If I Were To Catalogue This Post, it Would Go Somewhere in the 100's

More than any other institution I can think of, libraries emulate society, creating their own little hierarchies and communities within the greater clientele. Lots of kids, parents coming together through the medium of their kids, lonely twentysomething singles, the elderly and the homeless—every day of work at the Ames library is a pretty constant stream of these same groups, although I suppose I may just arrange the general public in such categories unduly, or spend too much fucking time at the library.

Either way, the extensiveness of the library’s programming, compounded with the relatively small market in Ames, frequently has the effect of exacerbating the visibility of these microcosmic social groups. It is with this notion in mind that I try to sort out my affinity for working with the library’s teen volunteers.

There are over 100 11-18 year olds (though mostly on the younger side) that come in weekly to clean shelves, sort books, and do other menial tasks while employees such as myself supervise, savoring the break from the menial tasks we would otherwise be doing. What fascinates me about my interaction with these kids is that the library’s environment, both by being a physically small space and putting parameters on the teens’ expected behavior, serves to accentuate the awkward adolescent dynamics. Thursday I learned that if someone is a “friend,” (quotation marks, of course, added physically at the time) then you hate talking to them but do it anyway. The “friend” carries a different, more subtly flirtatious social meaning than the friend or the friend.

The environment is especially interesting in how it can make me feel both closer and further removed from that pubescent period than I would have thought.

I’m close enough to understand how they see me. As someone who is still under twenty and doesn’t normally work with the volunteer program, I carry a sense of detachment from Authority that works in interesting ways. Remember the sub that you always got excited about because they’d let you get away with shit the regular teacher wouldn’t? It’s kind of like that, and I revel in seeing the baby steps that some of the volunteers will take to rebel using the space my person gives them—partially because they’re so hilariously trivial, and partially because its exactly what I would have done.

But that’s the other thing: I may have done all that, sure. But it would have carried the weight of my whole pride with it, the integrity of my Subversive Enough to be Interesting but Tamed Enough to be Allowed way of interacting with peers and authority figures. Get in-school-suspension for showing a girl the boys bathroom? I’d do it, but I’d be equally pissed if I missed that question about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in U.S. history as I would if no one knew I went into Victoria’s Secret stores on dares. It’s the same thing in the library, but in a different, arguably clearer context: a Led Zeppelin t-shirt can make one feel countercultural, but its hard when there’s a Library Volunteer pin stuck to it.

Of course now, with the help of my work situation, the contradictions are pretty clear. But it continually amazes me how deeply and for how long I lived those contradictions. Insulated rebellion is, apparently, long-lasting and completely mind-encompassing.

There are a couple places I could go from that realization: I could try, and likely fail, to identify the points at which what I stood for became more cohesive, or at least easily readable. But singling out the forces that most strongly catalyzed my maturation process seems unlikely at 19. What’s probably more plausible is that I embody the same sort of trifling deviance now, and it’s just considerably more difficult to recognize in context (which could be why it was so hard in 7th grade, too). I do, after all, spend most of my time on a campus where the security system is designed to accommodate this deviance. Maybe drinking beer in the woods is today’s sneaking into R-rated movies, although, at this point, the former has really ceased to feel subversive.

So the question, then, on my mind, is less when did I ever seriously find that sense of unified purpose (whether proactive or antagonistic, assimilatory or anti-authoritarian) as it is will I ever? The same goes for the teens in the program, for anyone who is profoundly ambivalent toward the idea of biting the hand that feeds them. It does seem weirdly premeditated in hindsight, though, the extent to which I’ve spent in this quasi-defiant limbo. But maybe it’s been so constant because it makes sense.

It’s probably better than losing any attachment to the safety net of real-life competence, and it sure beats losing that defiance at all.

What the Fuck am I Doing?

When I was a sophomore in high school some friends and I made a horror movie called the Iowa Chansaw Massacre, a 2 1/2 minute excuse to trespass, break shit and pour Hershey’s syrup on each other. The end product has minimal dialogue, but during filming we briefly discussed whether the film’s murder victims should be established as having deserved their slaughter. In said raw footage, the dialogue goes as follows:

-Y’know what I have opinions about?
-No, what?
-Things.
-Dude, you should get a blog.

Enter Axe Murderer.

In my life, I’ve generally tried to avoid being pretentious enough to warrant retaliatory killings. I’ve also generally been hyperconscious of whether my actions—especially with regard to self-expression (namely writing)—are worthy of acknowledgment as somehow legitimate. Legitimacy—truly, always my main concern—is a barometer of both quality and purpose. I’ve always wanted my shit to be good, perhaps even able to meet some standard of peer acceptance. The shadow of this aspiration meant that nothing could be more embarrassing than being told “nobody writes like that,” or the like. Even if some of these accusations (though surely not all of them—I’ve written some unbearably stupid shit) were arbitrary, they could still make me feel like some sweat-coated piece of my heart had been stolen.

My anxiety, however, has also focused on whether my output was ever truly worth the time and attention of whomever was confronted with it. Worth it, as in whether or not it provided some sort of inherent (yet of course fresh) service or value to its immediate recipients and Greater Conceptual Audience. This was the underlying yet supreme meaning of legitimacy. My internal pressure to make a statement that would change the world became so strong that, for awhile, my sense of purpose was too large to be channeled into anything remotely functional. I could never write freely in such neuroticism, of course. But it also seeped into my ability to relate to other people, into how I ran my life.

May 2008: park bench, somewhere in Des Moines:

-How are you feeling?
-I don’t know…I don’t really have anything profound to say, anyway.

The response of a well-intentioned teenager with cripplingly ambitious personal standards, or just a self-righteous motherfucker? Your call.

I’ve actually been wondering about that one for some time and all I’ve decided is that legitimacy is a bitch to define. Once you’ve crafted out a meaning for it, all of your actions can then be scrutinized through the framework of their relationship to that definition of legitimacy. Contradictions—breaches of the integrity of whatever you’re trying to say—arise like skeptical eyebrows. And, despite the more conventional advice I’ve been given, I don’t think that navigating those inevitabilities is quite as simple as just writing what you know, or, in life, acting as your conscience dictates. Your work will still be internalized by others within a (generally critical) personal context; people can only understand their surroundings with the help of their own exposure to others’ works and their own life experiences with the subject matter.

My exposure is limited. So is my experience. Sure, I can be concise about some things in writing, but when I try to communicate big, personal ideas (profundities? I can only fucking hope so), they inevitably go through this gauntlet of the audiences’ immediate circumstances, long-term contexts, and previous biases about myself. Usually, this is okay. But it also means that any opinion, impression, emotion I express will be understood by the reader with some impurity, with some dissonance.

I won’t argue that an important job of a good writer is to communicate ideas through that discord, but the practice also serves more personal functions. Writing is a way of contextualizing observations for oneself—of giving life and meaning to our notions; building them up or bringing them down. It’s a way of interacting more dynamically with our surroundings by asking ourselves if we understand them well enough to say something. There are times when this can be as meaningless (or misunderstood) to the reader as it is therapeutic to the author, but I’m getting to the point where I don’t think that’s so bad. Sure, these instances could often be avoided by less compulsive writing or more careful consideration, but why should I cheat myself of that sense of urgency? I’d rather take a pure idea and have it run me into a wall than quietly contemplate a better place.

So, do I believe that legitimacy has more to do with purity of intent than the ability to communicate that intent? I suppose so, but my convictions can be prone to significant ebbing and flowing. What’s constant though, is the necessity of playing with them—of considering their worth, or even just considering them all. Which is really the point of all this post, and the blog in general: a medium for me to legitimize that consideration. So far it feels pretty alright.

But I do hope you enjoy it, too.