Skip to main content

Angry Youth


When I was young I was often angry. Angry about how I felt slighted, by one thing or another mostly. Angry about injustice. Angry that children didn’t have rights, that we could be conscripted to fight and die by a political system we didn’t have a voice in.

This anger gave me strength and it gave me power. It drove me toward the political system, not away from it, and I determined at a young age that I would become the youngest and angriest president ever.

The anger wasn’t directed toward any one person and it wasn’t driven by evil. It was anger directed toward enabling positive change in the world. Our country had just pulled out of Vietnam, Nixon had just resigned office, and no-one seemed to know what was next except the inevitable nuclear holocaust and societal collapse that so many people were prophesying.

Into this mix I saw the world as a place that needed help. I lashed out and took swipes. At times I was taken down, “put in my place”, by adults who were less angry but stronger than I was. I ran for student council in High School but that was a farce. I voted as soon as I turned 18 but then, in the mists of life and the pea-soup-fog of booze, I drew back and grew less angry.

As I aged I lamented not keeping that fire burning longer, Though I didn’t stay involved in politics and counter-culture activism, I look with envy on the movements of our recent history. If I were younger I would have been an Anarchist, a member of the The Anonymous group activities. I am currently a huge Greta Thunberg fan. In our current political-separatist-state I wish more than anything that there was a viable third-party. Maybe someday there will be. For now, I am just getting angry again.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Missing Pieces

After I finished B. Coming Burl, I was fortunate to have many people read it who had grown up with me and knew for themselves, or who had grown old with me telling them my stories of a misguided youth. Several of them reminded me about stories that I either (1) had to edit out during revisions, or (2) had forgotten to include. So now I have decided to share a few of these missing pieces - teasers for those who haven’t read it, and a bonus for those who have. One story was from way back in the mists of my youth, when I was about four years old. We would make periodic pilgrimages to Nogales, Mexico as a family to buy essentials. I have fond memories of the small family-owned grocery store where my dad would buy café combate in small burlap bags, which the owner would grind for us in the back of the store, filling the space with the most amazing smell of fresh coffee. We would buy salsa from the factory and my brothers would buy fireworks to blow things up when we got home. Th
Post a Comment
Read more

Daily Routine

My routine is to write on the bus. I work in Seattle and live in Tacoma and so my writing salon is the Sound Transit bus, the 590. Both the north-bound (in the morning) and the south-bound (in the evening) is my literary capsule, driving through time and space while I am cocooned in my thoughts. I often write about people I see on the bus. If any of my characters seem familiar, and you take the 590, I may be writing about you. My inspiration often comes from seemingly inconsequential occurrences. As an example, seeing the rivulets of water tracing the glass on a rainy day, or overhearing a conversation between two people where one person says, in exasperation, “They can’t keep us in suspense like this!” From these small happenings I spin great tales in my head, with ideas cascading off of one another and building momentum until I spill over with excitement about the images that I conjure up with my vivid imagination. And then I get to my destination and I get off the bu
Post a Comment
Read more

Writing background...

I began writing at a very young age and really never stopped. I wrote in journals, I wrote short stories, and I wrote poems. I also wrote a lot for work. That was an interesting oeuvre, to be honest, and one that might be of interest someday. The work-related writing included both highly technical instructions and also letters of apology to guests who felt slighted in some way during their stay with us at the hotel. Although most of this isn’t publicly available, I am certain that some of my responses to guests on TripAdvisor are still there. It took me fifty years but I recently finished my first book, a memoir, entitled “B. Coming Burl” and self published it using Kindle Direct Publishing. Even before I published it I began writing my second book, which I plan to finish this summer (2020). It is entitled “When I was a child I found the entrance to hell to be a real place”. Although this second book is fictional, it has a lot of me in it. Thank you for finding my blog.
Post a Comment
Read more