The Kids Are Wide Awake & Dreaming--How About You?

[On September 1, 1939, the same day that the German army invaded Poland and started World War II, lightning hit and killed 835 sheep that had been bedded down for the night on the top of Pine Canyon in the Raft River Mountains of Box Elder County in northwestern Utah. Rain from a passing thunderstorm wet the ground and sheep, causing the lightning's electrical discharge to move completely through the herd of female sheep and lambs. The next morning, fifteen sheep (out of 850) were found alive but in a dazed condition. The sheepherder was knocked temporarily unconscious, but escaped death because he was in a tent. However, burned spots on his canvas tent revealed he probably missed the fate of the sheep by only a slim margin. (Photo courtesy of National Weather Service.)]

We Are All Individuals (who like 2 live very close together).



It was Evelyn who first got me thinking about the kids.


She told me of the surprising number of under 25 yr olds that she'd recently met who were AWAKE!

And by awake I mean they're celebrating their bodies and minds--ridin vibes and feelings--being free to be whoever they want to be. Finely attuned to the beauty within.

They grew up not believing in the dualities that even those of us a few years older remember as being so polarizing—black vs. white, gay vs. straight, women vs. men.

These kids perceive human relationships as being essentially fluid and as a result dont overload them with unrealistic emotional expectations.

They are lighter than the rest of us--and I don't mean "skinny".

They aren’t guilty or burdened by the ressentiment that Nietzsche found so poisonous. They make up the heart of the heart of the "Millennial" demographic, for whom the event of 9/11 simultaneously confirmed and denied EVERYTHING they'd been told by their parents and other authority figures for the duration of the 80s and 90s. They've grown up waiting for the other shoe to drop. They've grown up with the worst American president ever. They tend to be crafty with a preference for DIY designs. Many are what I call "participatory architects" of online social networks--early adapters who blog streams into the internet bit torrent (pinging the light phantastic)

In a Craigslist, post-Napster world, many kids (as well as babies of all ages) are already living in an enlightened internet--call it Web 3.0--a spinning/spun reality of heightened consciousness which social objects are created without the intention of making money, not now or in the future, and "value" is placed instead upon bartering and sharing goods and services across a network.

Some other AWAKE kids are Luddites, without email addresses or cell phones, who communicate with through the telepathy of a shared vibe and a mega-chill attitude towards life.

These travelers have no need for stinky, overripe notions such as "destination" and "time". Nomad hunter-gatherers and dumpster divers with their beards and boots and dogs and long poems painfully typed on antique typewriters with ink filled keys and squinting smiles as they call out to you from the platform, that they "know it's all gonna be ok" and that they will be in touch via the cell phone network of our MINDZ.

I want to create fiction that provides a station along the way--a place in which the kids--as well as anyone who is a kid at heart--can rest and tell stories and maybe fall in love.

A place where they can catch their breath and catch a glimpse of the new reality that they're dreaming into being.