Am I stuck waiting?

For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O Pioneers!


I feel it is typical of almost any era, that the youth are seen as free and inexperienced. We're prone to follies and misdirection. Even when we enter into "adulthood" in the legal and physical sense, we're rarely regarded as an equal to our elders. This is why we still have mentors and "senior" positions within the work force. It seems as if people naturally gravitate towards a system where people who have been around the longest and worked the longest, are assumed to be the wisest and most capable. After all, wisdom is quality of the old. Otherwise, why do we make it a point to say that children or young adults are wise beyond their years? And this inclination of ours to defer to our elders is nothing new. Once human communities evolved past the "survival of the fittest" and stopped dropping our seniors into volcanoes once they reached a certain age or disability, societies world over seemed to turn to the oldest members for guidance. After all, hadn't they survived the toughest times? Witnessed the greatest moments? Doesn't this make their insight invaluable to the community as a whole?

Generally, I think almost all of us can understand (if not readily accept) such a conclusion. And without divulging into a tirade about the "pride" and "ignorance" of the older generations, and thus adopting the crude, disrespectful rhetoric of the youth, I'd like to examine what Whitman's words has to say about the elderly: nothing. His poem isn't about the older generation. It's about young adults. The children. The brave souls who, without any great deal of wisdom or decades worth of experience, braved the unknown.

Something that haunts the elderly is time. At some point they begin to feel each stroke of the hour as if they were deep, penetrating beats of their own heart. Yes, time seems to like haunting the elderly. Grey hair. Odd colored spots. Stiff, unyielding joints.

But the youth? Hah. Our perception and relationship with time is very strange. We are restless. Sometimes debilitating so. We feel the urgency to move, to go somewhere, see something. Some of us have direction, other's just an idea. Our movements, our plans (however rushed and inexact they may be), are done assuredly but not cautiously. And incidentally, the future of all us (old and young alike) depend on our risky, grand endeavors. Sometimes we risk too much, other times we risk just enough. And when luck is on our side, the world seems to turn with us. We become masters. Trail blazers. We are the pioneers.

I sometimes wonder if the older generation is torn between wanting us to do better than they did, not making the same mistakes they did, or not wanting us to upheave the structures and industries they worked so hard to established. It must be difficult to see an innovative invention, that required thousands of hours of research and development (not too mention millions of dollars to produce and test), suddenly become a common whole-sale item. Think of flash-drives. Those little things used to cost hundreds of dollars. I've bought several for just a few bucks. But I digress...

As much as we may be criticized, and as much as we be drawn to the advice and ridicule of our seniors--the future ultimately rests on us. And at some point, we won't have our parents and grandparents to guide us. At some point we will no longer have trainers, but have our own trainees. Without a bit of our own experiences, or our brave march into the unknown, what on earth will the future generations need us for?

Indeed, "we must march my darlings." We must march. Everything depends on this. 

Pioneers! O Pionners!

Come my tan-faced children,

Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistols? Have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O Pioneers!


No matter how down or unmotivated I may be feeling, Walt Whitman's words have consistently served as a most exquisite jolt to my heart and soul. "Pioneers! O Pioneers" is a beautiful ode to the many courageous pioneers that braved the unknown of the "West" during the 19th century. I love how his ode is so inclusive and exuberant; a Song of Songs for the American journeyers. We take it for granted now, but the pioneers were primarily young adults. My age. While I have little reason to gather my provisions, buy a horse and wagon, and perhaps a dysentery shot or too (do those exist? Oregon Trail never said...), I have every reason (or at least, many good reasons) to keep marching forward.

My first challenge to myself for this blog, is to take each verse of this overwhelmingly positive poem and treat it as a reflective mantra. Whether I was in high-school theology class days (where we spent hours doing linguistic, textual, and historic analysis on biblical passages) or in a graduate-level rhetoric course, it was has always appeared self-evident to me that there is almost always something to be gained by analyzing passages or phrases. Some people don't like "in-depth" analysis of written works, printed art, film, music, etc... They want items of interest (be it a book or a picture) to "speak for itself," by either its plain language or objective appearance/sound. But once you realize that our languages enable us to describe things--even if it is an objective characterization--in a variety of ways that are usually synonymous to each other, but sometimes person A's description is more of an analog to B's description. While the words are not usually interchangeable, if B adds a few more words to A's description (filling in the analogy), then the two are on the same page with regards to what A is talking about.

This added cognitive step--this critical thinking which is fairly automatic for most people despite it's sophistication--is what should naturally give us audience members license to openly think critically. Whether we are writing or being written to, we will consciously and subconsciously be executing a multitude of incredibly complicated neurological and chemical orders in our brain. This is a fact. So why not just consciously analyze the many works that are presented to us? Perhaps we're afraid that one day our words--our very deliberate and purposeful words, are undermined by some obscure subtext that you in *no way* wanted to exist within your writing. But alas, some crazy professor somewhere, just wrote an extensive article arguing that that very subtext exists--and in fact, it's more than a subtext. Your work is apparently *all about* that theme you hated. Now, I won't even go into the possibility of a subconscious concern seeping into your writing oh-so-sneakily, that you powerless in your paranoia to detect it. But what I will go into is this... Your brain is incredible. So is mine. And so is hers! (whoever she is haha). The fact that she can piece together an elaborate and coherent theme throughout your work (despite the lack of intent on your part),  and manage to persuade others into seeing what she saw through qualitative analysis is remarkable. There will probably always be a question of whether or not the author or artist is the truest expert on his/her work? I certainly think the original authors/artists are in the best position to tell you their writing process, their hopes and goals while writing, and shed some (typically amusing) light on which items they had no clue had any kind of double-meaning. However, once work the work is published and subject to being read/listened to/seen, the artist is no longer  in control of the piece's future. It's in the public's domain now, and subject to hundreds, thousands, or even millions of other sophisticated minds processing your work.

Phew. So why did I go into all of this? Well, it's a bit of a defense for what I want to do here. I will be taking "Pioneers! O Pioneers!" and connecting its words, themes, and images to my life (if a connection can be said to exist). Hell, I'll even be talking about how it departs.

Further, this blog is generally going to be an exploration of my mind. I've been keeping a secret blog elsewhere on the internet, tracking my law school activities. Right now, it just feels like an online diary. Lots of moping, lots of anxiety, and not a lot of substantive writing. It's all about "woe is me" or "damn that class was hard." No shit. I'm a student in law school. :P At any rate, since this poem has been my go-to pick-me-up these past few months, I decided that I wanted to reawaken my old writing skills, dust off my copy of Leaves of Grass, and try to discover which frontiers are hidden in my life that are all-but waiting for me to discover them and fully experience. :)

So in the spirt of the above passage, so I have a pistol or a sharp-edged axe? Do I have the tools necessary to begin this journey of mine? I do believe I do. :) I have a heart that loves very quickly and deeply, and a mind that has proven to be very adaptive if given a fair amount of time to breath.

Thus, my heart shall be my pistol and my mind a sharp-edged axe. And I promise to wield both strongly and wisely. :)

-Miki