LIFE: Where to go from 9/11?

On the television, one phrase seemed relevant to life down here on earth, over talk of war and retaliation too abstract to conjure anything more concrete than childhood fear: life will never be the same.

The truth was, life never was just what we’d expected it to be. There was once a Daddy and a Mommy. There was knowing we’d go to college, get married, that the Daddy and Mommy would be grandparents someday, meaning we’d find the husband of our dreams by the time we were twenty years old, just as Mommy did, have two kids, maybe three, a house, and a dog. Be happy.

There were life-changing events since those days. Maybe it was finding out that the Mommy and Daddy didn’t hold all of the world’s knowledge. The comfort in their words was sometimes pulled out of the same nonsense that ran wild in our own fears, in our heads late into the lonely night. It could have been learning that parents can die (when you least expect it, sometimes long before their old age). Or it could have been the dream changing, growing tired of those plans, tired as the weather-beaten white on the fence Daddy last painted the summer before you were in the second grade. That same summer you broke your arm and couldn’t swim, sat in the muggy backyard while the other kids swam nearby. (God doesn’t it seem like yesterday.)

There was always a theory. I pulled it out of thin air at a time too long ago to remember. The theory determined that some people had easy childhoods. Others had easy adulthoods. Easy meant that not too many important people in your life died for a very long time. Mommy had the easy childhood. She didn’t really see much death in her life until she had a family of her own. Then, slowly they all dropped off one by one. That was my childhood: my mother’s husband passed away, her mother moved on. I’m only twenty-three now, hoping the bridge to an easy adulthood will hit soon.

There was not so much room for self-pity that day, it would have been blinding and suffocating all at once. All you had to do was look at those blazing buildings thinking, there goes my scenery, my icon, my view, and remind yourself, there are really people in there, to realize how guilty of it you were. But what good would that do? At least it wasn’t you. Or someone you loved. Oh, be thankful for what you have! It might run away someday. (Or as they recommended: Get back to the life you had as soon as you can! Go shopping! Support the economy! Try to forget for most of your day!)

Everyone in this city was in a mad panic, grasping for, running towards, the people, the things they never had. They believed their freedom was being taken away. I believed there was simply less reassurance to choke down the fears that boiled in my innermost parts for so long. It was so calming to have faith in the daily drama, even if I’d known for way too long that life was fleeting.

I feared most, at that point in time, that the fear would gain the power numb me. A fear that was tucked away with childhood, away with soured dreams of what this future would be like. It was not scary, by then, that there might be no husband, or picket fence. But where would one find comfort when there would be war? And if no war in this city, then tragedy somewhere else? It was no longer easy to shrug it off, to say it was “over there” once it came so close to home.

Art seemed still important. It was the mark we made, the laughter, relief. I wanted my art to feel comfortable, to taste good, to take me away from what was on television, what was trudging mournfully down the once whirring streets outside. I feared less and less that I would not make art—that my art would die and it would be a tragedy. I thought, what is important now but satisfaction? Art will not die, it will be reborn with new emotions, new passions.

Life is good, my Mom-mom said, like it was a motto to live by. I trace my roots in art to her, her sloppy left handed portraits of clowns that frightened me as they stared down from the walls of her house when I was small. All the world loves a clown, she’d scrawl at the bottom of half of her paintings, as if the phrase was not redundant, but significant enough to hold onto and smile about for the day. While her paintings might be shrugged off by even lesser known art critics, her ways ring strong and steady long past her death, through love of family, passion for creativity. Life—it is no longer a sad or tragic thing.

I want to set what’s important to me in stone, to be cliché. Art has often been a way for me to commemorate, or even “return to” times past. Two years ago it was the crooked buzzards my father once drew. I remembered them one day, a vague picture on the corner of a white sheet of paper on the breakfast table he drew in minute detail—a crosshatched bird. Above it he wrote, “when someone dies, the buzzards come.” The phrase didn’t mean anything much to me at the time, but the scenario holds a heavy symbolism today.

When my father passed away, years later, there was no elaborate funeral—just a paper grocery sack filled with ashes carted over to New Jersey from Tennessee in his twin brother John’s tiny blue hatchback. There was an empty spot on the seat next to him, where the jewelry box should have been. It wasn’t enough that everything had to happen all the way out in Tennessee, a land even my mother hardly knew. There would be no true funeral to comfort the family because my father had always thought and always said “funerals are selfish”. The watch fobs and the rings he had promised to my sister and me were not there. His journals, kept since the time he was a teenager, would also reside in Tennessee, at the time under the pretense that my sister and I would receive them when we were “of age” (to this day objects that I have never seen despite attempts to acquire them). The buzzard theory was then clear: his family had scurried like vultures for his material possessions and would fight to no end to protect their acquisitions.

What do those objects mean really, I’ve asked myself time and time again. Wishes to hold them have often moved me to a strange discomfort. Walking through Roman and Egyptian sections of the MET one Sunday, I was reminded of the art I have done in the past—recreating childhood myths and fantasies, phrases and morals that have influenced who I am, given to me by the family members I have loved most. While the body inside of a Roman mummy I gazed over was surely decayed and gone by now, or more likely taken into the possession of historians, the painting of his face was in near-perfect condition. I thought it slightly eerie, “looking into the eyes” of the young man pictured, a man who lived and died nearly 2000 years ago. At the same time this encounter was extremely meaningful.

The rooms to follow contained jewelry and artwork all related to and inspired by the once-sacred event of death. I thought a lot about the events on 9/11, how so many Americans had just recently adopted a fear of death, the way in which our culture looks at death so differently from cultures of the past. I began to feel that life today might have been valued in a much different way, if its end was taken into account in a manner similar to that of the ancient Romans and Egyptians.

It is amazing to step outside of the shoes you once wore as a child—visiting a museum exhibit, thinking these things were beyond your understanding—to look at a relic and really concentrate, visualize the thousands of years this relic has lived on. I don’t mean to over-emphasize the importance of possessions on an overall human level, but I want to consider the control we have over making objects that satisfy our memories and commemorate the people and experiences in life we have loved. I don’t want to focus on death, per se, but on the comforts that the ability to produce something, anything in life might have.

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PERSONAL STORYTELLING: "The Personal is Political”

I am working on a self-portrait, but no one looking would especially know it’s about me, the “artist”. Upon looking they would see a girl in her bathing suit—how old is she? One friend told me the girl looked “older” than I look today, How could it be me when I was fourteen? he asked. I chuckled and thought to myself, I guess long hair and a tiny bathing suit made me look like a woman that way, the way I don’t standing here right now in my baggy jeans and short haircut. It’s wasn’t what I meant for the man standing in my studio to interpret—this idea of what womanhood looks like—though I assume he didn’t mean as much as I’ve read into his words. Funny, he couldn’t have said so much without me originally explaining the drawing to him, The “girl” you are talking about when you talk about my drawing is me, it’s a self portrait.

What do I matter in this piece that is a picture of me, that is made by me, if I will not be present when they are all staring at a drawing of me in probably the smallest bathing suit I have ever worn, half-naked in front of their gaze, with a hairstyle I probably wouldn’t tell most people I ever owned? I find what they say amusing, at most—I am making something of a very personal, somewhat self-centered subject matter, and they are relating somehow. They are making their own personal associations and assessing dislikes and likes. There is a reaction at least.

I started speaking autobiographically because I knew no other way to speak completely honestly, without filling between the lines with senseless bullshit. First, I loved to write, but failed countless times trying to make up stories I’d never been close to living myself—I was trying to be a vampire, sucking blood in a poem driven by the color red, or I was a girl going to Sweet Valley High in a story I eventually threw out for lack of success. It never quite worked right until I revealed myself in those stories, which was hard, and nearly impossible in high school.

I was the shyest girl in my circle in some years of adolescence, “Why don’t you talk, Emily?” I wasn’t going to tell them that my father had died, or that my mother was desperate for a steady job and struggling (it was hard enough to hide the free lunch ticket every day in the lunch line at school when my friends all paid with their parents’ pocket change). Every time I spoke the truth, the truth was responded to with an air of discomfort, as if I had ruined the glossy atmosphere of high school English class, a teenage sleepover, wherever I might have been holding my breath and painfully blurting out what was real.

It is important for me to relay these past stories in my work—not to be reminiscent of the good old 80’s or 90’s, or to recall a certain period of my life, but because these are the stories I have enough distance from to retell, and they are the stories whose telling will hold the most meaning in the end. It was long enough ago that I stood half-naked on the beach in that bathing suit, long enough since I was that girl, but it is still important to me, still significant today.

I realized, eventually, that the truth was all too relative—too many people were familiar with what I was stating, but did not know how to talk about it (so I would talk). If I would not be the one to speak out loud about death, about class differences, about the tens of other daily realities in my life that seemed to make everyone uncomfortable when put out in the open, then who could I count on to do so for me? Who would say the things that would make life easier? I have always made art, but if my art does not attempt to speak up about what I feel needs to be changed in life, then I feel my art is saying nothing. I revere the artists and writers who have helped me discover who I am. I want to join them, “give back”, as they say.

I do not think “my art” is where I want it to be yet—I am not sure just how much control I have in the receiving of what I have made once I’ve left the room. Much satisfaction is gained in process, and I could rest with that, but I can’t say that I am satisfied with the idea of misinterpretation (although misinterpretation often offers a useful challenge—maybe I need to clarify my language).

The meaning in many of the drawings I have done lately is personal and emotional. I want to put myself out there, put the truth out on the table. I sometimes fear most the indirectness of the medium of visual art, as compared to the words that come so clearly, with such definition. I would like to speak in a language that is accessible and clear, and in this sense I often feel a tension for deciding what kind of work I make. Can I produce work understandable to my family who are not especially educated in the language of “conceptual art”? To my friends who appreciate art but are likewise accustomed to a different world? What audience do I want my artwork to speak to? While “my art” is separate from “me”, it is so much a reflection of what I am (or want to be) that these questions are ever-present, dangling in the periphery of whatever I might be making.

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A “FICTION”: Girl in Bathing Suit

They tell me I thinned out just like Daddy did, like a beanpole, a growing tree. It’s embarrassing when they talk about it, like the other day when we were over at Barbara Seigle’s and I was wearing my black one-piece Speedo, running back from the bathroom, through her dining room to the pool. “She’s gotten so tall and skinny. She could be a model soon,” Barbara said to my mother like I wasn’t in the room. I just felt weird, looking at her with her crazy fake blonde hair, sitting there at the dining room table with a cigarette in her hand, propped in the dark wooden chair like her thighs were heavy weights.

Kristina had problems with pimples, Barbara told my mother and me, showing us the tiny jar of white paste the doctor told her to keep in the refrigerator. I’d already noticed Kristina’s pimples scattered across her forehead, almost like an imprint left from the way she held her head against her palm when we were at our lunch table. I felt pretty bad for her, they looked like they hurt, but even worse wondering how she would feel to find out her mother was telling us the whole story of them.

It didn’t feel too good to look tall or skinny standing in Barbara’s dining room. I tried to run by and smile, but my mother grabbed me affectionately but pushy by the arm, dragging me next to her so they could talk more about me in my bathing suit.

So maybe I am pulling it off. I read Seventeen every month. I don’t think I look quite good enough to enter the teen model contest yet, but maybe I will soon. Since last year I got rid of all the bad clothes, the Cavariccis and those silly half tops. I mean, those were cool, but in a weird way, not a way that any of the cool kids would think is cool. This summer I am going to put Sun-in in my hair again. It’s gotten really long and gets some natural highlights that are this goldish color, but I want to really bring them out early this year. I’m also going to try that new tanning stuff that just tans you without the sun. I am so pale, you would not believe it, but that’s because it’s a genetic thing, my father was pretty pale and I have his color.

I’d like to meet a boy soon, but it seems like the more June and I try to meet guys at the mall, the harder it is. She says that I am prettier and skinnier and it’s always me that they smile at. I mean, sometimes I do catch some cute ones in baseball caps looking at me, but it’s not like I’m getting dates or anything.

June has a big thing about weight. I don’t blame her because her mom is always on all of these different diets, but she never seems to lose any weight. June really isn’t fat at all but I guess you think these things about yourself when your mom is thinking them about herself. I don’t think she’s very happy that I got skinny and not her, but I wish she wouldn’t care so much. It’s not like I’m any happier than her.

Last month June’s mom Sharon took us to Ocean City again. We got to stay in this nice hotel that was shaped like a pyramid. We got dressed up all weird because Linda was going to let us walk on the boardwalk alone one night—I wore this dress my mother helped me sew that looks like a hippy dress with sunflowers. I made two little braids in the front of my hair and wore two yellow plastic butterfly barrettes. June wore cut-offs, this neat plaid flannel shirt, and clogs. We were just like, “Who cares! We’re on vacation!” No more neat GAP jeans and no more of those Aeropostale T-shirts with perfectly matching socks here.

The strangest thing happened on the boardwalk, this boy tried to pick me up. It was the first time ever. Later that night, when we were talking before bed, we decided we were going to dress however we want this September when school starts. It’s fun, and people actually try to talk to us when we do.

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THE COMICS

I am looking through a small green suitcase, what in high school I called my “zine box”, donned in stickers of various riot grrrl bands and catchy girl-love phrases. It was my “secret box”, in my mind, the one place where all of the glue-sticked pages would be carefully kept once I was done photocopying an issue of my zine, hopefully well enough preserved that the glue wouldn’t dry brittle and weaken, ruining my hours of layout work. So if I saved enough money from my job, I could go out and copy some more at Staples. Bright lime green box that sat on my bookshelf, begging a compliment of everyone who came into my room. “Nice box,” they’d say. “Thanks”, I’d reply. Surely it wasn’t as secret as I thought it was, catching their eyes, appealing to the sticky fingers of my mother and sister, just for a “look through” to see what was really in those zines I refused to show them.

My distribution wasn’t as large as I would have liked it to be. Mostly because copies were expensive and it was nearly impossible to convince most people to hand over a dollar for my magazine. It wasn’t about making money, though. It was about making back a small enough percentage so I could keep my small-press going. It was about having a network of friends and pen pals, trading zines with other teenagers all over the country, all over the world for that matter. It was how I learned about politics, new bands, how depressed other kids were feeling. My zine was sent out in tens, and over the next month or so I’d receive almost as many copies of new zines as I’d dropped in the mailbox the month before. We’d review one another’s material in upcoming issues. I was the “art girl”, my zine (once called Teen Angst, then Angst Girl, then even later Mad Girl—indecisively) was known for its “awesome layout”, “cute drawings”, “amazing comics”. Once again I was getting a name for drawing something. It wasn’t famous, but it was something.

I finger through old beat up copies of my zine and feel nearly embarrassed at my own fifteen year old antics, my adolescent conception of newly-learned feminist politics, “Riot Grrrls shouldn’t have to shave their legs if they don’t want to but armpit hair is GROSS.” These belong back in the green box, for my reminiscing only. Not too tucked away, still very close to my heart. I really don’t know if I’d be who I am today if I hadn’t found the secret underground art culture of zine making. It changed my viewpoints, my politics, helped me find a place for myself where I fit in. Maybe I would have otherwise found myself some other way, eventually, but who’s to know?

Zines have since stood out in my mind as a way of making things. Aside from executing several papers for writing classes in straightforward zine format during college, they have always come to mind as a way of combining text and images, of creating “art” that is inexpensive and easily accessible. I cherish the idea that I can spin something through the copy machine and pass it out to all of my companions who don’t have the chance to see what I show in school critiques, something they can take home and experience in an intimate and personal manner.

If I had completely stuck to this love throughout art school, I would have limited myself completely, because it is a very specific language. While possibilities of original interpretation of it do exist, they are few. So I grew outside of those lines, painted, sculpted some. Yet no matter what, I find myself returning to the place I feel most at home—whether I am making my own zine-like creations outside of school, drawing in a manner I reserve only for comics, obsessively in the margins of my notebooks. Recently I began to bring my comic strips into my studio to share. They are something I do naturally, and that I will always probably do whether I show them of not, but are also something I have had trouble bringing into the context of “fine arts”. Is this because of what I have been taught in school, or because of my own biases and hesitations? Surely it could be a combination of the two.

I have been working on several comic strips for over a year. Their lines are always tedious and it often takes as much time to fill an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper as it does to finish an entire painting. The stories I tell are often mundane—a botched up romance, an ironic night out, things of life I wouldn’t especially philosophize. They are, to me, executed in a fairly common language—while each tiny composition on the page is an original invention and made without any visual reference, they resemble the basic frame-by-frame form that many other comic artists use. What is significant about making them for me is that, through their drawing, I am able to re-visualize details of a past event, create my own “movie” out of my head, complete with pivotal emotional moments, turning points, close ups, far shots. I am able to work on them secretively, tiny lines on a page small enough that I can bring it with me to the coffee shop, then pack it back up into my bag. There is something so important about the control I am able to have when I make these, similar to that of playing dollhouse (only I get to choose the characters’ every detail, their hairdo’s, what they are wearing). And in the end of it, the tedium of making a comic is so worthwhile. I go to the copy shop and photocopy a stack of my artwork and pass them out to friends, to strangers. Everyone is grateful, entertained.

While there is no longer a zine community, in my world at least, no letters bombarding me through the mail, the experience of making comics brings me back to a similar sense of community to that which I experienced making zines as a teenager. I enjoy that I can tell the mundane stories of those around me and participate in a process of drawing that feels natural, then later share what I am making with a community that intersects with my daily life.

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VIDEO ONE: Triadica

The video begins: two teenage girls sit on the front porch. One holds a guitar on her lap, the other a banjo. They dress like the teenagers television tells us to “watch out for”. One girl wears a Marilyn Manson t-shirt, both are dressed mostly in black, and both have short shaven haircuts. They play an out-of-tune blues duet on their string instruments as the mundane suburban scenery unwinds before the viewer’s eyes.

This is what they do regularly—sit on the front porch, trying to start a band and play out someday, think up ways to get famous, as they maneuver their bodies around the neighborhood for lack of better places to go. What did you do this weekend? I ask them, and they seem confused. What do you mean by this weekend? they both want to know. To them the “weekend” lacks definition, every day is like this—Saturday, Sunday, Monday after school. They try to find an engaging way to “kill” their time.

Phoebe is my sister. She is five years younger than I, lives in the same town, same house that I lived in five years ago when I was eighteen. My original idea was to make a documentary-type video on her in order to get to know this sister I have, who I still somehow feel is a “baby”. I hardly know her, let alone who she is becoming as a young adult.

After hours of interviewing and videotaping, I decided to weed through my footage and compile a very short vignette for my final video piece. The most profound discovery that came up in my interviewing time with my sister and her friend Nicole was a description of a “secret land” they’d created and named Triadica. Triadica was born like most teenage pastimes, as a way to kill time and gain control over their lives when they were not old enough yet to drive, tied down to their parents and to the restrictions of a small town.

Strangely enough, their land was in the woods. This was the first time I’d heard of there being any sort of “woods” in tiny suburban North Plainfield, New Jersey. I sent them out on their own with my camera to tape what they did in their time alone in Triadica.

The footage that they took themselves was probably the most honest and raw footage I obtained, over and above the hours of interview footage I took, questioning them with a microphone in my hand. When I held the camera on them, they were awkward, looking at each other for reassurance as they mumbled an explanation to my questions, What was Triadica all about?

They weren’t doing anything “bad” in the woods, as one might be suspicious of (no drinking/smoking/etc). Triadica was simply a hideaway, their own stage show where they’d put on costumes, long velvet robes and Medieval-looking hats, go out into the woods, bless trees with self-made prayers, remove themselves from the world of high school and parents. After making the video and showing it to them, I found out that they’d actually written their own book of rules. The doctrine of the members of Triadica dictates that all people should be accepted no matter who they happen to be—a wish of most awkward high school students.

The video is an extended self-portrait, in a sense. This was me when I was a teenager. Maybe I wasn’t obsessed with role-playing and Medieval costumes like my sister Phoebe, but I made up my own path towards community and friendship through zines, being in high school bands, talking for hours to new friends online. Most “adults” can feel an affinity with Phoebe and Nicole as they are portrayed in Triadica, since most of us were stuck there at some point in time.

The following, written by my sister and her friend, is an accompaniment to the included video.

THE HALOWING As Proposed to the Council of Thrice by Lezhumn, Keeper of the LawTHE PREAMBLE

The great people of the Empire Thrice, hereby declare themselves and their Empire independent of all organizations and nations. This document is certified by the counsel of thrice as a declaration of that independence. The great people of the Empire Thrice do declare that they and their nation shall forever progress, even under suppression of enormous amounts. This document, upon signing, does hereby govern the Empire Thrice and its constituents. This is the Halowing.

PART I: “THE RIGHTS OF ALLTRIADIC PEOPLES”

1. All people have useful purpose and have the right to be treated as such. 2. All people have the right to religion(s), belief(s), and moral values, and have the right to pursue this right in a legal manner. 3. All people have the right to creativity and originality to the extent that is “right” under the Halowing. 4. All people have the right of choice and decision. 5. All people have the right to act under those decisions as governed ender the Halowing and its amendments. 6. All people have the right to speak their mind and have their belief(s) made public. 7. All people have the right to put their idea(s) and/or belief(s) on paper as is governed by the Halowing and its amendments. 8. All people have the right to privacy and secrecy as is governed by the Halowing and its amendments.

PART II: “THE TRIADIC GOVERNMENT”

The Empire Thrice will be governed in an orderly manner.

1. The main governing body of Triadica (The Empire Thrice) is the Congressional Triadic Administration. 2. The Congressional Triadic Administration (C.T.A.) is made up of representatives of the Triadic people, known as Governors. 3. The three main governors are known as the Kepper of the Culture, the Keeper of the Land, and the Keeper of the Law. These three Governors together serve as the Counsel of Thrice, the “leaders” or “rulers” of Triadica. Each has a specific responsibility according to their title. All of the Keepers have a say in the matters of all Keepers. 4. The C.T.A. take into consideration all of the Triadic people’s views on all issues concerning the C. T. A. (quoted directly from a document written by Phoebe and Nicole, 2000).

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VIDEO TWO: Plainfield/North Plainfield (script)

Scene One

My first friend Rodney was split down the middle and I wasn’t. I learned this when I was four years old taking a bath at her house. She showed me a line. On one side of it her skin was “peach” for her mommy and on the other side she was brown for her daddy. I was a pale shade of peach all over.

Rodney’s family lived in Plainfield and my family lived in North Plainfield. The towns’ names were related, but adults around me insisted they were different worlds. Plainfield had been a Black town since the riots in the late 60’s. My elders told vague stories about white people moving out after the riots and black people moving in.

Plainfield was a differently colored town from my own. Rodney’s father was a deeper shade than her mother and her neighbors were brown-skinned. Theories of “white flight” echoed in my mind, yet I remained blind to any internal difference as I spent my childhood playing with Rodney in her backyard.

Scene Two

Scenery changed as we drove over the bridge that connected North Plainfield to Plainfield. Plainfield was a small city, had streets lined with dime stores, restaurants, and even a Macy’s, until malls took over and left the Macy’s building vacant. Many of the buildings downtown were boarded up. My mother would tell stories of gift shopping at the now-empty Tepper’s department store as a child, and of visiting the head shops that were there in the early 60’s.

This landscape was to be feared, changing from the closely placed houses of North Plainfield to the unkempt city streets Plainfield. Adults around me did not consider themselves “racist”. They wrote off any such idea with the proof that they had Black friends. But racism was implicit in their fear of the “strangers” in Plainfield.

As a teenager, I occasionally challenged my elders’ fears of Plainfield. They argued it was just a safety precaution. Every other white parent backed them up, my friends’ hands reaching for the car door locks as their mothers drove through Plainfield (when finding it necessary to drive through at all).

This image of false danger is a clear memory: a sunny street on a beautiful summer day, so hot the vinyl car seats stick to my bear thighs. So airless, because the windows need to be rolled up because the scenery is such: a Black man is jay walking and there is a fear he will do bad things to the white family locked up in the car.

Scene Three

In 1994 my town was to vote on whether its name would be changed from North Plainfield to Stony Brook. Those for the change stood for disassociating themselves from Plainfield. They claimed they had strong pride in their town, which they believed was so different from the “problems” that existed in Plainfield. There was a lower crime rate in North Plainfield (and it was comparatively mainly white). There was an underlying fear that an association would be made between Plainfield and our town, and that this would keep the “good people” from moving in.

The vote never passed. Too many were against it because money would be needed to change road signs, address labels, sports team uniforms. Looking back, I wish that someone had noticed the overt racism suggested in the proposal for the change. I thought myself to be “not racist”, yet I stood for the change, with an absurd superstition that it might really change things to give a new name to the town that isolated me so much.

Scene Four

I was thirteen. A new family moved into the house next door. They introduced themselves, shaking hands over the backyard fence. Back inside our house, my mother jokingly pointed out the plastic pink flamingos they’d installed in the front yard. I laughed along with her, thinking it was indeed odd to see such things on a front lawn in New Jersey.

Our neighbors had a loud stereo system installed in their garage and would turn it on Sunday mornings as they set up for family gatherings. One Sunday, my mother turned on her radio as loud as she possibly could and placed it on the back deck, below my bedroom window, to “block out their Spanish music”, she said, in response to my morning complaints about the noise.

I couldn’t help but remember the strong friendships my family had with families that had lived in the same house in the past, the beer-bellied white family from the Midwest, who would annoy my parents as they spit phlegm over their back deck, so close to the yard where my sister and I were playing. Still, they were treated with respect and invited to family gatherings none the less.

According to most of my elders, the growing Latino population in our town was a growing “problem”—although this was only admitted in the privacy of the home. A different “problem” extended to the hallways of my high school. My honors classes were all white, and only lower lever classes were racially mixed. Students remained separated the few places they were given the opportunity to commune—such as the cafeteria and during gym class.

Scene Five

During high school, I would claim that color didn’t matter to me when racism would come up in the activist community I involved myself with. I felt uncomfortable with racist remarks that came from the mouths of my family members, yet they were written off and covered up so often that I swore I didn’t have anything of my own to deal with. Looking back, I surely wasn’t forced to deal with anything. What I failed to realize was that this was my privilege, this was a part of my being white-skinned, part of closing myself off to the issues that were prevalent for the people around me.

Not until I became friends with Kate at the end of my senior year, did I realize how blind I was. I failed, on numerous occasions, to grapple with Kate’s insistent discomfort being the only black girl in our white group of friends. She’d sometimes jokingly said that she, herself, was white. My friends and I reacted to what Kate had presented as a “joke” with uncomfortable silence. Why did she need to say she was something she wasn’t? I wondered. I’d thought it was so simple, that she should be proud of herself, because my friends and I loved her for who she was.

I knew there was so much I was truly blind to. Almost everywhere we hung out, at punk shows, at parties, the girls and boys were white. Most in the “scene” didn’t discuss the racism the few people of color in it faced. I feared that my blindness to how my friend was feeling was a reflection of ways I had seen my elders write off their own racism, pretending that they had all the answers, that they knew the weight of their words.

Scene Six

It is easy for me to leave a town behind that I hate, to move somewhere new and separate myself from its sickening normality. It is most difficult for me to separate myself from my family, those whom I love dearly. But this is a part of them, now a part of me that I want so badly to free myself from. If I could go back, I would challenge the things I disagreed with and never spoke back to, demand answers to the questions that lingered in my head. I’ve realized that I have a lot to learn from others, and a lot of history built-up in myself that I need to acknowledge before I can even begin to overcome it.

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