Passing Generations

The high school was designed in the customary sprawling fashion as befits Southern California. Instead of a central building with multiple floors, the layout was single storied and extended lengthwise for half a mile, from the science rooms at the top, down to the pool, tennis courts and football field. The design vaguely resembled a large cross, at the tip of each point of the cross were “quads.” A quad was a conjuration of classrooms in the shape of a square donut. Along the sides of each quad were rows of maroon lockers and in the center, where the donut hole would be, was open space, usually dying grass.
The school had central point, it was called “central quad.” It was a park-like space, with various wooden benches and short cement walls used as seats. There were a couple of picnic benches, areas of lawn with mature trees and islands of shrubby bushes that produced clusters of red, orange and yellow flowers. Through the large space, like a sparse spider web, were cement paths that led to each quad.
During lunch, and in the seven minutes allowed between classes, students would congregate in the central quad and in other spots on the campus. Like self-segregating animals claiming territory, clicks of teenagers remained loyal to a designated space and returned to the same spot every lunch, day after day, and year after year.
The popular kids, otherwise known as the “soces” (derived from the word “social”), congregated a couple of steps away from the administration building. They sat on the short cinderblock horseshoe/bench that was uncovered by the eaves that stopped just short of them. There were white and purple irises on either side of the horseshoe and pots with flowers that hung from the eves behind them. The soces tended to be rich, white and blond. They played soccer and football and many of the girls were cheerleaders. They were the all-American standard, their pictures could be cut from magazines.
The smart kids, many of whom wore glasses (also known as the nerds) sat on the lawn in front of the school, a couple steps away from Indian Hill Blvd. The Latino kids sat by the vending machines, on the large cement stairs that separated the upper quads from the lower quads. The punks, and there were only a handful of them, sat on the maroon bench close to the library.
Then there was “the block,” a maroon-painted cement block in the center of the lawn, in the exact spot where if imagined, the lines of the large school-cross would meet. This is where the “alternative kids” sat, the ones who bought vinyl records, listened to college radio and dressed themselves in thrift store clothes, and judging by image, tended to be more artistically inclined. When I arrived in the high school as a freshmen, “the block” was occupied by mostly seniors and juniors, although there were a couple of sophomores and one freshman, Sid, who had been accepted into their ranks.
As freshmen, we were very similar to the alternative kids on “the block,” only we were a little more radical and had no male counterparts. We were a dozen mostly short-haired girls that dressed in old clothes, hung out at the record store and had hard feminist leanings and authority issues. We were called lesbians and man-haters, although almost everyone had a boyfriend from time-to-time. Although some of the girls were friends with the older kids on “the block” and many of us dated, we kept to ourselves and sat at the horseshoe between the trees, a cement configuration of benches that looked like two parentheses facing each other. We sat there during lunch and I often watched the people at “the block”, I watched how they interacted, what they wore…I watched Jean and Mimi, the couple who kissed. I watched Leandra and her big jiggling breasts beneath her ironic thrift store T-shirt, Winslow and his old man clothes and slouchy posture.
By the time we were juniors, the bulk of them had graduated and we, next in line to the alternative throne, migrated to the red cement block, claiming it as our own. This was the block of countless alternative generations. Just as new Latinos entered high school and stood on the stairs, just as freshman football players began to stand at the soc horseshoe, we took our inherited spot in the central quad. We sat there for two years, each new year bringing new, younger additions. They would be the generation to replace us, the kids who would, by merely standing at “the block”, show the incoming freshmen where the alternatives would stand.
A couple years after our graduation, the school removed the block from the central quad. But alternative kids still stand there today. Even though the actual physical block is gone, “the block” is still there.
Year after year, the same kinds of people stand in the same places. It’s a legacy that is passed through shared visual cues, shared heritage, social status, music and dress. It’s passed on by the way we identify ourselves and others. Are we in this group, or that?
Like parents teaching their children the ritual of Christmas or Hanukah, we’re not exactly sure why we put lights up, not really sure about the origin of the potato pancake, but we eat it anyway. The grandparents before us did it, we do it, and the kids will end up teaching it to the next generation. It’s not quite the biological impulse to reproduce and eat, but it’s the human impulse to gather with those like you, to stand next to your clone and reinforce the same shared ideas. It is the impulse for a legacy, a lineage. The danger is the dilution of the original purpose and meaning. Why do we do what we do? Why do I desire marriage? Why do I eat cheese and not cats? Why do I stand by the maroon block?

Influence

There once was a kernel of knowledge, and although it is described as a kernel, its beauty and wonder stretched further than most eyes could see and went deeper than most could even begin to imagine. It lived in a clear void of light and constant movement that displayed itself with rays of electricity that darted like fireflies across the blackened expanse. The kernel lived eternally, existing before beginning and lasting beyond end…and although the kernel would bend and re-form and breathe, it always remained a kernel, a nucleus around an orbiting mass. The kernel was boundless, able to touch and transform itself through solid matter and muscle mass. It remained contained outside the world of laws and concrete, outside of human society, yet, it traveled and moved through their realms. It journeyed in and out of the earth with the help of human bodies through a system of paths and golden corridors and sparkling moments of serene attention. The earth was cluttered with metal buildings and rigid gray institutions that were rooted in generations of dogma and habit. It was full of gluttons and those who could not eat. There were morals that were woven through generations like woolen thread and pretty fashions that changed like the seasons and boomeranged with the wind. There were men who desired power and beautiful women, there were women who hoped for fine hats and smart children. Some wanted gold and rugged health, some read mountains of books and drew pictures of the world’s monuments on white napkins. There were people who believed in law and order and there were slaves who were forbidden to read. There were women forced into small rooms with only a fire and a cooking pot and there were certain plants which were forbidden by those in power.
The kernel existed before all this, long before human history and moral codes and lawyers and banking institutions. There was once a man who had a moment of blinding insight. He sat under a blue sky, his thin legs were crossed as he sat close to the earth. The wind blew across his face, and for a long moment, he felt inhuman, he was, in this awakening, open to knowledge beyond the human world. He was experiencing the kernel. Everything he had been taught as a young boy was irrelevant, what he felt, now, was beyond the people of this world and everything they created. The knowledge, the kernel, was far beyond his social status and beyond his ethics. As he sat, he felt a channel open up within him and a radiantly blue cord flowed into his heart with the force of a runaway train. He received it, his body slightly fearful, but his will was open and receptive. In this moment, though his direct contact with the kernel, he developed a way. A way to live, a way to walk, a way to experience the universe, a way to work. He developed a set of tools so that others might open up to the channel as well.
While he was alive, his ideas spread. His students spoke to others who spoke to more people. A large web was formed. After his body died, his way of life traveled across seas and mountains, from person to person. Schools were built to study his way. For thousands of years, his way was passed through language and books and song. The popularity was not without consequence, though, and his way had become words…a religion…an idea or philosophy that someone could try out and perhaps quickly move on to the next tantalizing idea promising inner peace. The initial discovery of the kernel was diluted into an organization with leaders and foundations and bureaucracy. There were workshops and seminars, people paid hundreds of dollars for a couple of life lessons on anger and love, but in the end, there were no life teachers and guides. Some tried the way and gave up after a few weeks. Some tried it and devoted the rest to their lives to it. Movies referenced it and it became a household name, along with the other religions with scores of followers. Entrepreneurs made T-shirts with quotes and people browsed bookstores with hundreds of titles in the genre.
This Way, this way of living life and working with its electrical nature, began with a man that had a deep moment of awakening, a true moment that left behind a changed man and a path into the void. But after thousands of years, moving through continents and people, many of its secrets were lost or misunderstood, its power became diluted as people without teachers experimented with the ideas and then became dogmatic. People practiced what they thought was the way, they claimed it as their own, yet they had no direct contact or connection with the man who had opened to the source. The initial knowledge was so contaminated by the human world that most traces of its way had been lost on the human machines, its power to awaken, its "ways" that required devotion and constant attention were lost on the sleeping, even the sincere workers had no real power or skills to do the work required and nowhere to get it from.
But still the kernel exists, it stands outside, now, living, alive, moving, shifting, glowing. There are other lines. There are other channels that run from the kernel and others that run in, feeding it the nutrients of attention and work. There are long lineages of work, passed from person to person, always under the shadow of secrecy. There are too many chances for contamination if the ideas are distributed freely. This knowledge is beyond humans, it lives outside of humans, but it can pass through them, like sparkling ions through a willing conductor. A direct channel flows from the kernel to the people, and, from them, the energy flows back into the kernel. A circuit in constant movement. The eternal kernel flows out, passing from one person to the other, and the energy comes back, slightly more diffused, back to the source, where the current flows out once again. This has always been so. It cannot be otherwise.