing, all fighting, all struggling to make ends meet is too much a burden for them to bear and I don’t have the resources, the support, the time or the drive to ensure their future and prepare them.
The thing about men and women like me is that we fill a void that represents the lives of so many discarded people. We are complete as an individual, a singular cell, an agent for change, a mentor, a caregiver, an artist, a poet, a writer, a philosopher, a scientist, an activist, an inspiration, a trailblazer, an adventurer, a storyteller, an advocate, a peer counselor, an aunt, a muse, an enigma. And, now more than ever… necessary.
I am the resisting sort, a non-conformist, and a skeptic of well — Everything. I read widely and deeply. I try to have an open mind. Like many Americans in the historic months leading up to the election of 2016, which felt like an excruciatingly long and painful bowel movement, I watched the news constantly. I read a broad width of news articles, online and in print as if my life depended on it, and everything I was doing in my life outside of work took a backseat. I listened in full, to the candidates running for President of the United States of America and what they had to offer. As a citizen of my country, I felt an extreme obligation more so than ever before to be actively engaged and aware.
With that, I must tell you; I had several existential crises’ in the months leading up to the election. I lost hope several times and plunged into darkness, and when I came out, my social media friends were there. They inspired me and encouraged me and I felt an obligation to them to continue posting the best information I could. If I could not verify it I wouldn’t post it and I think my friends relied on me and so I continued to fight with information and thoughts and hope and encouraging words.
My motivation was that I was very worried. Worried that there were things at play I didn’t understand completely. Worried that the news may be somewhat tainted and the sources I grew to trust were not telling me everything I needed to know. I was worried that sensationalism and speculation was overriding fact based reporting. Worried that American citizens were not reading the same base information, not scrutinizing every post in their social media feed, and I found myself defending authoritative sources against fake news sources.
…I found myself defending authoritative sources against fake news sources.
In the pre-digital days, it was easier to pinpoint fake news. In that time, most people knew that the trustworthy news with the best sources were on a separate aisle next the stationary and Hallmark cards. You could pick up a National Geographic, Scientific American, Popular Mechanics, The Atlantic, Newsweek, Time Magazine (thicker in content back then) and a plethora of well-researched feature articles and thoughtful opinion pieces. One could spend an hour reading and feel reasonably satisfied, up-to-date with the barometer of world news. You could get this news at any grocery store or convenience store. The important news was widely available and heavily stocked. Only at the checkout stand, were the sensational kitsch rags, which everyone might pick up while waiting to chuckle at ‘Bat Boy’ or the most recent Elvis sighting. Only your crazy conspiracy-theorist uncle would think that some legitimate stories were buried in a copy of The National Enquirer or Star. The majority of us knew better and it was obvious.
On Facebook, I received a flood of reactionary comments to my legitimate sources. I tried my best to sort out and clarify for them and myself, responding to everyone and encouraging them to continue the conversation. I was both thrilled to the challenge of debate, but stunned that so many people posted things unedited with irrational and poorly thought out responses. Worse, I tried to engage them to find facts/articles to back up their positions. The few who did post a reference article, referenced an obscure Canadian post from a single blogger with pixilated images or the one video of Barack Obama reading a book with a sexual reference that was supposed to cancel out the years of voluminous blatant sexual misogyny of Trump.
In particular, there was one Facebook encounter that brought out many things. His name was Dennis and through him, I found my archenemy to do battle with. He was relentless in his comments and so was I. It went on like this for several weeks. There were a few moments we agreed and I felt a welling up inside that perhaps we could reach across the brain matter and connect and we did on some levels. We shared some very personal things in private messages as he was from my same hometown and both of our grandparents knew each other. We had history in common that we shared privately, and heatedly debated our politics in public.
I learned a lot through this exchange. I learned that there are times to be vocal and learn from one another’s differing opinions and when to discontinue the dialogue to save your own sanity. I felt that we were engaging in the very thing that would make the founding fathers proud – civil discourse. As Christmas was looming, I felt that our discourse was beginning to sour and I felt angry as our discussion turned to women’s issues. This is where I had to let him go. I first restricted his access as a friend hoping that if he didn’t see my ‘friends only’ posts that we could stay in contact. He then started commenting on every single thing that I liked, not commented on, but merely liked. Instead of rabble rousing on my posts, he was now invading my friends’ pages of who unwittingly made the mistake of posting publicly. I had had enough. I allowed Dennis into my house and he invaded every room. I told him in a private message that we were done. I wish him well, but sometimes you have to shut out, Unfriend, detach, and let go the people in your life if they are depressing your soul.
Blue words are good in private for letting off steam, but are ineffective in conveying an important idea to an opposing viewpoint.
I tried my best. I wanted to change minds by keeping my language tame, respectful, and based in fact to the best of my ability. Blue words are good in private for letting off steam, but are ineffective in conveying an important idea to an opposing viewpoint. I give Obama credit as setting an example of profound civil discourse, as he stayed poised and respectful and tempered throughout his presidency on the level that matters to the American people. I think the majority of Americans, regardless of politics, can agree that Obama is inspiring and smart and capable of uniting the people even if they don’t like his policy stances or the color of his skin.
I think of Dennis often, as we approach the inauguration of the 45th President on January 20th. I wonder what he thinks of Trump’s Tweets, the investigations into Russian interference of the election, and the recent polls that show a majority of Americans uncertain of a Trump presidency. I know that Dennis is a lonely old man who seeks out political storms on Facebook for company in the middle of the night, and I, a lonely middle-aged woman seeking facts on Facebook in the middle of the night. I’m not sure how things will turn out. Trump is addicted to his Twitter account showing the American people more and more that he is strange and this is not normal.
As I write this, nothing feels right, or good, or hopeful. Yet, I hope that we will be okay. I hope that democracy stays intact. I hope that there are enough people who will do the right thing, whatever and whenever that may be. I hope that one day I can talk to Dennis again and share the history of our grandparents and that this whole experience will make us better people.
I am a voice in this world.
I exist and I am a woman.
Most of history does not encourage nor consider the voice of any woman. Men are the writers of most of history.
Woman are only written into the historical record when she raises her head up high enough that men cannot ignore her and only if it serves the status quo, AKA the interests of men.
I am a woman who cares about the children of this world, because they will inherit the bullshit, the inhumanity that I endure, the ultimate sacrifice of a world that doesn’t care about its own survival.
I am angry that this world is run by certain men; certain men that make weapons against other men.
I am angry that certain men are willing to create weapons that will destroy our very existence because they have to.
I am angry that some women think their only place is to birth more children, that it is all we are born to do.
I am angry that most women are not part of the discussion of where we should be as human beings.
I am angry that many women are forced to be the caregivers, and clean up after the wars of men.
I am angry that so many women are not allowed any space on this planet to exist, to nurture our minds beyond our ability to have babies.
I am angry that so many women are seen as inferior to men, because we are socialized from birth that we should be subservient.
I am angry that my mother never taught me the reality of what I would face, that the world is hostile and indifferent to my needs as a woman.
I am angry that this world only caters to the war-like features of certain men and that all the things a woman can be will ultimately be obliterated by men.
I exist and I am a woman.
Women are relevant on all levels in this world.
I remember Princess Diana, growing up. Her short, feathered hair and bright, blue eyes exposed the goodness of her soul and the pain inside her heart. In the summer of 1984, my mother and I cut our hair off just like the Princess. My father wasn’t happy because he liked his wife to have long locks. It was a moment I shared with my mother when we both felt the same giddy excitement as mother and daughter going to the salon to have our hair cut like Princess Diana.
Solo GenX Warriors 
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