coming-of-age

We aren__ encouraged to think for ourselves and ask questions. We are expected to accept what they teach us as infallible truths.

Well, most of us think the __erchant of Venice_ is a porno script. On a more personal note, I__e decided on pizza for dinner.

Boys always make things more complicated.

It__ sad really, trying to appreciate all of the great events in our lives and all the amazingly good days. Sometimes it seems like we take them for granted, until something bad comes along to put us back into perspective. Are these bad events catalysts for change, which bring out the resiliency and best in us? A cosmic wakeup call that reminds us to enjoy the good times, because they can be taken away so easily. How messed up and ironic would that be?Is it even possible for us to remember what goodness we__e truly capable of on a daily basis, not just when things cause us to react out of necessity. A base line of beautiful acts and thoughts that are not brought out only by holiday music or someone else__ misfortune, but remain at the surface of who we really are. Wouldn__ that be amazing? Wouldn__ that be something to strive for?

I was the ref. I was the ref they didn__ know about. Deaf and dumb. Invisible as a wall. I wanted no one to win

Hip-hop, this thing we love that loves us back, is our lingua franca.

That's what it means to be a man. You do what you think is right, regardless of who it hurts, and whether it works out, because in the end you have to live with yourself.

He was a shadow of the man that once intimidated us out of our home, a shell of a human being, a fragment of a father.

The music is happy; the laughter is happy. Everything feels ecstatic and desperate. Blurrily, I think of sex, and I think of death. I realize: Every moment of joyous celebration contains the seed of death.

He begins to sing to her, very softly, almost not singing at all, just a whisper of a tune. He spins out the tune like it is a tale he is telling her, until he feels her body relax, until he feels her falling into sleep. He sings to let her know he__ there, to stay anchored to the earth, to keep from laughing or crying in amazement that he is lying with Alice in his arms, he sings as if music could keep her alive, as if music could feed her soul, as if music could weave a protective spell around her to survive these days and these weeks and these months and these years, he sings as if he could give her a piece of himself, which will ring inside of her like a bell, like a promise, like hope whenever she needs him; and in his singing, he promises her every single thing he can think of, and more.

What in the world could this family have done to deserve a fate such as this?

In the end, every person's life is a tough act to follow.

As with all young ones, a deeper perception comes clearer with time... Roe'vaash recieved the grace to release the anger and pain he had carried and suffered for so long...

I just want to this about that.

You only go through High School once, but if you go through the way we did, that's enough.

You people who have survived childhood don't remeber any longer what it was like. You think children are whole, uncomplicated creatures, and if you split them in two with a handy axe there would be all one substance inside, hard candy. But it isn't hard candy so much as a hopeless seething lava of all kinds of things, a turmoil, a mess. And once the child starts thinking about this mess he begins to disintegrate as a child and turns into something else--an adult, an animal.

When left unsatisfied, lust becomes violence.

I was a late bloomer. I was still naïve about what 16 year olds today have known for years. I remember sitting up and taking notice__f the world, my body, others__n a way never before experienced. I noticed boys, or rather they noticed me, at 16.