all the world's a stage

I wonder sometimes how it would be if I was ten years old today and still quite engaged with “growing up.” Well yes, technically I am still growing up or to be precise, growing old. That is VERY different now, isn’t it? Your legs don’t grow any leggier, your breasts don’t get any breastier (unless you are sculpting with copious amounts of silicon), your penis has had its 'ohhhkay that's it. you happy now?' moment, your nose don’t chisel itself out, your teeth don’t reach new levels of geometric perfection or concaveness… nothing good really occurs in this stage of growth, namely the period between your late teens or early twenties to the end of your life, anymore. Any “growth” now, after 25 at most (I would think), is an aberration, a trespassing fleshy appendage, which quite possibly will need a surgical intervention in the non-silicon, non-enhancement kind of way. If anything at all, the only slab of our body STILL growing would be our belligerent, teasing old gut, perpetually snickering at our incapacity to check the eternal threat of portliness. Anyway, let me come back to my original tedious curiosity of how it would be to grow up in these times.

Undoubtedly, in many singular ways the act of living your life has been made easy and efficient. I am not questioning the ramifications of technological advancement at all. It is most certainly, and absolutely a winning argument. And indeed, I am not engaging myself in an altercation that life cannot be lived without technological efficacy. Of course it can be. The denial of that, I imagine, would finally enrage the peaceful Amish people enough to shoot me with bows and arrows! (Um, pardon me for my lack of knowledge about Amish armaments). My argument stems from the run-of-the-mill concern of the evermore growing lack of innocence enshrouding us all. Yes, this realization at this point in history will not make me famous… I am behind the mark by at least three centuries. Even William Blake wasn’t really the pioneer of that aphorism, and HE worked pretty fast I tell’ya! Day 1, born. Day 2, write. Day 3, create the Tyger and the Lamb. Hence, this concern is not new. But nevertheless I am rather sad, and a peculiar sense of loneliness haunts me, at the general lack of innocence in the world that I inhabit. It is inevitable that I insert a disclaimer here: I am not a saint, not a prude, not a puritan, and have participated in many cardinal sins with volition, I am sure. Had I any camelesque bodily functions to store liquids, gallons of alcohol might be pumped out worth a whole capacity of an artesian well in one of our own Amish lands! Indeed, cocktails have been drunk, sex with its many imaginings has been practiced, and meat has been ravaged without the slightest reprehension… basically, the works. Hence, I am not a saint. But even then I have not been able to evacuate myself of this brooding, breeding, and intransigent feeling that the world has reached and penetrates into new realms and levels of inebriation, vulgarity, and unscrupulousness. And in me I have been able to locate for some time now, a smooth transitioning with retrograde motions of awe, absorption, participation, disapproval, detest, fear, more fear, detachment, or aloofness as possible reactions to the world around me. I imagine in my head that a randomly selected 25 year old of today is outrageously more profligate than a 25 year old of my parents’ time. And that if I was a 10 year old today, I might be acutely aware of many of the beginners lessons on sex, which in my lifetime I had stumbled upon a biology class in eighth grade. And I remember I could not comprehend for the life of me, how and through what the spermatic visitors reach the ovarian hosts. The teacher did not quite explain that in class either, at least not during my attention span. My friends from school can vouch for my inconsolable naivety back then. In fact R was the one who enlightened me after the class, in a fit of amusement, about the mechanics of sex. So anyhow, my point is I was, I am sure, not the only 14 year old who had absolutely no clue about certain things in life. And it had seemed fine. But I am afraid that a 14 year old of today might have had field experiences already. My concern is that the average girl/boy of today of any age is far more tainted, and lost a little more innocence, and acquired a little more experience, and had a little more “fun” than that of the average girl or boy of the same age of even half a generation ago. There seems to be an anachronistic compression today, and people just know and do a lot more in every aspect especially of the bad and the ugly; I am not so sure about the good. Am I entirely concocting this or is there a figment of truth embedded somewhere? Browsing through pictures in social networking sites has prodigiously rounded my belief that indeed we are all looming in a world of amorality, at best. I don’t know what I am looking for; I don’t know what I am hoping. I am not seeking a world where everybody is a buck toothed farmer, looking like the kid from Jerry Maguire, leading a Forrest Gumpian life, or holding hands and singing nursery rhymes, and drinking milk as the only other substitute for a liquid refreshment; no that is not what I expect, and that is not my definition of innocence. But I guess I am just looking for some elegant quality of the heart, which does not tarnish with time, and retains some sense of purity, and faith. I don’t know what I am looking for in these snapshots of peoples’ lives exhibited in the electronic world…I don’t even know if a single hour of my life entailed the very innocence that I am searching for. I probably don’t make a rational argument here. I am probably looking for something entirely unreasonable, which makes no sense… which never existed, which does not need to exist…

And yet it’s just that… I need to believe that you effortlessly understand what I am trying to say… and offer me a reassuring nod that all is not lost…