Crack

I was born between the generations. Not part of my parents' Depression fears, nor my older brothers '60's rebellion, I fell between the cracks of the Named generations. I was too young to remember the day Kennedy was shot, too old to have had computer access in my school. Too young for Howdy Doody, too old for Sesame Street, or even the Electric Company. I had leftovers, my brother's Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs- or the remains of them.

I was not the object of hope, but the salvage from despair. All the anti-drug anti-sex messages were aimed at me, warning me of the excesses of my half generation older brothers. I had missed the boat, and I had escaped the worst of the dangers. I saw from the car window the scars from the Detroit riots of '67, boarded up storefronts, and the death of the older neighborhoods. I remember vaguely the gas wars, and the prices dropping to 30¢ a gallon. My oldest brother was in Thailand during the Vietnam War, it was simply the underlying horror of my early childhood.

What I came into consciously in the popular mind was the fear of nuclear war, and pollution infecting my world. I supped feminism as a right, an inevitability, to grow into as the society would. I assumed that all the old small minded men would die out, and the boys my age would assume the obvious- that women were due equal rights. Assumed to be a goody-goodie- I was not offered drugs in school. Shy and depressed, I was not offered sexual experimentation either.

I remember not being able to find clothes that were not hideous polyester knit, and skirts too short, and jeans not allowed. My mother bemoaned the difficulty of finding slips, and I longed to never wear a dress again. Popular music was a constant, consumed with no more thought than Wonder Bread or canned corn. I was given no choice, so I did not evaluate. Having no money myself, I was not invested in the material culture of my time.

When I went to college, a year after high school, I was 19. I caught up on the mass culture, but not just the current one. I had film classes, and the University Film Society and the Detroit Institute of Arts Film Theater, and the Punch & Judy, and dollar night at the Ren Cen, seeing everything foreign and domestic. I most enjoyed going folk dancing- never shared by my friends. I had friends ten years older, and two or three years younger- when the world seemed to have changed when I wasn't looking. I learned from them, but I was never a part of their soap operas of rotating roommates, loves and dramas, existential angst or nostalgia. I was quietly blundering along my own path, in my own timeline, hiding my experiences as unworthy and uninteresting, not part of the movement of the lives around me.

I am still hopelessly out of step with any group of folks around me. If I have a drummer it is Steward Copeland. I was on my spouse's friend's BBS before there was a www. I love music from all over the world, since before it was called World Music, and I sing Sacred Harp which is a very old form of folk music. Neither truly Buddhist nor ever evangelical, I do try to live in a christian manner and grow the serenity treasured in Eastern philosophies. I have this outlet for my writing that strains the definition of blog. I don't follow the rules unless I think there is a point to them. I don't dress like anyone I know, I never wanted a diamond ring, pregnancy or children, a house or a dog.

I do not do drugs, although I may well have tried marijuana on several occasions many years ago (May Have because I told the Army not ever, so well, can't admit anything, can I?) I am against the war going on, but I despair of making any difference in ending it- just as I despair of ending bigotry or sexism or Global Climatological Fuck Up (GCFU) or ugly fashion. All I can do is object and live my life consistent with my conviction. And with kindness toward all I can touch.

Because if WWI didn't end war, any more than WWII, and the activists of the 60's fell down on all their promises, how can I hope to Change the World?

Perhaps by putting just the right amount of pressure in the crack, in my own small way, in my own time, one soul alive to possibility can make a millimeter of difference. I figured out in second grade that I cannot shush the rest of the class when the teacher asks for quiet. I can, however, be silent myself. I can become myself, only that, and it is everything, in any generation, in any culture, in any world.