Lost

[matrixmann]

The bus stop turns into the youth club...
First love, first drink, maybe even first time getting physical. And lots of friends.
What has modern society to offer to its youngsters?
Living in sterile, mold-contamined, pimped up flats, celebrating their weekends in used up buildings whose purpose they know at the highest from when they were kids, offered consumer goods which they can never pay, jobs that don't exist and promises that never come into effect. On top, bags of clothes manifactured in the third world which they can cut and rearrange to show how run-down they are, and ugly hair-cuts which make them appear like they have some sort of problems.
Education somewhat is an alien concept, both in the way of knowledge about the world and emotional development.
They get handed a lot of toys and tools to get paid the time their parents haven't spend with them, but can't make up for the deep nothing they perceive.
Sold out worlds, they long for destruction, for the destination that remains for when there's no task for you or your body is plagued by diseases. Diseases the parents thought about in their selfishness "they will be able to get along with that". And they keep wondering why these kids in their selfishness for exstasy beget another aimless generation of kids accidently...
On the other hand, education in the form of learning in excess for those who can pay for it. Planning of futures until the age of 40, orchestrated and without a doubt that anything can come in between this. No guess of what poverty means, what deprivations means, not even that it exists at all or what life-threatening circumstances could be. A bubble which nothing goes wrong within.
In the end, the planning also reveals its shallowness: Getting education, getting jobs, founding families, reproduce, buying houses, buying cars - running around and following the established role model, without a thought for a deeper meaning, just as trying to get drunk and loitering around in derelict houses and on the streets. It's about running away and clouding your mind.
The middle class youngsters ignore in their planning, that their kids are going to have to fight even harder for getting jobs as there is limitation in this, so it is also done in a manner of feeding your ego, numbing your mind to prevent to understand something.
Whereas the kids which grow up in poverty rather get their kids unvoluntarily and suddenly start to get those dreams of a idyllic world that isn't reachable for them. If they do not turn out in the end to abandon them, to show them the true face of what their existence already is: Superfluous.

Comments

[mandarinsun.livejournal.com]

This is really well written. Having the bus, at the beginning, provides a frame for it that is much better than just doing an angry rant. It's also from young people's perspective which also makes it different from previous posts.

[matrixmann]

I thought like I have done this a few more times...

[mandarinsun.livejournal.com]

Maybe, but I think you have potential as a writer, but you should try to do more like this one. It's tricky though, it's not like writing just pops out easily the way you would like it. Some books about writing that I liked while I was growing up said a writer should go for producing as much writing as possible while not censoring any of it and keeping it all and then going back and looking at it all and saying this sucks and this is better. That's what Natalie Goldberg says in her books about writing and it was useful to me.

You should read the series of five books by Karl Ove Knaussguard too- the My Struggle series. It seems to relate to what you and I do: kind of left wing frustrated working class male stuff. It is like a current movement, maybe it isn't a movement but I don't know what to call it- zeitgeist?- of being sick of globalization and the way multi culturalism currently works but now wanting to go to being conservative like old white people.

[matrixmann]

Hm... If it was for writing, I think I always had my own method. Well, some formal stuff one should always take to heart - your writing must be readable as well as undestandable by others than you -, but that's it on the whole I think which I ever followed as an advise. Sometimes this may reflect in some chaotic style one can notice throughout, but... there always needs to be some chaotic idiot among a lot experts, this belongs to groups in human society. By the way, the stupid idiot just gets looked at for being what he is: A little bit of intellectual, a little bit of not. If all sound like the same, nobody looks at anyone at all. So that's the way I keep it - I develop the way I think I must. And in that, I think I haven't run out of ideas still.

[mandarinsun.livejournal.com]

"The bus stopping at a youth club" makes it sound more like a story than a personal essay and stories are always more interesting to read. Maybe writers can play and go back and forth between categories of writing, but it is better to be working at it that way and not be approaching it the same way every time. Though I am not good at it yet.

Also, I was going to say that reading a lot seems to allow someone's writing to grow.

[matrixmann]

Therefore I have my tag "story writing". I realized, some contents you cannot tell effectively just by an analytic intellectual text. Sometimes contents transport their message all by themselves, just by telling their tales. The opinion of an author in between would ruin the meaning for the one who reads it.
For some kinds of content, it's also the best way of remaining respectful towards the certain topic. Say, e. g., a story can depicture brutality just to make the reader wanna puke and be appalled about something, but an opinion of a narrator in between can turn something directly into political propaganda. With some topics, this is just beyond respect, it's downright ugly and disgusting. (Two examples I think I got it expressed in an okay manner: http://matrixmann.livejournal.com/105475.html, http://matrixmann.livejournal.com/120003.html)