broke weed summer

“The end of an empire is messy at best. And this empire’s ended, like all the rest.” -Randy Newman

And the ever sounding crashing down of the economy permeates through the market’s fruit bins and meat stands to the country club with well groomed grass and eighteen hole golf. Us, friends, together in a new pioneer of poverty (barely, but broke nonetheless). Who lack funds to continue the dreams we have, but are sufficient enough for the broke weed summer; no ceasing of movement and moment. Are to withstand the wake of current affairs in our own oblivion.

Embark with us, dear pioneer, another front and future of the grand country we live in. The backdrop, the canvas, is that of failed and outsourced factories and industries. The methods of career and work are now riddles, and inefficient in their own structure. We are to build something different, something old, and something simple in procedure. Something, but as for now (the ever important now), friends, gather together with our little monies, and celebrate the crashing down with dancing, singing, laughter, and art.

Morale!

Blow Holes

Dolphins have blow holes. It’s sort of weird if you think of it, the concept. There’s this damn mammal that lives in the water, but doesn’t breathe with gills; They have lungs. Dolphins also have fins, slippery skin, bottle-noses, and cute calves. However, there are a few things dolphins don’t have.
Dolphins don’t have mortgages, and they don’t have economic crisis or wars. They don’t pick apart their leaders for bowing to some prince in another country. They don’t’ have academic essays, and they don’t have cars, and they don’t have romance comedies or iPhones.

It’s largely known that dolphins are the second most intelligent mammal, but I say “Nay”. I think they are smart enough to have successfully avoided all of the problematic systems that we humans have created to “help” function our lives. So far they have avoided loans, currency, government, politics, technology, land, and so on. All of it on purpose. They focus their lives on their family, and their community, and battling sharks. They have their dome heads around the stuff that really matters, and they never get any praise in their genius.

I guess I’m just a bit down on the whole human thing; Tired of being the most intelligent mammal. That’s a lot of pressure that I’m not sure the rest of the Animal Kingdom fully understands. It’s lonely at the top of the food-chain.

I’m sure it’s a rough and tumble ocean with the undolphin safe tuna and oils spills, but I’d give up my imposable thumbs any day for that struggle. Or maybe for one day I would experience total dolphin freedom. To try it out, yeah, to have a look see.

Also, mice are retarded. Don’t believe that lie.

Relating to the Dog

I chit chattered my tongue as it rested on the nameless puppies head to her dislike, but it sparked some sort of energy that I now describe as a foreshadow to the overall personality of the dog. She responded with a sudden urge to see and understand the noise and it’s origin, and I was there, with the puppy in my lap on the ride home, in a sort of dumbfounded state.
That was over a year ago, on the ride home from buying her.

Now she shits on the floor almost everyday, and tries to tear apart the tissues and socks she finds. She barks at my Mother when my Mother says “No”, and tries to run after birds that can fly higher and faster then her. Sometimes she doesn’t eat, and sometimes she doesn’t pee. She climbs onto tables to get the things my Mother says “No” about, and then gets walloped and sent to the cage for trying.

She’s only a year and some months old now, but still close to full grown. Her fifteen pounds consists of folly, hair, and muscle which is penned up for a decent amount of the day.

My mother likes to say “No” to her fairly often. When the dog grabs a panty-ho it is quickly acknowledged with a “No”, and when the dog jumps onto the sofa it is followed with a “No”, and when the dog scratches for pure attention it is followed with a “No”…or maybe a “BAD” or “GO TO BED’. Either way it all seems to be directed in a negative and loud tones.

And I’m starting to think the dogs misbehavior is straight out of our lack of (positive) attention and her being built on folly, hair, and energy. I’ve recently begun to punish her misdoings with a rough game of chase or fetch, and I think it makes more of an impact. I tried to explain this technique to my Mother, but she followed it with a “No”.

And then I realized this evening the dog is much like me. Or maybe I’m a lot like the dog, but yet I think the dog is more brave then me  for the direct disobedience, and intelligent as all hell to be shitting on the floor in form of communication for her pleas of “entertain me, socialize me”.

Slowwwww Down

I have thoughts, but they’re swimming too far down and they refuse my bait.  So, instead, here is a piece of fiction stemming from the slow summer nights.

The next exit:  that is where we will get off, that is where we will be only two minutes away from our destination, our mecca.  We drove all night for this.  Maybe it was only an hour.  No, no, I think we’ve been on the road for fifteen minutes, or, at least, it’s been fifteen minutes since we decided to come here.  We drove around for probably half an hour before that; no direction, no aim, no reason for either at that point.
Yes, it was fifteen minutes ago when someone in the car said that this is where we will go, this is where we shall find the things we have been searching for.  This will be the answer to the question that all of us have been trying to spit out ever since that feeling set upon us, that same feeling that had crawled down our throats so many nights before, setting up camp at the base of our stomachs, shaking the walls and stomping on the floors of our innards, sending messages of war up to the hypothalamic regions of our minds.
“Just think,” someone suddenly says, somehow finding a voice strong enough to overcome the music that has filled every nook of the car, “we are only four minutes away; three right turns, two lights. We are one collective moving like water with no dam to stop us.”  We don’t need to respond, all three of us know that we are thinking the exact same things, about the glory that will hit us with a gentle blow, rocking us back and forth on our heels, about the easy contentedness that will settle on us as a pitcher of dry lemonade on the porch of a farmhouse, ice cubes disappearing faster than we can tell a story with our hands as we point to where we got this scar and that idea, over there by that fence, some thirteen years ago.
I’m torn from this thought as I realize we’ve just pulled in; it seems while I was pouring another glass and listening to the dust crunch under my shoes idly sliding on the old wood, my hands were turning the wheel and my feet were working the pedals.  I could have run someone over and all I would’ve noticed was the sting of citrus in the cut of my hand.  My friends un-click their seat belts and suddenly I do not want to be here.  This oasis is danger. I’d rather just turn around and drive home, because this music is all I need. I’d rather be in my warm bed, because you can’t be a fool when you’re alone.   But then they get out of the car, and I know that they cannot ignore that feeling that has by now planted roots in every limb; the mind can do nothing against a body that is a slave to this feeling.  I try to protest but my voice is feeble and they tell me I am fine, and I know that they are right, because I know we have done this so many times before, I just cannot get rid of the thought that it would be so much easier, so much better, if we just turned around now.
But no, my legs are already moving and we go in and we are kings of the night, and I make sure every step is strong and every breath is calm and cool, and we already know what we have come for, so we stride past the others and we take what is ours, and after the cashier says six dollars and my friend gives her a five, I know our cover is blown, I know we’ve been revealed as fools, so my mind retreats to the porch, and I turn to my friend as my mouth tries to tell a story about what happened at work yesterday but it gets caught up on a tiny detail, whether the man said, “Yes, two oranges” or if he said “No, I’ll take three,”  and I realize that I am talking in circles and that my grave is ready for me to jump right in, but then suddenly I am receiving my change from the pretty cashier and I am walking out and the buzzing from the flies trying to get at the lemonade disappears with the sound of the bell on the door.
We sit down on the curb and there is no longer a need for the farmhouse.  This is our porch and here we can slide our feet over the pebbles and the cigarette butts and we can listen to the sound of the crinkling plastic wrappers as we feast on our donuts, our chips, our ice cream and our slushies, our success and our serenity that seems to come so easily now every night of this summer when we drive and we get that feeling which has now made peace with our minds and has poured out of our nostrils as the smoke it came in on, leaving only until we beckon it back again, asking it to shake and tear at our insides, asking it to guide us through these slow summer nights.

Prison Reform and High School Discipline

Making the switch to public school in 10th grade, I entered a world where the only punishment for wrongs was some form of wasting time (detention, suspension, etc). Whatever the student had done, they were told to sit in a room for an hour after school or to take a couple days off. Basically, because the student had annoyed and inconvenienced the teachers, the teachers would now annoy and inconvenience the student. Some teachers saw it as a way to set their students straight, and others used it as a socially-accepted form of revenge. Whatever the motive, the student was made to suffer through an hour of wasted time (arguably after having already endured six or seven hours of wasted time), and there was little encouragement for productivity. The philosophy of this punishment was determent. The student knows the consequences, so they won’t want to get in trouble. Unfortunately, it didn’t work very well, and it had a lot of the same problems as the modern day prison system.

When I was in middle school, I attended a small private Christian school that I’ve only just realized had a profound disciplinary system. Here, we were not given detention for our wrongs. We were given restitution. If we had been  caught sticking gum under a desk, we were told to stay after school, but the time would be spent productively, cleaning the gum off the bottoms of all the desks. If someone had written on the bathroom wall, they were given a bucket of soapy water and a scrubber to clean the graffiti off the stalls, and if that didn’t work, they were given a bucket of paint and a brush. In a sense, we were treated like adults and trusted with responsibility, a lesson more valuable than most of what went on in the classrooms.

Now I doubt this school had any idea that their system was so insightful or that it has such potential for other institutions. They were simply following the ancient Judeo-Christian ideal of penance. If you screw something up, then it’s not only your responsibility to apologize and ask forgiveness, but also to go fix it and make up for the damages.

Some see this system as barbaric, but I would argue that it could be seen as revolutionary. Imagine a judicial system in this country where criminals were given opportunities to make up for their wrongs, rather than waste time in a cell. If our true aim were to help people learn how to live in society, why would we punish them by taking them out of that society? It’s the same old problem going on with school detentions. The goal is just to get the trouble-makers out of our sight so we don’t have to deal with them. In fact, we’re so good at it that there are currently 2.3 million people wasting time in American prisons.

Instead of adding to these ridiculously high numbers, I propose we find a more productive way to deal with our criminals. Send thieves to farming communities where they can learn to provide for themselves and contribute to society, working in cooperation with others. Many criminals would probably prefer this lifestyle anyway but have never been given the opportunity for it, having been oppressed so deep into poverty and despair that theft was the only visible option for feeding their families. If citizens have sown violence, then teach them to sow peace. Don’t just lock them away as if to say they are lost and hopeless.

The major flaw in my plan is that in order for it to work, it requires a loving authority. Our middle school teachers genuinely cared about us, and that is why they took the time to teach us a better way to live instead of taking the easy way out and just forcing us to sit in the corner. And while I make this statement without much verification, I imagine it would be difficult to find law officials who would fit the same description. We would need not just a changed system, but a completely refreshed system, with new people running everything with a new attitude. I wonder if it would be possible to find enough of the right kind of people in this country.

And even more important would be for us as a society to make our own penance, to go and change all the failed systems that lead so many into crime. That is the real challenge here. To create a world where we can admit our mistakes and try to fix our damaging models of ecomoics, education, and more.

A quick ditty

Since the others have gone on to proclaim this as an act of nostalgia, I will follow.

Pennsylvania, more specifically Berks County, has been home for the past twenty years. It’s programmed itself into my personality, and as a result, a wrinkle on my forehead. It’s an appendage of both the physical and mental…or maybe the physical and mental are an appendage of it. Probably the latter.

Ever since last winter, however, I’ve been scheming on leaving. Of course, nothing has happened as of yet. I may be a bit to thorough and WAY to practical on actually leaving, but the thought is a daily one….Twenty years is a long time in one place…
And though I do look to leave, and at almost every possible way of doing so that abides by my definition of practical, I think returning will also occur. It’s home, and will now impact me for the rest of my adult life…roots do.

In the cold and dark New York

Of course, not all of us stayed in Pennsylvania.  Sometimes the world is bigger than Pennsylvania.  Not always, but sometimes.

The world is, however, ALWAYS bigger than Bernville, Pennsylvania, and sometimes you just have to get as far away as you can from the rural town in which you grew up.  I’m no further than my fellow Pittsburgh colleague, but there’s something about state lines that freak people out.  I’m not saying that compared to my friends I’m more daring, more cultured, or anything like that… because, quite simply, I’m not.  Let me just explain my view on that ol’ town (sorry, borough) of mine:

Bernville is that old friend from elementary school that you used to be able to spend countless hours with ravaging the imaginary woodspeople and playing video games until the dinner bell was rung, but now that you are fifteen years older you are two completely different people, and while you want to ponder the curiosities of life and your very existence, all he wants to do is drink beer on his back porch and take care of those squirrels that get just too damn close to his ’67 Chevy.  You can get together every now and then and reminisce about the good times and painfully try to make small talk about what is going on in each other’s lives, but sooner or later you will either tire of the awkward silences or you will offend each other when beliefs and politics get thrown into the mix.  It’s not long before you two stop seeing each other altogether, because, let’s face it, it’s only so long you can pretend that your friendship didn’t end a long while back.

It’s important to note that this is an excerpt from an essay that I wrote about Bernville, in which I explain how it will always hold a special place in my heart, how it treated me very well as a kid growing up, and how, as a huge fan of nostalgia, it will always be enjoyable to visit on my trips home.

That being said, I mean every word of it. It would be incredibly ignorant to think that the pleasure of going home wasn’t almost exclusively derived from seeing my family and friends who are there, who fortunately are not at all like that metaphor.  Remove them, and the burning of Bernville wouldn’t be such a terrible thing.