Youth is wasted on the young.

-Bernard Shaw

Being young has become quite a quandary for me.

I’m 21 years old. A young man in my own right, I’m neither an adolescent nor a responsible adult. A transitional crossroads is what I expected to be at now. Yet I find myself in a different sort of dilemma.

As someone who is on the latter end of his youth, what is my next course of action? I’ve been planning for my future down the road for such a long time, and albeit through all of its changes, I feel that I’m happy in it’s current course of direction. Yet is it wrong for me to have a course of direction? I don’t mean that there is anything wrong with having an idea of what you want to do in the future, but that having everything “planned out” so to speak isn’t necessarily what I might want at right now. I don’t have the wisdom to know what I should be doing, but only the guidance from those more wise than myself. I’m an individual in every facet except my push towards being successful, a cultural expectation that everyone my age feels.

Maybe youth is wasted on the young, who recklessly toss it around and bruise it’s reputation. Yet it’s always desired and sought after, and the one thing that can never be granted. It’s an envious position to be in, being young. But I am not young due to my choices. I was pushed into this stage of my life, as one is pushed into their skin color or gender.  I don’t choose to become older or younger, I don’t practice becoming older and more refined, I don’t wake up in the morning and think of how this one day will never occur again, and I don’t envision myself dying. But is that youth? Or is that ignorance?

And a song that has stuck with me throughout the years. A little dark and sombre, but really helped me put things into perspective when I needed it.

Heart shaped chocolates
Shedding their plastic shells
Is what you can buy for
Nine-ninety-five

Sticky deep-fried cheese
Regurgitated after relentless rolling
Is what you can buy for
Nine-ninety-five

Get Well Soon on paper
With a helium balloon
Is what you can buy for
Nine-ninety-five

Fifty extra HD channels
For all your extra time
Is what you can buy for
Nine-ninety-five

A hair-spring trigger
With seven silver shells
Is what you can buy for
Nine-ninety-five

To pursue happiness
Around your office cubicle
Is what you can buy for
Nine-ninety-five

I’m thinking of polishing this up and entering it into a few poetry contests. If anyone has any feedback, constructive or not, I’d be more than happy to hear it!

And as far a music goes:
This song has been stealing my heart lately. Keane is so damn good.

Reading Cather’s O Pioneers! I’m getting a good sense of what being American used to entail. A connection to the land you owned. The opportunity provided by the youth of the land as well as the youth of the nation. Being independent and self sustainable. Being good to others. This is all back in the 1900s, mind you.

And now? What is left over? We have reached the west, we have mined the mountains, there are no vistas that have been unseen. Land is too expensive, and owned by few. People are incredibly bitter towards each other, and we have become so afraid of strangers that we dare not be nice. So I ask, what does it mean to be American? Can I, a young man at a public university, feel American when I see so many conflicting forces, each claiming to be American?

I see the blind religious claim that the United States was founded on the principles of Jesus and should be a Christian country. I see the failing government in many issues across the board, and how they are eager to strip away individual liberties. I see fear in everyone, not of the government but of each other. I see no responsibility within corporations or government, both simply blaming each other but never the consumer, the same consumer who has been bred to become a sheep to which they sell us grass and sun, always with the threat of rainy days to keep us grateful towards them.

What now determines what an American is the  lust for money. Capitalism has become what it means to be American, not liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We pride ourselves on being the melting pot, on how much diversity we have within our nation. Yet in the same sentence we condemn foreigners and persecute them in their own lands. We preach freedom, and censor ourselves out of fear of our own government. Our manifest destiny, which resulted in genocide and strife, has become warped and disfigured beyond recognition.  The spirit of our country downtrodden and worn out.

As an American in the midst of youth, I find myself struggling not with inner turmoils and ambitions, but rather the turmoils of my country. As an American at a public university, I find a dichotomy between the variations of being American to be troubling, making me restless whenever I read the news or listen to the radio. As an American, I’m unsure of what it means to be an American.

And what better song to choose than an awesome French song about America. One of my favorites.

I would say that War Horse was a good movie, but the beginning really shit all over the place. The middle was very interesting, and the ending was satisfying. This movie was more about telling a story rather than entertaining. Something my friends and I weren’t really looking for. But should movies strive to do both?

Forget my rant about movies and let me drop an awesome song on you guys. This is from a long time favorite of mine, Deltron. It’s from an old record of his, but it is still really good.

I have a fun idea I want to try with my new posts. With every post I’ll have a song that I like, or think is worth sharing.

To start this off will be a sick mashup from Kap Slap. I haven’t heard of him before, but damn this is a good song.

However, I simply don’t have that much creative writing to share, especially since coming to UC Davis where I’ve been very busy involved in both academics and extra curriculars. I’m thinking of doing something a bit more personal and fluid, not necessarily purely creative writing, but something in between. Creative writing will never truly leave this blog of mine, but I would like to actually update this blog and keep it relevant to my activity recently. And I don’t want to be posting up my essays on here, however brilliant they might be.

Regardless of what I decide, it will probably start taking effect in December after my finals are over. When I have some free time to read, play violin, League of Legends, and of course, write.

Speckles of rain fell on the ninth night, but they were too asleep to become hopeful. Clouds had covered the stars and the moon gave no promise of existence on that night, for the clouds from the ocean had come quickly and noiselessly yet left their water behind. There were no shadows on the ninth night, just faint outlines of figures both living and dead, rocks and bugs and the reptiles that hunted them. The two figures hadn’t dug a hole for the night time. They simply slammed the blades of their shovels into the ground, hung their hats on them, and curled up with their heads on their backpacks. Such was the life of two free men with money.

Their watches woke them in the early morning before the sun rose. The darkness surrounded them completely, and the two made no attempt to scare it away. They were unafraid of not only the darkness during the night, but also the distance during the day.  Simple minded they pretended to be, their cares they left behind. The clouds disturbed them when the light began to rise in the east, for the clouds meant that the land would become less valuable if there was less sun. Normal people like the sun, not the clouds. And so as they sat and conversed together about the money they would lose from cloudy days like the one they were in, they drank the last of their water. That was their first mistake and their last, for once they realized their water was gone, did they find out how far they had come into their land of lizards and dust. Only then did they realize how much money they could make from selling water to people.

One of them killed the other shortly after they had rested for the evening, though both of their lips were cracked and peeling already. The clouds spared them no refuge as they happily danced on towards the north, bringing the moon’s fury into the early night. Under that pale light the other man dug a trench six inches down, resting only to roll his friend’s silent body into the pit. He then looked at his watch, and under the silvery moonlight he reached into his pack to calculate how much money he would make selling grass to the people living on his new land. For if it needed anything, it needed some greenery.