THE CHILDREN ARE GOING FERAL
On Leaving Society
I want to be… a leopard or a badger or a zebra… she says as she crawls into the room on all fours, laughing to herself. Until the local prison warden, whose entire conception of “the real world” comes from being a middle school teacher for 30 years, gives her some nonsense about “disrespect” and makes her return to her homework assignment.
That assignment? Look up 8 articles and write a persuasive essay around the topic: “Should School Start Later?”. As if this is something she has no embodied experience with herself, and she needs to seek external citations1. Are you fucking kidding me?
She says “if you start school an hour later, that just moves all the extracurriculars back an hour later, and you don’t save any time”. None of the suggested articles even mention this obvious piece of simple arithmetic.
Group of horses in broad plain, and the lead stallion is captured by a wild spirit, starts to gallop this way and that, and the whole herd follows in a great rush of power and freedom.
I want to be a wolf… to bare my teeth and growl and shake my head back in forth and snarl as drool drips down my chin… implies the 4 foot tall 8th grader who can’t sit down. Sorry kid, now’s not the time. Get back to your worksheet on the phases of the moon.
Honestly, fuck Bill Nye. Werewolves are real3. He wants to be a wolf. He wants to be Rocky Balboa. But now he has to shut up and sit down. He used to have such light in his eyes, now his face just looks drained of all energy. “He’s just a bit goofy” says a teacher.
“Mister D, they won’t let me do push-ups, what do I do?” You’ve gotta just sit there and take it, kid. Maybe slap yourself in the face, slam your head on the desk. Internalize that shit. When you’re old enough to buy cigarettes, smoke one and put it out on your arm, just to feel something. That’s how I’ve done it.
As a substitute teacher, one might expect to enter a classroom and be able to exert some form of control.
6 classes. 20 - 22 children per class. 120 kids.
Screaming. Crying. Arguing.
Yelling at me. Just me. All alone.
Worse than alone.
That’s the first mistake. You’re not in control. None of us are.
The only way to survive is to howl at the moon. To writhe in the dirt like a worm. To return to monke.
When you run through your calm suburban neighborhood and the dogs bark at you, you bark back like you’re DMX. And when a 10th grader making a TikTok asks you “What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever done?” you can respond honestly (after some prudent calculation): “climb onto the roof and bark like a dog”.
Sometimes… I wanna be a bird says the impulsive internet influencer. The great frontier of the internet offers possibilities to nurture gifts the school system dare not cultivate.
But the heights you’re looking for, you won’t find them in the admiration of anonymous internet strangers. To really become a bird, you must slow down. To fly away, you must first be torn apart5. You won’t find what you’re looking for as a starlet, but as a starling.
No wonder there’s so much binge drinking in college. Before that point, everything is structured all the time. Minds like rats running through cognitive mazes. Our over-developed Apollonian neocortex misses his sister, our Dionysian animal nature.
And nature has Her own structures.
Why can’t we move like this?
I’ve seen many things like this myself: was at big waterfall, gathering place of many birds and other animal. Through all the cycles of history this place remains and birds who witnessed the coming and going of human civilizations remember it through the aeons and always return there. I saw many group of small birds, when the weather slightly changed, this waterfall so big that a small wind would make spray of water everywhere. Sun came from behind clouds and spread many small rainbows, birds would become excited, come out from crevasses in rock face and would glory in the sprays of water and the rainbows, they swoon doing acrobatics this way and that.
The public school system is a wilderness. It’s falling apart at the seams, because we’ve forgotten that we ourselves are wild creatures. You need not hike the Pacific Coast Trail to encounter nature in all its wonder. So take a hit of your morning adrenochrome, and buckle up.
Bronze Age Mindset by Bronze Age Pervert
MARBLQUEEN. Young Wolves 3.
Chris James. Inside the Public School System.
The Emerald Podcast: Embodiment Means Being Torn Apart and Flying Away
Bronze Age Mindset by Bronze Age Pervert
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“Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten: that the world is meant to be celebrated [sic] /in the form of writing perfunctory essays that no one will read to dissuade the youth from encountering something real within themselves/.” —Terry Tempest Williams