I know, it’s been more than a month. I almost exited the month without a word or thought. I just don’t know if that’s possible, even here.
Of course, life is “busy”, meaning it is changing, or streaming headlong into the future with knowable changes forecast soon. In other words, Goldie Lobs and I will have a wedding one month from tomorrow.
She give me love, love, love, love, crazy love. So true. Thank you, Mr. Moondance.
But, this post really isn’t meant to talk about what little my unknowing mind will awake to in that sweet Saturday morning of marriage (both, the day after the wedding and then in the more metaphoric sense, which has been tainted by this explanatory aside).
What I really meant to write about, and something I have thought about for a little bit - people like my nieces and nephews growing up in a different world than I really even know. The title came from the a little bit of writing I did last Saturday. I wondered to myself about the misguided thought of many parents wanting their offspring to be “better off” than they were. Well, that very thing happened, sort of. And I’m just imagining from general perception and individual experience in my family. A lifetime of struggle from the Depression-era onward. All to give another generation a better chance, a chance to be better off. But there seems to be a loss in principles in the transmission of ease between those two generations. Better off ended up meaning difficult things became easier, and life was to be enjoyed in the moment, right away, not in a while, or down the road.
And like a lot of people right now, I think that the future is not so bright for the newborn and their older siblings. At least, it’s not bright from where we get to see and imagine it now. Whether it is nutrition or education or the death of planet earth or STDs… It feels like shooting a pellet gun at a battleship. What chance do they have?
But here is another change I think is fermenting. Parents who were taught about only giving their children whatever they wanted, and appeasement became the norm, or better yet, calling it opportunity and other ridiculous words - these parents who only knew how to give themselves up (rightly) for unappreciative progeny got successive generations of better off worse people. I see it at work, and I used to watch it on the trains in Portland, and I know it from walking through a mall or hearing the news, or seeing a group of teenage girls gathered at a table in a fancy restaurant, faces lit by texting cell phones while their counterparts likewise ignore them….
The nice thing about the decline of the general is the ability to shine without much effort. But that’s a sad glory. Sad to be the most beautiful pig-person. The most intelligent dullard. The nicest narcissist.
And then I wonder how much of the new standard is brewing below the crusty burnt surface. And that’s when I hope that a new generation will be better than better off. Eat better and waste less. Exercise not from obligation, but from desire. Think imaginatively, speak freely and fluidly. Think in other languages. Give their time and money and talents.
Maybe I’ll have happier posts to relay here shortly. I really am excited and happy, but on a very personal level. I am going to wed the woman who livens my mind and gives me goosebumps and makes me laugh so hard I fart uncontrollably. Doesn’t everybody wish they had that? Well, maybe not exactly that last part. I’ll see if I can post mid-month, since the end of the month is going to be too busy, I hope, for this sort of blather. Until next month, with l0ve…
-your Underground man