A Love Affair With Myself: My My My Generation X

"Language is a Virus." -- William S. Burroughs

Thrum, thrum, thrum the heart goes and has gone since the moment she was caught stealing  her father's drugs when she was 11 years old. She scrolls this invasive virus called the Internet that came to take our touch, our attention, our appreciation for things tangible, for things real--preferring images of experiences rather than the experiences themselves.

Typed messages. Typed messages racing through the ether in real time from one screen to another. Not even paper. No voices. No inflection. No sound of voice, the sound that binds that you live for and love to hear.

Just letters on a screen. Even love affairs. They begin with images over this virus that has taken over our psyches. Even the best minds are not immune.

She had her last love affair begin like that. Thrum thrum thrum. Over typed letters. Oh the words were real, but no voice. Nonetheless. That is over, and that is good. That is over, and it is over. That is over, and it's this strange fog of dreaming up alternate endings. She did not let it go. She has not let it go. She does not want it to be over. Thrum thrum thrum.

What do we do with the money. We spend it on dresses and jewelry and playing cards. Forgetting rent, mortgage payments, electricity, water. We, the Generation called X.  Not the Greatest Generation. Not the Baby Boomers they had.

We are children in adult bodies. We have yet to grow up. Still hold the oldest fears inside us. And as Jenny Holzer told us, our oldest fears are our worst ones. We were raised by hippies opened to a bright romantic world.

Higher education. Great literature. Great art. Great innovation. Great genius. But. We don't know how to sell it. We don't know how to get paid. So we languish. Luckily, we are witty, and amuse ourselves. Luckily, we were raised with expansive love from expanded hearts and turned-on minds. Imagine. IMAGINE, Jon. You got rich.

You got shot. War is over if you want it. But it seems it will never end until our species ends. Our parents lost their way.

Two decades-long wars at once, money racing away out from under our aging parents feet as they stand facing the sea. Loving the feel of the tiny crevices it leaves beneath their feet. Thinking not at all. Just breathing and visiting the horizon.

They studied Buddhism. They taught us to breathe. They let us be ourselves, if only, if only. If only someone had told us who that was.