Harper: In your experience of the world. How do people change?

Mormon Mother: Well it has something to do with God so it's not very nice.

God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching.

Harper: And then up you get. And walk around.

Mormon Mother: Just mangled guts pretending.

Harper: That's how people change.

Yesterday I yelled to -----, my mother. I don't really do it so often, just  when like normal people get normal outbreak, and yell, and scream and break things. It was one of those moments, I just went a little too far, and some things that shouldn't have were said, and then some more things were broken. Which is why I am now standing alone in a street, looking at the shithole my life has always been. And now I wonder what could have gone differently.

It all started when I got the normal problems of normal teenagers, coming of age, finding one's self, and all that crap counselors like to tell parents so they are scared of traumatizing their kids. It was just all normal; the shit in the shoe was that I am not normal. When I started having the outbreaks, the crisis and the long periods of isolation, "it's just an age thing" she said, which made sense. But I didn't feel like it was something I had to go through, you see, lying in the floor of the bathroom with a razor in one hand, pressing the wrist of the other , doesn't really feel like when you are lost in the Supermarket, or your first camp. It is not even comparable with the first day of school.

Of course my mother had to notice when she had to take me to the hospital bleeding my guts out. She freaked out, really bad. She kept screaming, and nagging me, and crying and coursing. She didn't understand then what was going on, but the look in her eyes-god, the look in her eyes- it was saddest thing I have ever seen. After the stitches and the sobs, she couldn't even look me in the eye; I knew she didn't know what to say. I was blank. "Sorry, mom" I cried "sorry." But I wasn't sorry, neither did I have the need to apologize, I was just empty, broken, a bag of bones and flesh lying in a hospital bed.

Days later I was in therapy, I think it was some sort of religious therapist, or at least he kept telling me about "the lord" and the "righteous way". I didn't even bother listening to him, what I felt had nothing to do with the absence of my father, which he kept insisting. The wound was not some child abuse thing, it wasn't. "It's just normal problems or normal teenagers" I said to avoid him, "I just can't handle well." I think even he knew that was bullshit.

After the incident my mother was not the same around me, she was careful, always treating me like some China collection of dancing Geishas. But the sort of careful that is not meant to mean love for the China, but fear of breaking it, fear it will all go to hell. She avoided words such as depressive, sad, good, bad, suffering, unbearable, common. Those still hold a close relationship for me. 

She always asked "Are you fine?" every single time she saw me, after school, before dinner, during dinner, before going to bed. "Yes" I always said, then she asked "Are you sure?", and all I thought was "Of course not! Look at me, I can't make human contact, a day can't go on without me having some sort of outburst, and entering to the bathroom for the daily routine is the most painful thing in the world, having to keep my eyes from all those edgy and pointy things, so to don't relapse." But I kept silent.

Very recently she started speaking with the school advisor I think, because he had started a tendency of calling me to his office, or asking me to participate in normal activities done by normal teenagers. I hated it, not the decorating the gym for stupid Homecoming, or being forced to help the Drama club raise funds. I hated being seen differently, those pathetic attempts done by normal people doing normal things, trying to include me, trying to make me feel oh so fucking special. Thos attempts that were obvious segregations to help the depressive kid, to make the fuck up feel good about his fucked up life. That's what I hated.

I could come off as some hermit who spent his days writing dark poetry and diaries. I am not. I do speak to people; I gather after school, I mock teachers, heck I even sometimes flirt. But there is just something in me, very deeply incrusted, stabbing me, something that brings me back to the bathroom episode. It all brings me to the sensation of having the razor pressing my wrist, back to the moment when I saw the blood sliding across the tiles. It was not happiness, it was not peace, but fuck, was it reliving.

But mother doesn’t understand this, and I can’t tell her, I wouldn’t have the heart to tell her, her son is likely to die in a bathroom floor without ever giving her grandchildren, without ever seeing Europe, without going to college, or any of those normal dreams normal people have. So I just keep silent, nodding, letting her know I’m perfect and recovering.

Then the pill episode started, which was not the answer, at least for me. When my mother started talking about it, I thought it was only natural, dose the crazy, that’ll keep him away from running with scissors. Yet it all seemed very absurd to me, it still does, how can you teach a generation of kids that drugs are bad, when you stuff the happy kids with Ritalin, the imaginative with Lithium, and the sad one with Prozac? Adults these days…they have a magic potion for every kid.

At first I didn’t care, it just made feel numb, always numb. Gladly I was no longer angry, sad, or had the need to run to the balcony and jump. I was just numb, which doesn’t mean happy, or joyous, or anything else; it means numb. But later I felt the need of the pain, like when your legs are numb from sitting on the floor, and then you stand up and they hurt. Sure it might not be nice, but the pain lets you know the legs are still alive. I needed that, the pain after the numbness, the soar wake up after the long comma. But I was healed, I was numb.

It couldn’t last for long. “It kills my soul” I told my mother, who thought was a fair trade for having her son alive, in a bag of bones and blood. I didn’t care; I started flushing it down the toilet, which brought the pain back; letting me know I was alive. You possibly think it is stupid for someone suicidal to look for feeling alive, to search that sign of heart beat. But it is not, isn’t dying the ultimate proof that we were once alive?

Maybe not for normal people.

La generación de gente nacida entre los años finales de los 80s y los 90s es pronto catalogada como una generación apática, nihilista y materialista. Pero decir que nuestra generación de jóvenes está solamente basada en los excesos mediáticos, el consumismo derrochador y la globalización carente de identidad, sería muy simple, y un error. Esta, como todas las generaciones, no es más que el producto de su entorno, su historia y lo que sucede en su desarrollo.

 No importa la dirección que tome una generación en conjunto, siempre está presente la marca de la historia de sus padres, la herencia histórica y cultural que nos acompaña. Y para entender a esta generación, común mente llamada la generación de la Red, es necesario conocer las generaciones que la afectan.

Retomando desde donde Paz menciona en El Laberitno de a Soledad la “Inteligenica Mexicana”, el dice cómo es que en su actualidad, los años 50s, México ya era un lugar sin más cultura que la mundial. A esto se refería que en vez de crecer de la raíz de dos culturas, las negaba, se alejaba de sus raíces precolombinas, y negaba su tradición española. Dejando a México con nada más que la historia mundial, y su papel en ella. Y esto nos habla de un inicio de globalización, a partir de los años 50s, la generación donde crecieron los abuelos de la generación de la Red.

Esta época se caracteriza como una de las más estables económicamente en el siglo XX para México, con influencia del estilo de vida Norteamericana, y la preponderancia del sistema capitalista. Es cuando la globalización comienza a extenderse, acentuándose aún más la perdida de una identidad nacional. Sumado a esto, existía una cultura donde imperaba  la censura, la opresión y las buenas costumbres.

Este ambiente fue lo que ocasionó que los hijos de esta generación, que crecieron en los 70s se rebelaran contra el régimen establecido. Continuando con las ideas de cambio social de los 60s, los jóvenes esparcían ideas de libertad en todo el mundo. Es cuando las mujeres en Latinoamérica comienzan a buscar una carrera profesional en su mayoría, y equidad de género y libertad sexual. Pero con esto también vino un periodo de tensión política global en Latinoamérica, causado por las dictaduras establecidas.

Por esta situación delicada, y el encuentro de ideas de las diferentes generaciones también causó una oleada de populismo en los países latinoamericanos. En los 70s también fue cuando después de una etapa estable de la economía mexicana, empezó a haber crisis e inflaciones muy acentuadas.

Estas situaciones dejan a México en un escenario que ya no es a cerca de las naciones, si no de la historia conjugada, de una economía que depende de otros países y de una cultura sin pies ni cabeza, solo influencia externa, un país globalizado. Además estas generaciones se acostumbran a un gobierno corrupto y sin cambios, una economía que es inestable y en constante crisis.

Esto se concentra y se traduce en una ideología que contempla la participación en la política como algo inútil, se es indiferente a ella. También un constante estado de desconfianza a cerca de la economía. Y más importante en la temática de El Laberinto de la Soledad, una ideología sin identidad nacional.

Y los hijos de esta generación, quienes heredan los estigmas del país y las historias de crisis, son los 90s, la juventud de la apatía. Y esta generación no solo tiene esto, sino que también crece en un ámbito de revolución tecnológica y mediática. Habiendo televisiones en casi todas las casas, y el desarrollo del internet, la información se volvió por primera vez para una generación joven, algo accesible y de muy alta velocidad.

Esta generación crece con una pre-concepción del gobierno como algo corrupto e inmutable, con el Tratado de libre comercio de Norteamérica, inundando el mercado de productos de Estados Unidos, su lenguaje y su cultura. El mexicano de esta generación no se vive como tal, se desentiende de sus llamadas raíces y se une a la ideología mundial, convirtiéndose en ciudadano del mundo. El joven ya no se vive macho ni charro, ahora es un fresa, un naco o un geek. Su distancia con los otros países se ha acortado y considera el extranjero como una realidad cercana. Pero a pesar de estos cambios drásticos, el mexicano joven aún es cerrado, se priva en sus mascaras y ve a la vida con indiferencia. El mexicano se ha liberado de México, pero sigue atrapado en el gran laberinto, solo.

[versión mexicana... dios bendiga al derecho de un autor por traducir descaradamente]
por I'm the penguin

Passion Pit, "The Reeling" from Benjamin Technology on Vimeo.

REAL FIELDS

All the little posts and dreams
Fly like some broken wings
Seems like all they really were doing
Was posting for themselves

Just like little birds and kites
Speaking with their windy voice
Seems like all they really were doing
Was posting for themselves

Don't need to post alone
No need to post alone

It's at the fields
It's real,
yes read it
It's real

In this moment I don’t know
Exactly where my life will go
Seems that all we really were doing
Was posting for ourselves

Don't need read again
No need to judge a friend

It's at the fields
It's real,
yes read it

Thought I'd written that before,
But in the skies we’ve written more
Seems like all we really were doing
Was writing for ourselves

Don't need to post alone
No need to post alone

It's at the fields
It's real,
yes read it
It's real

“It’s like it’s me, but it’s not really me, just a person there. Like someone who could be me, but is not, and I feel like it is, but it really isn’t because I’m me and no other person” I said, trying to make some sense, telling my mother how I felt.

“Pass me the milk will you?” she asked with a smile in her face, I knew she wasn’t probably listening anyway, but I kept telling her.

“It is something like inexistence, but I know I am here. Like in videogames, you control the body of the hero, I sometimes feel like the kid with the controller” I said, looking at her eyes to get any response, she poured the milk and continued to stir.

“I mean, I don’t think I’m a hero or anything or that I have to collect a hundred keys to get somewhere else, I’m not crazy.” I said, self indulging to apparently just myself “I just sometimes feel like it’s not real you know? You and I, the spoon you’re using instead of the blender, the bowl of your cookie though; nothing at all, real” I said, trying to get her into my scenario, trying to make her see what was inside my head, what worried me. But she had only eyes for the cookie though.

“You know I don’t like how the blender machine smashes the apples” my mother said, giving me the spotty glare. You see, she had this obsession with things being clean, but not your regular –wash with soap and water- sort of clean. She wanted a floor, a dress, a conversation, even an idea to be spotless, to be without a flaw, no trace of mistake, completely clean. She gave that look when one was not overwhelmingly polite with the neighbors,  when there was something she didn’t like about the set table, and specially when she though a discussion was not going the way she wanted it to.

And so I received the spotty glare, but I didn’t mind, I went on, I was sick of the spotty glare, sick of apple cookies and sick of silence. “You know, this guy on Youtube says the most wacked things, he’s like this philosopher who works at a book Publisher, and he speaks about this neo-existentialist guys who thing nothing is real and give advice about how to disconnect from reality” I said, partly because I wanted to, partly because I knew it would throw her out of her nerves.

“Amanda, you know perfectly how the Shepherd thinks about that web site, I will ask you not to reference it, or even visit it” she said, saying what was right to say, then there was silence, and she kept stirring, and mixing. “You don’t even know what I’m talking about” I said, raising my voice.

“Watch your tone!” she scolded me, without any attempt to comfort me. “What was I talking about?” I nearly yelled, and then she faced me and said. “I always listen you, you were speaking about videogames and Youtube, both things I completely disapprove” then she went back to her cookies.

“Could you just for a second listen to me? Could you just for one freaking second acknowledge that I don’t care about your stupid apple cookies, or your dinner parties, or any of that crap? Could you just for a second acknowledge I’m a person with thoughts and not just somebody who you put a dress on?” I yelled, I screamed, I cried and then I grabbed the fucking bowl and tossed it to the ground. And then, just then she looked at me, me and not her daughter who asks things she can’t understand, me and not some silly preppy girl she would like I were. Me, and it was terrified look, me and she didn’t recognized the person. Then the silence again.

“Amanda, I think you should go to your room and prepare, the guests will be here in one hour” she said, collecting the pieces of my broken self and the bowl from the floor. None of which she could repair.

By I'm the penguin