Stupid question

There is such a thing as a stupid question, so if you have one it is best to ask in private so you don't embarrass yourself and everyone who knows you.

Reading a Poem

When reading a poem aloud to an audience, the poet often wishes to communicate pain and anger. The kind that says, "This is my pain, so you cannot understand. But I'm going to subject you to five pages of my insecurities while you look at my purple hair and nose ring. And I'll blabber on and on about how my daddy doesn't love me. And you are going to praise me or else!" It's that pain that makes it all so special. It's the pain of showering in nopal. Thousands of picos covering every available piece of flesh. And I bathe in them, wishing to cleanse the pollution of the modern world with picos of grandma's cactus that I only met in old photographs and stories that craft my imagination, so that is where I bathe. That is all I have left. The non-existent memory of a cactus standing chueco on the side of a house I never visited in a dusty, hot pueblo I never knew. Yet I bathe in the idea brought forth by my imagination that I might have known, only if things had been different. I might be fulfilled only if the stars were correctly aligned an only if my futile cries and prayers had been addressed. Now I can do nothing but stand her showing in my imaginary cactus with picos sticking, I wash in the lather of my own blood, thick and sticky when I really want nothing more than to lay in a bed of roses with you gently running my fingers across your beautiful soft skin. Smelling the scent of a field of wildflowers each time you exhale. Getting lost in the moment of your glance. Wouldn't that be something? That would have to be a different poem altogether.

School Uniforms

Although I have never really liked school uniforms, I don't consider them to be evil; I do, however, see them as a serious indicator of an institution's overall educational philosophy. If a school's administration believes that they have the right (and they might even see it as their duty to save children from themselves) to to narrowly restrict how children dress, then just imagine what they are doing with the curriculum. When a school tells a community that its students must dress a certain way, we should ask what that dress code reflects. If it simply restricts what can be worn, then the school also likely restricts what student's learn. One thing students learn from this is that their place in the world demands conformity to to a narrow set of rules to stay out of trouble, or rebel against conformity and suffer the consequences. If it offers offers clear guidelines with limited choices, then student likely learn a slightly less restricted curriculum, but their real choices life are still limited. When their are guidelines that are open to some interpretation, it places schools, students, and parents to reflect upon the values they wish to represent to the outside world; it creates an environment where everyone can express their views on appropriateness, manners, decorum, and self-respect. When communities create environments that encourage dialogue in the area of dress codes, then imagine the types of dialogues that happen in regard to the curriculum. We seldom see large numbers of successful students come from the most restrictive, least critical schools and there are many reasons for that, but if the overarching philosophy of those schools are to limit students from the moment they arrive, then they are doing a huge disservice to our society as a whole and one by one, they are dooming those children to a life of fewer and fewer options.

Television

The job of most media these days is to completely anesthetize the viewers into a zombie-like slumber.

Otherness

I have always felt like the outsider, the unnecessary component, the tag along, the other. Since I was a small child I just never seemed to fit anywhere or any place regardless of how hard I tried.