Friday, August 28, 2015

Twenty School Rules for Adulthood




1.      Naps are not confined to the trifold permissions of a kindergarten mat

2.      Careers can become pill capsules; always question the cafeteria line  

3.      Joy of creative expression through art is not childishness, but the seed of maturation

4.      We all want to be accepted, heard, seen; the playground did not truncate it continues to expand

5.      Recess was not to play, but to figure out what the hell was going to kill or love you in the jungle

6.      Sex is always there from third grade libidos, impish puritan denial is death paste on a stale cracker, pack your own lunch box according to what feeds your body, not the rest of the lunch table’s eyeballs, carrots and apples over ding dongs or ho-ho’s, nutrition before packaging

7.      Attraction across or within gender does not determine emotional or sexual commitment; girls and boys can play how and whoever the hell they want to play with, BFF’s rule! 

8.      Junior high memo notebooks kept under mattresses are the genesis chambers for obtuse idiot prolix words to hide simple ideas of hurt.  We all hurt.  Most starfish fingers grow back.

9.      Abuse is the nuclear cackle of god asking for communal empathy to convert bystanders into presence, what happened on that afternoon in fourth grade doesn’t go away, but better is possible outside the shadows

10.  Real girls never get too old for glitter, costumes, or paint brushes

11.  Sex ed never mentions how a simultaneous orgasm rips at the atomic seams to burst fusion of true intimacy or that casual sex can be a petri dish of loneliness or a portal to god

12.  The machine of innards is the ultimate scientific experiment; we are clockworks of love and fear

13.  Most of high school is oscillation between inner romantic and delusional idiot; if one is lucky cynicism does not strangle this right the hell out of you by thirty

14.  None of us know what to do; adulthood is basically still waiting for the principal to call us for expulsion for faking it; we are all faking it

15.  The only place for a participation ribbon or first place trophy is in a trash can; the inevitable destination for every clutched totem-achievement idol is either a landfill or an attic crevice some adult is contemplating making room for another iteration of commercial plastic shit no one needed to buy in the first place.  Adults don’t need to advertise; memories are enough.  If need be make art out of it; art is rarely bad. 

16.  No one needs permission to make art.  Dancing shoes, poetry notebooks, skits on video, singing, sketch pads, canvases: should not end at graduation or begin with enrollment. 

17.  Pretentious self-indulgent narcissism is the holy grail of the jock or the queen bee who never quite gets past the ambrosia of being a school yard deity; see elective cosmetic surgery and penial marketing through truck choice

18.  CPA’s, lawyers, chefs, educators, nurses, betting consultants, biomedical and computer scientists can all be on an adult dodgeball team and dress up likes superheroes

19.  The bravery to ask for help is a pinball catalyst to spark the humility to shed the ego and really get it; like finally really get it; never quit raising your hand


20.  The difference between adult and childhood is that when an adult attempts to coddle you with euphemisms like everything happens for a reason, it will happen when you least expect it, or karmic equilibrium jargon: a child believes, an adolescent suspects, an adult knows, the lie was a cushion to accepting the aching bewildering awe of your life is what you make it, there are no saviors, only finding the interconnected universe through the self; that’s it.  

No comments:

Post a Comment