Teach your children well, their father’s hell will slowly go by
And feed them on your dreams, the one they pick’s the one you’ll know by.
Don’t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry
So just look at them and sigh, and know they love you.
Graham Nash
Last Tuesday, I took off work to visit the doctor. My twenty-something niece Felicia came with me for the exam, and afterwards we decided to take a drive into the city to kick up our heels.
Listening to the news while crossing the bridge, I turned to her and said, “I’m so sorry the way this world is turning out for you.”
She asked, “How so?”
“I mean, it’s lucky that your parents are pretty secure, but I know it’s so very hard for you and your brother to find your way in the world as it is right now. Everyone seems to be tearing everything in two. We can’t seem to talk to one another. We can’t seem to get things done. And we’re going to be leaving you with an awfully big mess to clean up.”
She said, “Don’t worry, Auntie Fe. We’ve grown up with a lot of kids who have been home-schooled. Some of them devout Christians and Republicans. Some of them even Tea Party kids. But we’ve learned we can talk to each other. That we can talk to each other.”
I took a breath. With those words between us going across the bridge from Berkeley to San Francisco, I realized my niece and I were also crossing a bridge to another distant shore: the generational divide.
Looking at the Plutonic eras of Leo and Scorpio — the divide between me and Felicia — is like looking at two different time stamps, similar to comparing the differences in a vintage of wine or distilled spirits. Our generations were in different climates — political, social, economic and meteorological — and though our worlds overlapped, our experiences of the world shaped us like a lathe into patterns distinct for our eras, and there was more to the divide than a slightly different curve to the wood.
My parents not only escaped from war, they left it so far behind that in order to survive, the memory of war was something to be suppressed, never to be spoken of with the children. We were given the most any kids could get for a new immigrant family: two nice homes, the second in a better neighborhood. And of course, there was the television: Ed Sullivan, the Cuban missile crisis, the assassination of the president, the Beatles. A snapshot of us in 1960s showed us posing as a family — Mom, Dad, me and my sister — looking a lot like the official White House photo of LBJ, Lady Bird and their two daughters. We could have been a model minority family had my sister not entered puberty during the 1960s, and life became a movie about how everything changes. That included how we would behave in the world, seeing, probably for the first time, what kind of world it really was.
We were dumbstruck by the struggle for racial equality in the South, knowing somehow this would affect us — but how we were uncertain. That alone brought us fear and for my parents a need to conform even more in order not to draw the ire of the white majority of our home town. Yet within that movement lay the groundwork for a freedom my sister and I could not yet name. We were amazed by how white Americans were protesting against their President. In 1969 when my sister’s boyfriend got a low draft card number — meaning he could get called early to service in Vietnam, we both participated in the growing anti-war movement in high school.
For a family of immigrants trying to remain invisible, I’m sure we must have terrified our poor parents. To this day I remember mama’s single wordless gesture of exasperation: holding her head in both hands and throwing her arms up as double-exclamation points to her multi-lingual invective about our skirts being too short and “those dirty hippies.”
The hard-wiring that came with being formed in the crucible of the 1960s stays in your life like a burl on a tree. The tree keeps growing, but it leaves layer upon layer on top of the burl, the burl growing in proportion with the tree. The system, the Man, the Power we all fought remained, and we also carried with us, running inside us like a secret spring, our distrust of them. We developed our first physical and spiritual muscles holding up protest signs and placards. We also carried with us the hope of change and the power of joining together in the struggle for human and civil rights. Our lives and the lives of our loved ones were at stake. And we have, to a certain degree, been very successful, as well as reluctant — out of necessity — to give up our wariness. ‘Us’ versus ‘them’.
Yet, looking at my niece’s and nephew’s formative years, we saw what we built through the struggle of the 1960s and 70s and the reaction to it and realized that some things don’t change easily: the ‘me-first’ generation of parents aspiring to greater heights of consumerism, the rejection of social consciousness, the unexpected and senseless violence of Columbine and Virginia Tech, the false flag attack on Sept. 11, and the more recent self-inflicted global financial meltdown built upon decades of escalating unregulated avarice — these experiences were their lathe, their distillation of character. It shaped how they see the world and each other in their generation. And now they see it in how it is leaving them without a future. They couldn’t help but see the world — it came crashing into their living rooms and classrooms, intruding upon their innocence in a way that they learned they needed each other, regardless how far left or right their parents were.
These days, I look at the thousands of faces in Zucotti Park, and check the websites and see those bubbly red Google landmark points crop up across the map of America, showing where the #Occupy movement is happening next. The map is almost blacked out by points. I see these kids and their iPods, notebooks and iPhones, like the kids we saw earlier this year in Tahrir Square — peaceful, joyous and persistent. Van Jones has named this movement the American Autumn, a response to the Arab Spring. It’s a name that even Adbusters Magazine has taken to heart, as evidenced by their October cover. But it’s also an autumn for those of us from the summer of love to embrace as the kiss of appreciation from those kids we brought into the world, taught by example, embarrassed ourselves in front of, and are learning painful lessons from today.
I released the breath I held while taking in Felicia’s words, “We can talk to each other.” Breathing out, I said, “It’s so messed up, I’m not sure I will still be around to help you when you guys take your turn to fix it.”
She said, “Don’t worry, when we’re ready, we’ll know what to do. We already know now that we have to do it together.”
Together. She knew it even without reading Planet Waves. These kids are going to teach us well.
Teach your parents well, their children’s hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams, the one they pick’s the one you’ll know by.
Don’t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you
Just received word that the AFL-CIO leadership is calling for all members of the union to support the #Occupy Wall Street protestors here in NE Ohio.
Part of a quote from the email sent to all members is:”This action is well organized… we agree with their 8 principles …… actions will take place in 40 cities around the country….we cannot let them be marginalized as a fringe element when they represent 99% of us.”
The sister who passed this info on to me from her Ipod quoted an old 60’s song in which one of the lines was “The revolution will not be televised.”
And she laughed.
We could NEVER have imagined….and we are seeing it with our own eyes and hearts….
Be, would you mind living… hmmm… oh say, another 50 years? Your ability to (and interest in) mapping these generational transitions is becoming sharper and clearer. I’d say you have a book or two in you, but something is happening to melt the covers off of most books these days, so that’s not quite the right idea. But something bigger than a blog (Which is, in household lingo, a breadbox).
As for ‘innocence & lack of experience’ – ah, another topic. Kids are born with the ‘net in their hands, and experience has been traded for informatics. So they come pre-wired for cynicism (in the best sense of the word: the smile on a dog’s face). There are complaints about pleasure and fecklessness, but I don’t have any problem with immediate gratification as long as “immediate” means infinite (more than the teaspoon of time that ‘now’ represents). And *that* fact is starting to burst through the thinness of the medium. Media.
We ARE taking a different turn on the evolutionary stairwell. Stick around. . .
#6 “Real art is play, and play is one of the most immediate of all experiences. Those who have cultivated the pleasure of play cannot be expected to give it up simply to make a political point (as in an “Art Strike,” or “the suppression without the realization” of art, etc.) Art will go on, in somewhat the same sense that breathing, eating, or fucking will go on.” from Immediatism: an invisible movement
Be:
I’m going to check out the new Ken Burns series. I love watching with the eye for the astrology. And thank you for your always brilliant astrological synopsis.
Brilliant Fe,
The feeling here in your piece and in the words of those who have already commented are bringing such clarity from out of the chaos of now. Did anyone watch the 3 part series by Ken Burns called “Prohibition” on PBS? Last night I watched the final 2 hours, with Ephemeris in hand, spell-bound by the connections of what I was finding between the 20’s and our own decade and the last. This was the generation of my grandparents (whom I never knew) and my parents when they were youngsters. I expected to learn about booze but the way it intertwined with the aftermath of war, the financial collapse, the politics and the changing mores of the period created such a panarama, such a tapestry of history and life, one could not help but see the way it all fit together in evolving to become a big part of what we are living through now.
The 18th Amendment came into being in December 1920, but it was almost 100 years in development and you could see the fervor of those pushing for it and understand why they thought it would be the best thing that could happen to American families. Like justice, innocence is blind. . in some cases anyway. You speak of the wisdom of innocence but it is also protected by ‘not knowing’ or a lack of experience in order to allow the seed to develop. We too, as a whole, have been naive in our fervor for this cause or that or in our belief that we have the answer to make it all better. But we don’t really know. We are weaving the tapestry for the next generation and the one after that. . ever evolving.
Thank goodness for astrology though. In the mid 20’s when many were destitute and wantonness and gangsterism reigned in this country, the U.S. Sibly chart’s Pluto in Cap was in an off and on sextile with transiting Uranus in Pisces. Oh the freedom, the lack of boundries,. . . the libido ruled. Meanwhile, transiting Pluto was in a constant pace across the U.S. Sun and square the U.S. Saturn during the years of 1925 through 1927 and just about every conceivable demon buried in the country’s psyche was brought to the surface to be extinguished, including racism.
Add to that, the passage of Neptune in Leo was forming – in his nebulous way – a yod to the transiting Uranus in Pisces and the natal U.S. Pluto. Oh the drama! The sacrifice! Transiting Neptune was the focal point of all that natal and transiting outer planet energy, the revolutionary energy of transiting Uranus and the powerful and corrupt depth of natal Pluto was fueling the escapist but spiritualizing transiting Neptune, and in the end a Leo-created path was born; a way to solve the problem created by the well-meaning but hopelessly naive people who only wanted to make things better for all. Blind indeed.
Of course we fear for our children and grandchildren, but they are – as a whole – unafraid of the future. Bless their innocence and lack of experience for it will allow them to try and fail, and try again and succeed in making it a better place for all. As Pluto opposes his position in the 20’s it is a full-moon moment in history. What have we learned since those times. What are we repeating. There is a transiting sextile between Neptune and Pluto and transiting Uranus is in the pattern too. It’s the same players but a different generation. Things have changed. Or have they?
be
All the children are like little Dalai Lamas these days. How the heck did THAT happen? The seem like little points of light sent to guide us home. Every child we met at market this summer seemed ultra-special and eternally wise. I think most of them were born under the influence of Sagittarius.
Thanks Fe for this stunning and uplifting piece. xx
Encore, encore!!!! Brava, Fe, wonderful. My students are very similar, although often more limited in being able to see beyond the immediate ‘now’ and contemplate the future. They are still in concrete thinking mode, abstract thinking is a ways off for most of them. They, for the most part, are not yet in the mode of realizing their full place in the world nor what they can do to change it. I’m working on them, trust me… 😉
The most hopeful thing I see is often a complete lack of racism here amongst the kids. Many are of mixed Anglo-Hispanic families, and some African-American/Hispanic as well. Once, I actually had to explain what racism was to a number of them, and they were still confused as to why anyone would ever think that way. They just didn’t get it, which made me smile all the more.
Tribal? Ha, thy name is high school. We all know what that was like! The tribe does fluctuate, yes, and grows bigger once they leave after school. Still, if I can get them to look beyond the near horizon and see far beyond, that’s a good day.
Time for my dreamstate.
Such a beautiful piece, Fe, thank you.
I had a similar experience with my niece a few weeks back, only it was a non-verbal exchange – her moon is exactly conjunct my sun so we have this happen a lot when we hang out together.
After my day with my niece, I was reflecting on the beginning of the last century. How those who were adults at that time must have recoiled in disbelief to see so much changing before their eyes. Yet it is the youth of any era is who takes up the rush of change most easily. For the most part I think the young could always look forward with a certain amount of hope for their future, with the exception of those born in my father’s generation who grew up in and around the Great Depression and the following World wars. Their uncertain future must have seemed as nebulous as the one we now are facing. Back then, they had their “tribes” as well… family and their fellow workers seemed to be the strongest bonds to weave together a sense of community…but there was still so much rejection of anything outside of that small circle. But the surge of prosperity that was the wave they surfed raising their kids (my generation) in the late 50s and early 60s must have seemed like a dream come true for so many. (counter-culture and the revolution of the 60’s aside)
You are so right that the youth of any generation is able to see their future worlds much more easily than any of the adults who are mostly caught up in trying to hold back the slippage of time. I’ll be really interested to see how the generation born with the concentration of planets in Capricorn will fare having so much weight in that one sign which is now getting plowed under and turned over by Pluto… who will they become when this is all in the rear-view I wonder?
Thank you so much for this lovely essay… and reassurance from the future that all will be well… one way or another.
Baycyn:
I promise I will.
Nice, Fe.
Brings to mind the quotation from Einstein: “The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.”
Give your niece a hug from me, okay?
This post made me tear up, I remember my teenage years in the 60’s as either marching in protest in NYC or dancing, in the streets, the Fillmore, the parks. The kids in the park are giving me hope that things can change.
The biggest chasm, if their be one, between myself and my two near-adult children is my fear for them. Is it not truly my own fear? They are not afraid. Concerned. But not afraid.
You cause me to also take a breath Fe, and remember that my children have different answers to questions both old and new.
Jan, Kat, Len; beautiful praise. I add my sentiments to yours.
Thank you, Fe.
Fe:
Since the words “sweet” and “grace” have already been well used, let me just say thank you for a glimpse of hope and a flash of inspiration in a piece that is also a pleasure (as always) to read.
Jan:
It is finally time for grace, isn’t it? We have learned that after all these decades.
Thank you for voicing your anguish. I share it and it keeps me awake at nights at times.
Kat:
Your post made me well up. They are a gift to us. And yes, they don’t have to re-live what we have feared. They have a fresh chance and really want to make this movement right.
Thanks, Fe, for your sweet message. I was just mentioning to a friend today that one of the many gifts of astrology is evidence of, and a language to describe, each generation’s gift to all of us. Isn’t it a miracle that what we all need appears exactly on time – as described by Uranus, Neptune and Pluto placements (and beyond) I remember in the late 60s, when I first learned about astrology, wondering who the Uranus/Pluto children being born right then (like Eric!) would be. What answer, what solution would they bring to conditions still in seed form at the time of their birth?
I have had the same feelings of sorrow for the challenges of those younger than I, but then realize it is my story projected onto them – they have their own story, as you and your niece so kindly mentioned. Each generation is a gift to those before and those after – to themselves and to their children and grandchildren (and parents and grandparents, too.) who will, in turn, appear with their challenges and their gifts. I feel blessed right now. Your article reminded me. Thanks, Fe. Kat
Oh, Fe, thank you so much for this, this grace. I have been anguishing as well over our young people, what they have inherited, where they will go. And I am so bolstered by their certainty! They can still see a world, a way, where they CAN do things — just not the things that we imagined. Because they can imagine it differently, as it must be if we are going to heal.
God bless your niece and all her fellows. I envy their possibilities and potential.
And thank you again, Fe, for your brilliance and your heart.