Millennials

We're the generation that can communicate with anyone, anywhere on the planet, at any time, speaking to them through little machines like they were right next to us.
We're the generation that can go to a different universe and live in it for days, killing dragons with magic and building houses with stone we've collected while making friends with aliens or humans or elves. We can do all of this by moving two of our fingers.
We're the generation that can access and process almost all of the information in the world, current and past, in our homes. We can instantly watch what is happening 300,000 miles away, like we were there. We can access free history, free opinions on history, free counter-theories on that history, free different perspectives on that history, at any moment. We can look up any word in any language for free. We can listen to the opinions, the blogs and the facebooks and the twitters, of most human beings on the planet, whenever we care to listen.
Most of us carry a little device in our pocket, five inches long and three inches wide, that gives us all of this at any time we want.
We're the generation where for a month's pay we can visit a different world in a day, where people look differently than we do and speak differently than we do and have differently shaped houses and clothes and think differently than we do. But when all of this is stripped away, we still all need to love and feel happy and eat and sleep and work, and the easier it is for us to visit one another, the smaller the world becomes, the more we realize that we are all neighbors, all needing one another to get by.
We're the generation that treats people like they're people, no matter what they look like or what they do. At least we're trying to be.
Yes, we're lazy. We get so caught up in our magic machinery, our alternate universes and our instantaneous communication that we put little emphasis on money and a 9-5 job and an education. I guess our little phones keep telling us that education doesn't get us a job. Our phones keep telling us 9-5 jobs don't make you happier or a better person. Our phones keep telling us that people of different races, different sexual orientations, different religions and different genders are people with just as many flaws and just as much goodness as anybody else.
So stop making fun of us. We're in our twenties and thirties, and our phones tell us how when you were kids, you were doing drugs, being racist and inventing the trends we're still following today. We're your children and your grandchildren. Give us some time, let's see what we can do.

Sunday Song #6: "Ticket to the Moon" By Electric Light Orchestra

Remember the good old 1980's,
When things were so uncomplicated,
I wish I could go back there again;
And everything could be the same.

I've got a ticket to the moon,
I'll be leaving here any day soon;
Yeah, I've got a ticket to the moon,
But I'd rather see the sunrise, in your eyes.

Got a ticket to the moon
I'll be rising high above the earth so soon,
And the tears I cry might turn into the rain
That gently falls upon your window;
You'll never know.

Ticket to the moon.
Fly, fly through a troubled sky
Up to a new world shining bright.

Flying high above,
Soaring madly through the mysteries that come,
Wondering sadly if the ways that led me here
Could turn around and I would see you there,
Standing there.

Ticket to the moon
Flight leaves here today from Satellite 2
As the minutes go by, what shall I do,
I paid the fare, what more can I say,
It's just one way.

Smoke

A wave of smells hit me as soon as I walked through the door—the smell of spilled wine and perfume, the smell of incense and withered roses. Another, stronger smell penetrated the air as well but I couldn’t identify it, thought it made me think of a woman who had spent many sleepless nights in a crowded room and it made me sad without knowing why.

            Sissy hadn’t seen me come in yet. I could see her face illuminated in the mirror light and the silhouette of her slim white shoulders, her curly black hair. No, she didn’t see me yet. She had her lipstick pinched between her fingers and pressed against her small mouth. She did it slowly, and I stood watching her quietly where she couldn’t see me. Always it had amazed me how much time it took for a woman to paint such a small part of her body and I wondered why she ever bothered. When Sissy finished she rubbed her lips together and clicked the lid of the lipstick back on decisively.

            Little Noel had the T.V. on in the corner and was sitting in front of it, her legs curled up to her chin as she hugged herself close. Sissy had finally seen me in the mirror. “Hi,” she said, still facing her reflection, still covering her face. “I missed you.”

            The sheets and blankets lay twisted up on the bed; I pulled a red corner out and flattened it against the mattress, sat down. I had come here to say something warm and comforting but now I had nothing to say. I just looked down at the red carpet and listened to the quiet voices in the T.V.

            “You okay?” I asked. I could ask nothing else.

            She slowly lined her eyes with black. “Yes. It’s the best thing.”

            I glanced at Noel. She had scooted around so that she faced me and now she grinned with all her little white teeth showing. I grinned back and she shyly buried her face in her knees, still grinning and looking.

            “You want to talk?” I asked Sissy.

            “Nothing to say,” she said. I knew there wasn’t. She had said everything already, shouting it out in the living room every day of their lives. She finished her makeup and looked dully around the room, then at me. “It’s hot in here,” she said. “I want to smoke. I want to be outside.”

            We left Noel with the door cracked. Sissy leaned against the stair rail and looked out over the parking lot where the trees met the sky. The sun hung threateningly low over the branches and a warm dull breeze seemed to fly from that sun. Nothing is worse than a warm breeze; there is no refreshment in it. She sighed, pulled out a cigarette and lit it up.

            I slowly settled myself next to Sissy. “Thanks for being here for me,” she said, taking my hand in hers for a moment and squeezing it hard. A faint wisp of smoke drifted up from between lips.

            I wouldn’t have missed being here for the world. I had known it would happen for months, and when I got a call yesterday I hadn’t been surprised. Maybe I had even been happy, I don’t know—all I knew was that Sissy had cried and cried as if all the tears she’d been holding in her whole life suddenly opened up. She wasn’t crying now.

            “Where’d he go?” I asked.

            “Didn’t say.”

            “Not a letter or anything?”

            “There was a letter, but he didn’t say.”

            Sissy’s face was yellow under the sinking sun, and despite her makeup I could still see the shadows under her eyes. She took another long pull from her cigarette and as she did a mask of ashes fell from the glowing red tip, fluttering down and down into the air below us. Her eyes stared absently at the sun.

            “Pretty,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

            “What?”

            “I don’t know.” The silence grew longer as the sky grew darker. Noel was talking to herself in the bedroom and a cicada shrieked out in the trees, but Sissy and I were as silent as the sun.

            Slowly she turned and glanced at me for only a moment. I put my hand on her shoulder and she looked away back to where the sun’s rim glowed faintly in the tree branches, etched black and yellow like spider webs. A moment later the rim was gone. Slowly I lifted my hand from her but quickly she grabbed it and held it like a lost child. Her cigarette was shaking between her fingers and the smoke wavered, but only for a moment. She took another pull from it and let me go.

            “Maybe he’ll come back,” I said softly.

            “I don’t want him to.”

            “No?”

            She paused. “Maybe for Noel I want him, but not for me. It’s too late for me, but Noel deserves more.”

            “What do you mean?” I asked.

            She looked at me and opened her lips for a moment as if she planned to speak, but quickly turned away. “It’s not going to be easy on her. I don’t think she’s figured it out yet. He’s been gone before.”

            I could hear the advertisements floating out of the room and Noel’s soft childish singing. She’d figure out in a few days that her Dad was gone, and she would cry hard and long but her tears wouldn’t bring him back. But she was young now, and if he never came back it didn’t matter; in a few years she would forget what he looked like except in maybe a few faded photographs and how his face was captured in her own reflection.

            I saw in my mind’s eye the moment when I first held Noel in my arms two years ago. Her blond hair was just beginning to curl around like her mother’s, and she smiled for the first time as I made funny faces at her. Something swelled up in my heart, something hot that made my eyes burn. I pulled Sissy close to me and held her head against my chest; her body stiffened for only a moment, bristled, resentful, and I could feel the tension in her shoulders and neck. Then it was if a knot inside of her was untied and everything went loose. If I had let go of her at that moment she would have collapsed but my hands still held her head against my chest.

            “If you need me, Cecilia Devonport, I’m here for you. I’ll be there for Noel. If she needs a father, then even though I’ll never be the real thing I’ll be the closest thing possible.”

            “James—you don’t have to—“

            Something weird and dry came out of my throat, something like laughter. I pulled her head up and looked into her eyes. “Sissy, you know I’m here and there’s no one else.”

            For a moment there was silence. Then Sissy squeezed me hard and said in a dazed voice, “Thank you.”

            The shades of the sunset darkened and left us in blackness.

Art at its Best: This is Where you Make it Permanent

Sunday Song #5: "Yellow Brick Road" By Elton John

When are you gonna come down?
When are you going to land?
I should have stayed on the farm,
I should have listened to my old man!

You know you can't hold me forever,
I didn't sign up with you.
I'm not a present for your friends to open.
This boy's too young to be singing, the blues!

So goodbye yellow brick road,
Where the dogs of society howl.
You can't plant me in your penthouse;
I'm going back to my plough!
Back to the howling old owl in the woods,
Hunting the horny back toad.
Oh I've finally decided my future lies:
Beyond the yellow brick road.

What do you think you'll do then?
I bet that'll shoot down your plane.
It'll take you a couple of vodka and tonics
To set you on your feet again.

Maybe you'll get a replacement;
There's plenty like me to be found.
Mongrels who ain't got a penny,
Sniffing for tidbits like you on the ground.

So goodbye yellow brick road,
Where the dogs of society howl!
You can't plant me in your penthouse;
I'm going back to my plough.
Back to the howling old owl in the woods
Hunting the horny back toad.
Oh I've finally decided my future lies:
Beyond the yellow brick road.

Lily

There was a time when I knew you quite well. You were like a garden; I knew all your flowers and colors, all of them etched in my mind with your touch. Then it happened and the door slammed shut--bolted, chain, silence. None of your beauty remained but pale green paint peeling off an iron door, and the windows were empty.
I wanted what was in that garden. My tears fell but they wouldn't open the door. I stroked the stone walls but it did not open the door. I laughed and spoke-no word in return. I will find other gardens, I said; perhaps it will help me forget.
You have flowers that no one else has; I could go to the most exhotic garden in the world and sit unmoved, saying, "Where is the lily?" Our lily. You put it into my hair once, but you seemed to have forgotten.
You became all walls and closed doors to me, but there were still windows. When spring came I could see the tips of the hedges bud and thought, "would you let me enjoy them?" And in other windows I saw dead branches, but you tried to shutter them from me--from everyone. I see things you would forbid me to see, but I have wandered too often in that garden to not know the signs. You are dying, but you are all walls to me. How am I to love the walls as I did your garden? Are the walls apart of the garden of something of their own? I do not know; before I didn't know the walls were even there.
So I will love the walls. I will watch the moss grow on the stone the way you used to bloom in spring. I will ask you if anything was happening within, and you will answer that if there was it wasn't important. Thaat is how we talk now.
It's been a while. I have stopped caring. The other day you hugged me and whispered, "It'll be all right." It was like a flower blooming on the topmost branch, barely reaching over the wall. I looked at it and thought, "Didn't I used to love that tree? It's been so long, but it's not as pretty as I remember. I have forgotten what you looked like on the inside."
Except the lily. I will never forget that. Although I'm sure that if I could enter you today I would find all our lilies shriveled and dead forever. No, I will not enter the garden again.

Sunday Song #4: "Miriam" by Pretty Balanced

Miriam was kind of homely,
kind of ugly in the face and yet
She had nice eyes.
She had nice breasts and hands and feet, but she was
small
And dark
And hurt
All over.

She was buff from lifting things.
Secretly she played the tambourine.
She had nice rhythm.
She dreamed to play the drums, but she was
Poor
And overworked
And tired

Miriam bussed to work each day
And hummed over cold soup at night.
Miriam worked for minimum wage
And hadn't had a boyfriend since that
Drug addict fling.

She had sold her television,
Saved her pennies for a weekly quart
Of milk and lotto ticket
Just in case her luck should change to
Good,
Or slightly
Less
Than bad.

Miriam was kind of homely,
Kind of ugly in the face and yet
She had nice eyes.
She had nice breasts and hands and feet.