To encourage a child of this nation to attend college
is to encourage a child to accept a sentencing
of suffocation to be served immediately
upon becoming an adult. Their first however-many years
spent crossing long bridge patterns over open water
meant to connect "childhood" and "adulthood" (
arbitrary time stamps) inside a cold bone grip
as though a fist was shaking the last dying pieces
of warmth that comes from wearing the skin of youth,
a large dead mammal shielding against wintric subzero temp-
orary permanence inside the waking world's frozen organs
and shaking. Not for the cold, but for the fear
of how cold it will very soon become when the skin
is absorbed into skin, leaving a single shell
glowing naked destructible and helpless and so
the child must learn to use disappearing moments wisely, to fortify.
It must claw to safety inside reasonable fields of study,
and for the right reasons. To find and make enough to pay their dues
and their debts, so they can crawl their way back to much-needed
warmth. So that it can fight. That it can learn how to fight.
That it can learn how it is good to fight for yourself.
And that it is good to fight for your dreams, and fight
for your family, and fight for your nation under the gaze
of the late Dr. King Jr, and his calm practical dares
to the world to fight with your voice, fight with reason
because if you don't, that's what makes you a coward to me
(I don't quote him exactly). The king has gone
completely unignored. But still there lies disjunct
between his words and our incentives that nobody
seems to want to talk about, strangled in the struggle in
the nation that encourages a child towards
evolutionary progress. The ultimate goal of any species.
Raising the young to be mindful of the true human condition -
survival of the fittest. That we are one part of a large human
engine, and that our fight for survival is helping
the survival of the collective, the engine grind.
So you too will fight.
Because the fight will be brought to you. Into your home.
Into your mind. To encourage our human evolution towards a flock
of flawless beautyless questionless colorless artless non-wandering bloodthirsty
survivors. To encourage a child of this nation to attend college
is to love them, very very much. And very well.
It is to teach a young person that you must bite
the hand that needs you. It is to be genuinely
concerned for them, and for their well-being.
October 2014. Thanks to etouffee for some of the pipelinks.