to live and die in YA

I’ve been trying to decode all this YA I’ve been reading lately, and here’s what I’m thinking. It’s about fighting to stay a kiddo. Peter Pan. Captain Hook. Figuring out a way to grow up and find your place in society, but remain childlike in ways important to you. These YA books are populated with characters who are questioning society and authority. Learning to make their own decisions. Questioning the law, questioning the rules, the status quo. Being an outsider, not quite fitting in. And realizing they don’t want to compromise. YA books are full of characters who are just waking up. And that’s what I love. They are so full of hope. Anything can happen. If we could all maintain this mindset just imagine how much we could progress.
As a (still, barely) twenty-something, this is something I still struggle with. Living in Florida, having this professional job, wearing the big girl work clothes. It all eclipses that childlike sense of whimsy I was so close to in Indiana. Feeling like I am supposed to be acting like a grown-up makes me second guess myself. It’s like I’m in the closet about being a belligerent hipster. And that’s just too hard, you know? Being a hoodlum is too important, as ridiculous as that sounds.
I’ve realized something these last two years. My eyes have been opened. I bought into the system. I was (the public service equivalent of) middle management. I moved to a completely foreign place for a job. I worked for a large organization with a tightly controlled flow of information. My innovation was squashed. I was bored. I wore khakis. I was always anxious. I didn’t have time or energy to be me anymore. I was a bought woman. I didn't do the job because I wanted to, because it made happy. I did it because I could. I did it for validation. I was a puppy, begging to be petted. To belong. To be important. To matter.
And now- I have been fundamentally changed. I have swung farther toward my center in these last few weeks, having decided and planned my return to Neverland. And I would rather be a proletariat for life than a middle manager, at any price.
In Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series, when Tally Youngblood gets made into a Special- she hasn’t won the fight. Going up the chain of command doesn’t mean you’ve won anything. You’re still selling yourself for a price. You’re still a bought woman. You just got a better rate. And they have to pay you more, to give you the illusion of more freedom. Because they’re getting a bigger piece of you. Because that’s the price for your silence, your cooperation. Your alliance. And that makes it even worse, because you think you’re free. You think you’ve won.
We each have a choice to make between two paths. Work for the man. Buy into the man. Care about the man. Make money and buy a bunch of shit. Or go your own way: be an indie. Let the chips fall where they may. Live by the seat of your pants.
It’s all about sticks and carrots. Every society has them. Whether it’s money, power, validation, fear, duty, fame, or celebrity. There must be a way for society to ensure its continued existence. What’s your incentive? Are you going to let someone else create your carrot? Or do you trust yourself to create your own?
People have been trying for centuries to create new ideal societies, new systems of government. And they always will. It will always be advantageous for people to come together to live and work in societies. And there will always be governments, city councils, chore duties, work. The fact the most people play along and buy into the system means that there is a bigger crowd for the crims to hide behind. And there will always be crims too. You will never get 100% buy-in, no matter what you’re selling. There will always be abstainers. And if capitalism fell tomorrow, another system would follow. And it would take us decades to decode the system, to figure out how to take advantage. To hijack the infrastructure. So, um, I guess thanks, capitalism?
The bottom line is this: I want to be a crim. I want to pull ugly tricks, fly under the radar, and stay a kiddo. As long as I can.
I’ve always been a socialist, a prole, but I think I’m coming out as an anarchist. And it feels like freedom.

on going underground

People keep asking me “what are you going to do?” They say it real slow with their faces all twisted up. Holding their breath. Like I am about to pull a Thelma and Louise and jump off a cliff. My answer to their question is more like a paragraph. But that’s not what they’re asking.
What they really mean is What Are You Going To Do For A Job? I just don’t think it’s that big of a deal. Yeah, I’ll get a job, but it’s just going to be one little piece of that which is What I Am Going To Do. The last time I answered with “live,” which I think is the most accurate and precise answer, but the co-worker in question was so puzzled that I inevitably went into the paragraph. I think a better question is who am I going to be?
I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to go to brunches and potlucks with friends. Go to local rock shows, art shows, take hustler for walks in the cemetery, lay on the grass and watch the sunset. Ride bikes around town. Go hiking in the forest, sneak into the quarries, salvage for junk at the salvo and cast offs at the recycling center. Hang out at the library and Soma, go on nighttime photo hunts, join my friends’ book club, volunteer…all the things I haven’t been doing since I’ve been in Florida. I’m going to get back to being all the versions of myself which I’ve subjugated for this job and this place. Other people have lives, and I want one too.
I feel like I’m coming full circle and making the choice I wanted to make when I was eighteen. I wanted to put off college, get a simple job, and take lots of road trips. My gut instinct was that I didn’t know what I wanted to do for life, but that I knew lots of little things I wanted to do. Going to college felt like such a huge thing. An expensive commitment. No way to turn back and undo it.
And I did love college. It certainly did its job, which is to ripen one as an individual. But it was also at great cost. Being indoctrinated into “the system,” being trained to enter “the big machine.” It’s a slow wake up out of that long sleep. Realizing how things work.
We’re all running for these carrots stuck in our faces without thinking about who put them there. Realizing that the carrot is there is the first step. Once you see it can you choose to ignore it. Ignore it enough and it goes away. Then you can make your own carrots. Make a million in all different directions. Do whatever. Say to hell with the system.
Growing up in Bloomington, it’s easy to think that everything is lovely. That lots of towns are like Bloomington. That every place is a community. That people work together. You just don’t realize how special it is. What an island it is. How rare.
I feel like I can truly say my eyes are open. I am going to dedicate myself to the small. If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do, right?
Right now I am happy to just swim beneath the currents.

taking out the garbage

The thing they never tell you about Miami- Carl Hiaasen, Dexter, CSI- is it’s all true. It’s all. Fucking. True.
They don’t like to advertise it on the travel sites. Welcome to sunny Miami! You’re about to get fucked by a major metro area.
They don’t tell you on Miamiandbeaches.com about how two years ago there was a string of killings in the summer heat. Three people were attacked by alligators in their apartment complexes. Home sweet home. Women jogging around the man-made lakes with their center-placed fountains. And a former resident of the Everglades wants to play nature. He’s just hungry. He’s just doing what he’s supposed to. You did drain his home after all, pave over it with these gawdawful strip-malls.
One of the victims was a man jogging with his dog. The dog attacked the gator and his owner got away. The dog didn’t. Man’s best friend.
But the thing about Florida, the entire bottom half of the state is only a couple feet above sea level. In order to build roads they have to take ground from somewhere else. Even the earth gets displaced. Try driving along the highways, any major road, and you’re going to see never ending drainage ditches following along side. People like to call these drainage ditches, they call them “canals.” I suppose living next to a “canal” makes people feel better. Better than “open-faced sewer.” With alligators. So maybe the next time you’re on 595 and you’re car breaks down, maybe next time you don’t get out of the car. Maybe you just sit tight.

the beginning

I’ve always been good at melding. At shape shifting. At becoming the shape that fits the hole that I see. Not necessarily the hole that is, but the hole that I see.
I oscillate. I’m constantly becoming different versions of myself. Being reincarnated.
I am always sure that this new version is what I want. I want so much to be petted. To please you. To make you proud. Eventually-
Just as I get really good at being someone I start to shift. I start. I think, “Maybe I’ve been all wrong this whole time.” I think, “What the hell have I been doing?” I think, “God, I’m so stupid.”
Everything I build, I tear it all down. Start over. “A clean slate,” I say, “That’s what I really need.”
I look for new possibilities. I search my inventory. I set a goal and I become someone new.
It helps if you accompany this plan with a really dramatic action, like loading up all your earthly possessions into a Volkswagen and moving across the country. It helps if you don’t know anyone in this new place. Anonymity means you can be anyone. Being a nobody is freedom. No expectations means you are free to be a failure.
But moving is hard. Learning a new culture. Where’s the best pizza place? How do I get a driver’s license? Why isn’t anyone using a turn signal? It’s all bound to wear on a person. To whittle away the extras.
The surly starts as a little pang at first, slowly gathering speed. Rolling down the hill like a Katamari. Headed for destruction. When you start to find yourself scowling at little kids coming out of story time, you know the train has hit the station. It’s time to go.
All this shape shifting gets a person thinking. “Who am I when I’m not being someone else?,” you say. “Where is my default? Who is that person?”
Maybe a somebody needs to stay in one place long enough to find that out.

no telling

i dreamt about a boy last night. this is pretty weird for me, being that i rarely think about boys. the last time i had a dream about a boy, i was the boy-person. so last night.
i had just moved into a new town and rented a room in a house. a little two room house built all shed-style onto another, real house. after a while someone moves into the other room. it's this boy. he's all like oliver twist and sitting on the bed. he looks at me and it's like we're the same person. i know him from somewhere. from my real past. he is so. fragile. it's disarming.
let's just say at the end of the dream he had turned into a sexually confused girl, whining away on the bed next to me. but when i woke up, i was the one who was confused. a dream about a boy? was i the boy? am i the boy? am i more boy than i think? is this what i'm afraid of?
no telling.
or maybe it's because of all the YA fiction i'm reading lately.