Leddy Z or 1D?

I'm currently rediscovering the Flower Child Era.  I would say that my taste is eclectic at best, and borderline schizophrenic at worst, but Hippie Generation is something I will always return to.  It's true that the purists left the movement before the masses REALLY jumped on board, but something of the spirit must have remained.

I remember that I used to be completely infatuated with Led Zeppelin.  I still love Classic Rock, and Zep is my favorite all-time band, but I was obsessed.  So obsessed that I can no longer make fun of Beliebers and Directioners with impunity.

Jimmy Page, 9th grade

I could-and often did-listen to the Mighty Zep for hours on end.  I thought their songs very profound, and myself equally so, for listening to it.  It's pretty funny to me now, that I used to lay with my hair artfully fanned out across the floor, moved to tears, tracing the music in the air.  What a little snot I was.  To me, classic rock was the only music worth listening to, and Led Zeppelin was superior to everything, end of discussion.

13 year olds can be such snobs, can't they?

Courtesy of Pinterest

I remember in an interview, Slash (of Guns N Roses) denounced One Direction for being meaningless and pointless and a bunch of other less favorable adjectives.  He said that its just a bunch of shallow, recycled ideas recycled to teenaged girls-an extension of the materialism of our time.  And I don't think the Almighty Slash is wrong, exactly, but I don't think he's being fair.  Everyone has different emotional baggage and so one song to one person might mean something different to another.  Personally, my theory is that One Direction gets accused of being frivilous and shallow because a lot of people that listen to them are, in my estimation, frivilous and shallow.  But that can be said for any artist, and it's simply unfortunate for them that their targeted audience is in the throes of pubescent agony.  I went through a Jonas Brothers stage myself.  (I prefer not to think about it)

You know that one song by One Direction that everyone knows? What Makes You Beautiful?  I love that song.  In fact I love all five songs that I've ever bothered to listen to by them.  What are the lyrics? I dunno.  Who sings what part? I don't care.  What's the song's message? Went over my head.  I may not be a hard core admirerer, but I do to some extent appreciate the songs because they are like a trip down memory lane, back to my own Jo Bro days.

When I hear One Direction on the radio, it makes me feel younger and carefree.  Suddenly I'm 12 again (this being pre-Zeppelin), and I remember the things I used to say, and the things I used to like, the people I used to be friends with.

So maybe boy bands are all recycled stuff-there are those that would agree and those that wouldn't.  But does it even matter?  Eventually those annoying little girls will grow up, but that special part of adolescence will be forever preserved with those silly songs.

But Led Zeppelin IS the best. Just saying.

Robert Plant was such a Babe. (courtesy of Pinterest)

An Orange Morning

The best thing about living in San Diego is that warm SoCal sun.  The best thing about that sun is the way everything bursts into color and fragrance beneath it.  This is one of those things people know to be true, but until confronted by it, pass through cold, dismal days without appreciating it.  I gave up trying to understand the sun in scientific terms-namely, that it will shine this many billions of years before going out, that it burns these chemicals, that it is this distance from Earth.  I would rather worship like the unlearned, like the peasant tilling the fields.

One of these days I'll figure out how to get straight to the point.

Anyways, yesterday my mother, brother, and I drove up to Lemon Grove to do some community service.  We, along with a number of other people, were to pick oranges, blood oranges, and tangerines from this man's house.  The point of the organization, you see, is to pick fruits from people's houses and redistribute it to the homeless and hungry.  It's splendid, because not only do the owners get free maintanance and the homeless some wholesome food, but we the volunteers get great exercise and some much-needed how-de-do's with Mother Earth.

And ah, the sun! It was mid-morning, so it wasn't blazing yet.  Still, it was hot enough to see us all sweat.  But it was a fine way to sweat, with the scent of orange blossom heavy in the air, and the leaves sunsoaked and vibrant.

We had come on the recommendation of my orthodontist, of all people.  Dr. Truong is a small Vietnamese lady with glossy, permed hair and a loud voice.  I like her very much, for she is always in the habit of speaking her mind, to any and all that care to hear it.

"You wearing da sunscreen?" she hollered at me.  I wasn't, and so endured a good-natured tongue lashing for it.

"You got bags? Good. You see any good fruit, you can take some home wit you."  So we did.

Pictured above is half a blood orange.  Until yesterday, I had never so much as seen one before.  To be honest, it didn't taste any different than your average joe orange.  But the crimson hue of its insides were a treat.  It was more pigmented than I expected, so imagine my surprise when I dropped it onto my shirt.  Stained.  A worthy sacrifice, I suppose.

I thought about Woodstock as I worked, because sun and trees and fields reminds me of music festivals.  It was only a passing fancy, but that very lot could have housed something like Woodstock, which was held in such a place in New York, after all.  But it was so nice to think about these things, and pick at the sharply sweet smelling fruit, so I allowed myself to continue.

My brother was reluctant to come at first, because he had wanted to stay home and play video games.  The prospect of picking oranges simply did not appeal to him...that is, until he found out he got to use one of those poles with pronged baskets at the top.  Imagine his excitement when he found out that they were extendable, too.

I suppose this was what you could call a productive day :)

The Slipperiest of Slippery Slopes

I'm walking on thin ice.  Literally ten minutes ago I made a twitter, and I only "discovered" facebook, like, a month ago.  Seriously.

But I can tell you that while I may be late to the party-indeed, a lot of us left when that crazy drunk chick started dancing on tables-I now know why people are so addicted to social media.  So, it's a social experiment, really...

I've always censured social media as something dehumanizing, because it makes people forget what face-to-face interaction is like, and how important it is.  I thought that not only did it waste time, but it also made comformist zombies out of its users.  It was an industry that fed on idleness, decadency, and superficiality.  

And I don't disagree with past-Cynthia.

But I haven't been fair; I never saw the benefits.  Being 17, I have to think about college, which is advancing with alarming velocity.  I'll lose at least half my friends to out-of-state schools-more if I'm one of their number.  No one writes letters anymore (too bad, because I'd have been so down), and phone calls are becoming a thing of the past.  

There's another thing I hadn't thought of.  There's something enchanting about communicating in a removed, impersonal way in short, disointed bursts.  Suddenly things are ten times funnier than if the same person said it in real life.  The instant-gratification principle mixes with irony, I think.  

Part of the reason I even jumped on the band wagon was that social media and its effects are ubiquitous themes in school nowadays.  We discuss it in AP Spanish.  I wrote about it on my SAT essay.  We read tweets in our school newspaper.  

I feel like a cowboy, with the coming of trains and industrialization.  The dawn of a new era ushers in the death of another.  Yes, its a little sad, especially since so few seem to mourn its passing.  I mean, if I could stick to my handwritten letters and blotters and long telephone calls, I would.  But it's just not practical anymore.  

I'm no hipster, so I won't try to fight the future.  Besides.  Did y'all know that facebook has GAMES? 

Creature Comforts

I think everyone must have something within them that is never satisfied, something that longs for something else.  A touch of wanderlust.  This must be what keeps us from true contentment, a state where striving for something out of reach is rendered wholly unnecessary.  If we were comfortable, there would be no need to dream.

I dream.  To much sometimes, which is why I probably flunked my last Calc quiz.  But life is short, you know?

I dream vaguely of a nomadic existence and I've this idea that somehow I will be happiest this way, although I have never lived thus before.  Exotic lands, with their warm climes and coloful flora; forbidding celtic shores, whose very sands witnessed the coming of the Norsemen; austere European cities: London, Vienna, Budapest...

Yet central to these dreams (right now) is somewhere very warm and very sunny.  The people are dark-skinned, mostly, and the sky and sea strive to outshine the other.  There are mountains, at the edge of consciousness, and colorful open-air marketplaces selling non-GMO fruits and various handmade artisania.  

Argentina, maybe.  Or Peru.  Or even darling Mexico.  

I dream of a land of Spanish speakers, now that I am plowing full-steam through my later teenaged years.  It isn't truly a place, although I tell people that it is Peru I dream of.  And that's no lie, for Peru must be a place like that.  But I have never been to Peru; I have never been anywhere in South America.  I don't know what it is that gives man the desire to force a name and a face to a feeling.  

But Peru is ideal, even if I risk disappointing myself for trying to dress it up as something it may not be.  Indeed, that is a great disservice to the both of us, Peru and I.  

I have spoken of Peru many times with Profe Sanchez, my Ap Spanish teacher.  We talk of Machu Picchu with voices hushed with reverence and longing.  Always longing.  San Diego is sunny too, and there are mountains aplenty in California.  But they say that the Andes are unrivaled.  They say that there is no grass greener than that which grows thickly on the old Incan terraces at Machu Picchu.

I wonder what about my life right now makes me want warmth.  Not so long ago I wished for a place that snowed in the Wintertime, where beer flowed more abundantly than water, where cold, crushingly powerful rivers roared through.  A place I named Germany.  I will go to Germany next Summer, and I wonder how similar she is to My Germany.  Will the air taste as the air in My Germany tastes, I wonder?  

And someday I will go to Peru, to eat papaya and maize and bananas until I don't have to keep feeding My Peru.  Because then I won't have to feed the dream; reality will have taken its place.

Silence

She sits at the kitchen table downstairs, shoulders slumped and hair falling forward to hide her careworn face.  Her head is bowed as though conquered.

Her cotton shirt is brown, as are her loose-fitting slacks-she blends in with the table.

"You look sad," I say to her, pressing my cheek into the wall.  My voice is lighthearted, yet my stomach tightens in apprehension.  For a while she doesn't answer me.  Then she says to me, with little emotion, "I am sad."

My stomach ties itself into a knot.

"Why are you sad?" I unclasp myself from the banister and walk into the yellow kitchen light.  The proud head, with the wide nose and thin, flat lips turns away from me.

We are shrouded in silence.  Now, silence is a funny thing because sometimes it is the most beautiful thing in the world.  When it follows laughter, or a kiss, or simply itself as it floats along the meadows and streams.  But not now.  This silence is ugly and cancerous.

I step closer.  "Why are you sad?" and my voice takes on the quality of someone very young.  Someone I imagine that I used to be, although that was so long ago I can't truly remember.

"Why are you sad?"

She won't tell me.  I can see it in her eyes as she turns reluctantly to face me.  I can't force her, and I'm frightened of something I can't understand.  I wish I were older, wiser, versed in the ways of womanhood.

My mother tells me, in Chinese, to do my homework.  The silence returns to claim us.  So she repeats herself without anger or exasperation.

"How can I do my homework if you're sad?" She doesn't reply, but looks away.  I walk closer to her, and I can see that she doesn't want me there.  I can't help her.

So I leave before she can see me cry.  

On Being a Plant Killer

I am a vegan.  I have been vegan since February 1st, 2014.  My mother is not pleased.

I think I'd like to share my thoughts on this lifestyle, and perhaps debunk some myths.  I am by no means an expert, but my body tells me it is happy, and my mind is clear.  When I go to bed I find that I can sleep the whole night through, most days.  When I wake up I feel refreshed, with no headache, or joint pain.  Imagine that, joint pain at age 16.  

My friends think I am a hippie, but they thought so long before I cut animal products out of my diet.  I see nothing wrong with killing animals, or eating their flesh and using their skins.  If the lion can kill to live, why cannot the human? If the ant can herd aphids to harvest their sweet, sticky, secretions, how could humans be faulted for raising livestock for similar purposes?  Nature is ruthless and death is something natural-perhaps misunderstood. 

Yet if I feel this way about killing animals, why am I vegan?  Health reasons aside, that is.  Because killing is a necessity; because killing is survival; because killing is not murder. There is no indignity in being killed to ensure another's survival, but cold, lucrative murder is the greatest atrocity committable.  

With our great innovations come our great and human failings.  Genius invites greed, and the whispers of wealth hang heavy in the air, even as the blood of our fellow earthlings dry on our hands.  At some point in time the world entered the Modern Age and agricultural surpluses meant that families were no longer going hungry.  We looked not to our own daily survival, but to line our pockets.  We wanted to get ahead, we wanted pretty dresses for our pink-cheeked daughters and a fine strand of pearls for our mothers.  We wanted that special happiness that only wealth can buy.  Happiness not from love, but from stability and status.  It wasn't as important as the other happiness, but oh how we craved it.

So we industrialized and factories sprung like wildflowers all over the nations that could afford it.  This way of doing business is efficient, but very cold.  So faceless.  Employees were only numbers and cattle, well, they weren't much either.  

Mass production means that countless animals-today more than ever-are slaughtered to feed a swelling population that struggles to consume it all.  And we eat so much of it as it is.  We swell in more ways than one.  This surplus, this senseless waste, is mercenary; what do they care how many arteries clog and livers fail? This is the first generation that is in danger of not outliving their parents.  Because childhood obesity doubles and doubles and doubles again.  If a child cannot run and shriek and bang their knees on the jungle gym and bloody their hands on tree bark...where is childhood?  How will they know to love sunshine if they are but acquaintances?  

But there is more.  So much more.

Earth and her children do not exist so that one race may dominate and exploit the others.  Why are we so favored, so deserving?  We claim advanced intelligence, a higher development, yet we have been poor stewards thus far of the beauty around us.  

Did you know, for example, that milking cows are kept in tiny, putrid stalls until they fall from exhaustion.  For all four years of their life.  Did you know that a healthy cow can live to be nearly twenty?  And did you know that these cows are then dragged off to the slaughterhouses, where their diseased carcasses are ground into your childrens' hamburger meant?  But you needn't worry because sometimes their flesh joins that of euthanized cats and dogs from enterprising animal shelters to feed more cows.  And they wonder why mad cow disease is so rampant still.  

Did you know that many farmers will brand cattle with a fiery iron just below the eye?  I cannot imagine that their aim is perfect all the time.  A momentary distraction, and the brand misses its mark, the eye sizzles and turns milky white.  The cow bellows in pain but what do we care? It has no words.  It cannot speak to us.  It is beneath us.  Let the eye smoke.  Let it scream.  We do not care.

Did you know that they wrench off the horns of so many bulls? To break their spirit and to diminish the danger to ourselves.  No anesthetic, either.  

Cattle blood is very precious, because it makes less than choice beef seem more appetizing, when mixed with it.  Do we care how it is harvested? Does anyone care? Does anyone care that that long-suffering animal is strung by the back hooves and hit with a blow intended to stun it into unconsciousness and slit from belly to chin?  A jug catches the blood as it rains from the unconscious creature.  But what is that? A movement of the head, froth speckling a mouth that can no longer scream? That cow is awake in its final seconds of life.  Awake enough to watch itself bleed dry. 

This is not killing.  This is murder.  This is the greatest hypocrisy of our time.  This is why I am vegan.  You do not have to be, but I implore that you be conscious.  I beg that you be aware of abuse.  

My best friend came up with the quote emblazoned on our club sweatshirts at school: "Animals can't speak.  They need a voice."

http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/factory-farming/cows/beef-industry/

http://www.jsonline.com/business/undercover-video-prompts-nestle-to-drop-milk-supplied-by-greenleaf-dairy-b99160610z1-235244161.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD0RTBtl0Pchttp://www.think-differently-about-sheep.com/index.htm

PS! I am less deficient in calcium and vitamin B12 than I was before! And there is NO SUCH THING as a protein deficiency! So back off, MOM. Just kidding, but lets not hate.