the salted earth

perhaps all the tangled grief in my heart, and the fury buzzing aimless and frantic in my chest, throat, and limbs, comes down to this:

i am in mourning for the corruption of a moral language we once shared.

it is the loss of a homeland i can never return to, nor leave fully behind. words of universal principle have been sharpened into blades of tribal identity.

righteousness once meant inner integrity. now it means political loyalty.

truth was a difficult, humbling pursuit. now it is adherence to a partisan narrative.

love was a willful kindness extended even to enemies. now it is affection for those within the tribe, contingent on ideological conformity.

expansive concepts have shrunken into us vs. them checkboxes.

agency, once a sacred gift, is now invoked only to condemn.

faithful describes someone sharing dehumanizing memes.

courage describes acts of public cruelty.

peace is invoked to demand silence from the oppressed.

this language now sanctifies actions that would have been its very antithesis.

it feels like a violation, the misuse of sacred relics. like watching someone take the family china, passed down for generations, and use it to smash windows. the object is destroyed through its misuse, and with it, all the memory and meaning it held.

this mourning is valid because we are not just losing an argument. we are losing a world of shared meaning.

the corruption creates a devastating dissonance. the alphabet i learned to read love with is now used to write hate mail. the tool for connection has become the instrument of division. the past feels poisoned.

language is an ecosystem. a living network of meaning that connects minds, like mycelium connects trees.

this corruption is an act of ecological vandalism.

it pollutes the semantic watershed.

it clear cuts the narrative canopy, leaving only the harsh sun of dogma.

it severs the mycelial threads of shared understanding.

this is not a grief to get over. it is a grief to carry and transform. our task is not to rebuild the old, corrupted forest, but to tend the salted earth so new growth is possible.

i try to use the corrupted words sparingly, to reach for purer synonyms. to model semantic integrity. to show it is possible to speak of virtue without using a tribe’s polluted slang.

when i hear a corrupted term, i acknowledge the ghost of its original meaning. i let myself feel the pang. that pang is a moral compass still pointing true north, proof the corruption is not complete within me.

perhaps the most revolutionary act is remembrance. to recall what the words were meant to point toward, not power, not tribe, but the bedrock realities of compassion, justice, and our inextricable bond with all that lives.

i am keeping a vigil at the tomb of a beautiful, broken language. i know that from decay comes new life. this mourning is the quiet, fertile darkness from which a new, more resilient way of speaking, and being, might slowly, patiently, grow.

an inherited ruin

every generation inherits a world shaped by the ones before. that is not a judgment. it is just how the structure works. and when younger people try to name the conditions they have been handed, the pushback from a lot of boomers is not random. it is patterned, psychological, and it matters.

that resistance often gets written off as defensiveness or ignorance. but it is something more fragile and more dangerous: a refusal to face being vulnerable.

for much of the twentieth century, boomers grew up in a world of expanding possibility. there was affordable housing, attainable education, strong unions, pensions, a public investment in the middle class. these were not rewards for being good. they were the results of specific policies, movements, and a certain moment in history. boomers did not build that system, but they were its main beneficiaries.

then things broke.

as boomers took over positions of power, many helped, actively or by looking away, to dismantle the very structures that gave them their start. taxes were slashed. labor was weakened. housing became an investment vehicle. education turned into debt. the social safety net got rebranded as a personal failing. the ladder was not just climbed. it was pulled up behind them.

now, when millennials and gen z name what is left, precarity and debt and stagnation and collapse, they are not whining. they are describing reality. but for a lot of boomers, admitting that reality means facing an unbearable psychological split.

to say the system no longer works is to admit that the future they were promised, a secure retirement and care in old age and institutional support, is not guaranteed either. it means facing aging and irrelevance in a culture that taught them their worth came from productivity and authority. that is terrifying.

so the mind defends itself.

instead of confronting systemic failure, blame gets shifted downward. younger people are called lazy, entitled, fragile. structural problems are recast as personal failures. it preserves the self story: i worked hard, i followed the rules, i earned this. it avoids the grief of realizing the rules were rewritten halfway through the game.

that is why "not all boomers" misses the point. this is not about individual character. it is about patterns, voting blocs, cultural norms, who holds power and for how long. yes, individuals cast votes, but those votes add up to trends. individuals hold jobs, but collectively refusing to let go reshapes whole industries. exceptions do not erase outcomes.

you see it in the workplace too. many boomers hang on past retirement not always for the money, but because work is their last source of identity and control. stepping aside means facing the void left when the title goes. so positions are held onto. advancement stalls. younger workers do the labor of transition, carrying knowledge and adapting tech and managing change, without the pay or authority or recognition to match.

what looks like dedication is often fear. what looks like loyalty is often avoidance.

the cost is huge. leadership fossilizes. innovation slows. knowledge does not get passed down. institutions grow brittle. when change finally comes, it is sudden and catastrophic, not gradual and generative. whole generations are stuck in mid level limbo while crises pile up: climate, housing, health care, democracy itself.

the harm is not just material. it is emotional.

younger people grew up in instability and collapse, and were then told to be grateful. their reality gets downplayed. their despair gets moralized. their refusal to repeat the cycle, opting out of toxic work or delaying kids or redefining success, gets called selfish instead of sane.

that is the deepest threat.

when younger generations choose differently, they reveal a truth many boomers cannot face: it was always a choice. the suffering that got normalized and passed down was not inevitable. it was enforced. and seeing that choice now being refused does not provoke concern. it provokes resentment. because it shows what was lost.

that is why calls for "compassion" often get used to shut down criticism. focus on individuals. stop being divisive. heal your own wounds. these are not neutral appeals. they are avoidance strategies, ways to dissolve accountability into abstraction and protect the status quo.

naming harm is not cruelty. it is the first step toward repair.

this moment is not asking boomers for shame. it is asking for honesty. for humility. for the courage to say the world that worked for me is gone, and i had a hand, direct or indirect, in its unraveling. without that admission, there is no trust between generations. no solidarity. no shared future.

the tragedy is that denial does not preserve dignity. it corrodes it.

so the choice stays. cling to a story of individual merit until it turns brittle and breaks, or finally join in the work of generational repair. one path holds power until it shatters. the other lets go so something can continue.

history will remember which was chosen.

and younger generations are done pretending the damage is not real.

variations on vigilance

2 wolves inside me but
both the one at the door

a life 

organized around

perimeter defense

some of us

don’t get

an

inside

the hyper-attuned 

caretaker

reading microshifts in others

managing tone

preempting needs

smoothing danger before

it erupts

the “good” one

the socially rewarded one

the one people call

kind

capable

strong

the one that snarls inward

that mistrusts rest

tightens when things go quiet

that knows catastrophe

follows softness

the one that learned

being unguarded

gets you

hurt

humiliated

erased

this is not a romanticized

inner conflict this is

chronic siege

goodness did not protect you

obedience did not protect you

endurance did not protect you

silence did not protect you

a system adapted

by refusing to choose

neither wolf can be trusted to win

both must stay awake

there is only ever room

for one role in your life

every part of you

drafted into it

no artist

no child

no resting body

just variations on vigilance

need & alone

are the same

feeling to me

just in case

you wondered

where

all the rage is from

sorry if that

was “shitty &

try too hard”

i am tired of

going

without

in every semblance

of the phrase

what if my greatest fear

is unregulated aliveness

late to myself because

i was early for 

everyone else

what is it like

to be held

while you’re

hurting

how do you

carry yourself up

a mountain

what will it

cost me

Ready isn’t a feeling; it’s a decision.

I spend so much of my life waiting. Waiting for certainty, for permission, for the perfect alignment that might never arrive. Yet life refuses to pause. The world does not wait for me to feel prepared. Readiness, I am still learning, is not a state of mind. It is a choice. The choice to step.

Correctness is equally fluid. Everywhere I look, systems of control: patriarchy, dogma, inherited hierarchies, etc., teach that there is a single right path, one line to follow, one truth to obey. But reality does not move in straight lines. What is necessary, what is right, shifts with the moment, the terrain, the choices of others, and my own. By waiting for certainty, I am blind to the webs forming beneath my feet. By moving, I begin to feel them, shaping the world with each step.

The Wild Wanderer moves through my imagination, and perhaps through my own shadow. She walks the desert as though it were a living manuscript: each dune a line, each stone a word, each horizon a turning page. She carries no lantern, yet she is never without light. The web itself is her lamp. The tremor of the wind, the echo of her footsteps, the shimmer of rain across stone. Each vibration illuminates where she stands, and where the path might unfold.

She knows that a web holds only through tension. A thread with no pull is useless. A web without strain collapses. Fear and courage, effort and surrender. These opposing forces are not enemies but the architecture of the web. Every step leans into the pull. Every pause listens to the hum beneath her feet. Movement itself is creation. 

And she knows this too: the web is not merely around her. She is its knot, its crossing-place. Each choice spins a new web into being. Every decision, every act, every moment of attentive presence speaks a parallel world into existence. Threads branch outward through flesh, through breath, through bone, into kin, into memory, into futures yet unnamed. To pluck one is to feel the resonance of all.

I watch her, in thought, as I stumble across strands I cannot yet feel. I mistake trembling for danger. I fear the unknown. But she leans closer, listening. Every vibration is a message. Every quiver a path. Every echo an invitation. She does not follow a map; she makes one.

At dusk, when coyotes sing and shadows stretch long as grief, I imagine her kneeling by a dry riverbed. She presses her palm to cracked clay, feeling the threads hum beneath even emptiness. And she whispers, not to the world but to herself, and to me, if I am paying attention: Nothing is wasted. Nothing is lost.

This is the lesson of the web: power emerges not from certainty, but from stepping. Possibility blooms not from hesitation, but from engagement. Each act, each choice, each move signals the world, shaping it, calling new forms into being. Readiness is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to let fear become electricity, to feel the quiver as an invitation rather than a barrier.

When I walk like the Wild Wanderer, I discover that the web is not a prison, nor a single thread to follow. It is a living, pulsing tapestry, and I am co-creator. Every step matters. Every thread matters. Even the smallest movement sends ripples outward, stirring unseen harmonies into life.

And if I meet her, or recognize her in myself, she does not instruct. She does not command. She takes my hand, as though it always belonged there, and whispers:

“Step with me. The web will hold.”

The web is alive. Readiness is a decision. Correctness is emergent. Life, in all its trembling, tension, and possibility,
waits for no one but it invites me.

tonight’s particulars tie
my short breath moment
to a blood root recall to
perhaps an evening such
as this 1888 in wyoming
where kids dunno snow
can fall straight ‘steada
sideways my great great
grandpa’s horse returned
riderless in the icy indigo
hours of a tuesday dawn
from a desperate decision
for meat which drove him
up a squalling mountain i
conjure the deep chasm a
twice great grandmother’s
stomach screamed down
watchful & waiting before
his head appeared at the
hillcrest late that following
friday how she’d’ve flung
her new babe on the bed
how she’d have flown out
t’find him again a tangible
thing & seen something
wrong before she reached
‘are y’shot’ cried & caught
by wind ‘no worse’n that’
words & worn man fell into
‘er arms like the avalanche
which had swept him down
an entire mountainside over
every stump & stone which
split ribs into splinters then
shivved ‘em deep in his lungs
‘til pneumonia festered for
days on a broken trek back
to his wife boys & baby how
ice & air must have harrowed
what horrors she uncovered
peeling gloves & boots that
had frozen fused to flesh
she trudged then too thru
a hopeless nightwatch his
fervent words fevered & so
feeble ‘i thought too much
of you & the children t’die
up there in the snow & you
never knowin’ where i was’
‘til her tears & his tongue
were too thick t’speak so
he clung for 3 days & let go