but i fit right in.

I hold behind my back

like playground fingers crossed

a secret.

this is not my degree

this is not my family

my child

she is not mine

not raised in the sun

without sweat or fear,

this is not my pavement

and this bank I do not visit.

i know the stories

that built the railroad

the sadness loss and swept

i know the switch back snake

of this economy, dusting away footprints.

i do not belong,

but I am here

dressed in plain clothes,

a spy for a society of one

an audience

that applauds my secret dance

that approves my conformity.

Our culture has truckled to the times — to the senses. It is not manworthy. If the vast and the spiritual are omitted, so are the practical and the moral. It does not make us brave or free. We teach boys to be such men as we are. We do not teach them to aspire to be all they can. We do not give them a training as if we believed in their noble nature. We scarce educate their bodies. We do not train the eye and the hand. We exercise their understandings to the apprehension and comparison of some facts, to a skill in numbers, in words; we aim to make accountants, attorneys, engineers; but not to make able, earnest, great-hearted men. The great object of Education should be commensurate with the object of life. It should be a moral one; to teach self-trust: to inspire the youthful man with an interest in himself; with a curiosity touching his own nature; to acquaint him with the resources of his mind, and to teach him that there is all his strength, and to inflame him with a piety towards the Grand Mind in which he lives. Thus would education conspire with the Divine Providence. A man is a little thing whilst he works by and for himself, but, when he gives voice to the rules of love and justice, is godlike, his word is current in all countries; and all men, though his enemies, are made is friends and obey it as their own.

— R.W. Emerson

capacity.

i have too many friends.

or at least, i know too many people that, taken in isolation, excite my heart with friendship, interest, commonality, adventure, etc.

i don't know how to celebrate the individual, every one of these islands of intrigue.

i don't know how to love the light in each ambition, each discovery, the

little or great skirmishes between self and purpose,

the insecurity of each identity, and the brilliant shine of infrequent revelation

and not be overwhelmed.

or mocked for the volume.