Are You There Internet...It's Me, Mushka

An article i wrote for a teen mag a while back.

I can’t help but laugh when I reminisce of the days when internet was a sacred luxury. When those fifteen minutes on CompuServe were simply the greatest fifteen moments of my life. Correction- greatest ten and a half moments. Since I had to deduct the four and a half minutes it took for the computer to suffer a seizure, while emitting nightmarish sounds I could only assume to be aliens invading cyberspace.

It’s safe to say we’ve evolved a great deal since then. Our computers have been cured of the convulsions, we’re getting our full fifteen minutes of Tetris and we’re Skyping with people across the country. We can fold the entire world wide freaking web into the back pocket of our jeans. For God's sake.

But we’re not impressed. We’re not wowed or enchanted. This is life as we know it. We can’t imagine the world any other way. No, we won't imagine the world any other way. We’ve been shocked into a syndrome where if it’s not nano, it’s colossal, and if it’s not high speed, it’s painstakingly slow. Email is the new letter, text is the new phone call and writing on the wall is the new Hallmark card.

We’re all so wrapped up in cyberspace that we’ve actually built ourselves a home inside it. I live at 212 Exeter Rd but you’ll reach me far sooner if you go to my address in Cyberspace; My Name @ Facebook.com. Leave me a message in my inbox, send me a virtual holiday card, graffiti my wall. You’re invited to my home any old time you’d like sans the polite knock. Flip through my photo albums for your entertainment and should you still feel bored, my journal is available for midday reading. It’s labeled “Notes” if you’d like to leave your comments on the intimate details of my life.

Pull down the Info. tab and you’ll learn that my hobbies are shopping, dancing, and riding rollercoasters. I have green eyes and black hair.

That’s me.

But the more I think about it, the more I have to wonder, is that really me? Is that all? One picture frozen in time, that stares at my 312 friends and begs them to confirm my existence? Are we all so truly single faceted that we can condense all eighteen or so years of our lives into two paragraphs titled, “About Me”?

Has life really become a competition to see who has more Facebook friends or whose life out-parties the rest? Have we all become Snow White’s evil stepmother, peering into our computer screen demanding, “Is my profile the fairest of them all?” Has it come to the point where we actually need the confirmation of our peers to tell us we’re good enough?

Living in an alternate universe where our birthday gifts can be copied and pasted, an irritating friend can be deleted with just a swift click of the mouse, and our knowledge of current events comes from a place called “News Feed”, begs the question:

Are we, in the innocent name of socializing, ultimately losing touch with what really makes us click?

It’s almost as if we’ve built the past few years of our lives on something that we can fit into our purse. We’ve stored away feelings in folders, friends in web pages, and memories in boxes. We’ve forgotten that our identities are not marked by the way others see us but by the way we see ourselves. We’ve forgotten that the person who looks back at us from the bright LCD monitor is not the real us but a pretense that parades around with our face. And we’ve forgotten that Cyberspace is a galaxy far from Reality.

Oh sure we’ve been warned about sites like Facebook. Of the stalkers and predators and gross old creeps. Yes, the dangers of Facebook have been relayed to tops of heads and eyes rolled so far backward, they’re counting the cells in their brains. These alarms have been playing in our heads for so long that we’ve never contemplated the possibility of a more profound variety of danger. A type of danger that threatens that part of us that no Norton or firewall can protect. And if we’d take the time to consider the parts of ourselves we’ve sacrificed in the name of “socializing”, we’d come to appreciate the real danger in association with cyberspace’s parallel universe; the predators that steal our souls without us so much as noticing.

So notice this: When stalking your colleagues, chatting with friends, and posting your Israel pics, bear in mind: Comments are just comments. Pictures don’t have mouths. And you don’t get to keep the virtual gifts you get for your birthday. Facebook is not real life. And really any place where you can throw a sheep at someone ought not to be taken too seriously.

Log out, click back to reality.

***

Taste of Forbidden

***

They said, rebellion’s in our blood. The lure for forbidden pumping through our veins.
Its breath so close, you can hear it breathe. Only a whisper away.

I swore I could unlock my soul at anytime. I swore it didn’t matter.
I swore selling myself wasn’t a crime. I believed I was too strong to shatter.

They taught me the art of hurting, the people I loved most.
I learned to silence the guilt with a smile and a toast.

But the taste was ever recurrent. I could always taste it on my tongue.
I could taste the difference between good and bad. The flavor between right and wrong.

Every year I’d promise. And every year I’d break.
Every year I’d bow to sin and then call those sins mistakes.

Now I have to wonder. As I pray. And the shadows run by fast.
If I put a finger to my lips, could I fool the demons of the past.

And still waters run so deep; could I ever really forget.
Could I erase the memories, one by one, numb them with regret

When it’s all over, I won’t ask, will my sins be lost and snuffed.
When the dust settles. The question will be: will forgiveness be enough.

.

Sundaes & Rock

I like ice cream sundaes
And nighttime in the park
I like cherry slurpees
And rooftops after dark

I love speeding on side streets
And cranking up the bass
I like Britney Spears
And bands like 3 Days Grace

I'm the type of girl
Who wears boots even when it's hot
All those things you think I am
Are all the things I'm not

My favorite song
Is The Little Bird Is Calling
Secretly I'm in love
With the initial sense of falling

I love karaoke
Even though I can't sing
I love running in circles
Redbull gives me wings

I love being a kid
I dream of Never-Never
If I could, I totally would
I'd be seventeen forever

Sin & Prejudice

We look at people, at their smile, the crease of their forehead, the look in their eyes, and decide we know them. We arrange strangers by class, hanging labels over the people we meet just moments after meeting them. We converse with them momentarily, watching their lips move, measuring up their fashion sense and sizing up their intelligence all in the same time that we sort them into categories and damn them there forever. Or at least until they prove us wrong. We separate people into leagues, by size, ego and beauty.

And then we wonder why people do it to us.

The greatest injustice, by far, is the unfairness of being charged with a crime you didn’t commit. The prejudiced scorns cut the deepest. Searing like a knife to a chest that bears a heart that was misunderstood.

In simple, it sucks, a whole lot, to be misunderstood. Taken for a person you never were and never plan to be. It sucks when people have drawn boundaries for you, whispering out loud the things you’d do and the things they suppose you’ve done, who you are and who you ought to be. Determining, by the bat of an eye lash, or the raise of a brow, what you’re like, and what you certainly aren’t.

It’s so easy, but so foolish to guess who people are based on the superficial facades they cast.

We are too complicated to be read only by our faces. Far too intricate to be sorted by the first thing that escapes our lips. Nervous giggles don’t tell you what makes a person laugh and tearless eyes can’t say what makes them cry. Pictures aren’t worth a thousand words and words aren’t worth a thing. The only way to know a person is to get to know them. To touch them. To speak to their heart, like it isn’t the most cliché thing to say or do. To look into their eyes, and not see a shape or a color, just a person who is greater than their outer walls project.

Sam I Am

Names are kind of crazy things. The unfortunate thing about a name is that you don’t get to chose yours and are left at the mercy of two people as clueless as your parents. You are at an advantage when your parents pick one of those plain names, like Sarah or Rachel, a small one, but a certain advantage none the less. Because then there are parents who will name you just about anything, as long as it has a special meaning. Like Devash- honey. Okay, its okay to call your child honey, but its definitely not alright to call them Honey. You know what else is not alright- naming your kids after a food you like. For instance Cookie, or Muffin, or Corn Dog. Those names make me sad.

It’s safe to assume that children with names such as Sun, Moon and Imagination, if not the offspring of a famous and hot celebrity, will be smushed against lockers at school. And honestly even if you are Madonna, you're still kind of running a serious jeopardy by naming your kid Imagination. Like what if he’s just dull?

And then there’s my name. Mushka. Not the cutest of names, but then again I didn’t choose to be named after a Russian race horse. And past fifth grade its kind of lame to detest your name. Especially when half of the Crown Heights community shares it. Plus I love how people repeat my name tentatively, scared they’re going to say it wrong, like if they do, something bad will happen. It’s also horribly fun to have to spell out your name and say it real slow every time you want to put something on hold at Barneys. But I like it. It’s different-if you’re out of the tri-state area and black people can’t get enough of it.

Anyway, my point is lots of people’s names suck but still, it’s pretty cruel and fruitless to tease someone about their name because we all know they had no say in this decision and given input, surely, they’d have chosen differently.

I only have an issue with a few names. One I have a particularly hard time with is… Sam. As in the balding old man from the epic game of Guess Who? Or the lovable Dr. Suess creature who refused to eat green eggs and ham. At one time, those were the only Sams I’d ever heard of. Those were simpler days. Now when I call out Sam (note, the “a” is to be stressed and dragged when pronounced) on Kingston, a pack of too-cool-for-school, metro Crown Heights bochurs stop to think for a moment (because of course they were hardly named Sam but Shmuel) and then look up.

If you’re up for it, try walking over to a bunch of skinny jeans and asking for their name. Even if you’re really only talking to the one on the left, they’ll all chorus, “Sam” and just shrug like it’s the most natural thing ever. Even though you know they stood in front of the mirror that morning practicing their new name until it had the effect of someone who that name actually belonged to. If you really look out for it though, the fear of getting caught in the act is unmistakable. Like a 15 year old who stole someone’s ID to get into a bar. Apparently for them, it’s a risk worth taking. The only thing I have yet to discern is, why do they want their names to be Sam in the first place?

See my problem with the name Sam is not that it’s gross. It’s that its self elected and intended to sound sexy. It is anything but sexy. I will give you $100 if you show me one hot guy named Sam- besides Sam Ronson.

Another self-selected name: Sean. It always starts off as their “work name” -because apparently Shalom is just too hard to pronounce-- and they subtly work their way to having their friends call them that. And finally when they’re brave enough, they come straight out of the closet and introduce themselves as “…Sean”. You look at them kind of serious and go “Who named you Sean?…Is your Dad Kevin Federline?” They shift kind of awkward in their place and mumble something like, “I like it…” and shuffle away.

I don’t mean to appear acerbic or judgmental and really this is all just a little fun, but mostly my point is if you’re smart, stick to the name your Mama gave ya, because choosing your own name is just too enormous a responsibility, and really it’s the one thing your parents get the blame for. Stick with it.

Peace, Love & Weed

“No harm, just harmony,” was a little line I had deftly come up with as I was reversing out of my parking spot at the Harmony Festival. I must have swallowed too much illegally polluted air because the car kind of jerked out, nearly killing a few hippies in the interim. But no harm done; they just sort of shook out their dreads and shot me a sideways smile, thanks to a few things called peace, love and weed.

The Harmony Festival is essentially the kinus hashluchim for stoners, complete with perpetual music, RV’s and tents. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen that many hippies flying in one space, lending so much inhibition to the wind, and it kind of made me want to hug a tree.

I can’t openly endorse the act of smoking, although Nancy Botwin does so impeccably, but I have to admit, those hemp clad free birds taught me some stuff about life.

Bob Marley, the ultimate chossid, advocated one of the most fundamental concepts in chassidus. He named it ‘don’t worry, be happy…’ Which isn’t the simplest of task if you’re earthbound but definitely something worth pursuing.

Upon entering an alternate universe teeming with peace and love, for a day kind, I was reminded, if its real, happiness really is the finest drug.

So now I’m high. I’m high off the energy I reaped from people who took the short long road to tranquility. I’m high off all the jumping and dancing I did, with my hands up high, bass in my chest and my heart in the sky. I’m high off the idea that if I let myself I can break free of the right inhibitions, I can fly without leaving the ground. I’m high off the things I learned from life without having to open a single book.

High.

High as a kite.

Me, Hoovs, Smoosh, Noams and Sheins @ The Harmony Festival in San Fran.
June 2009

Candy Hearts

I'm not very good at beginnings. I'm kind of indecisive. Title of my blog is dangerously random. In fact, the whole idea of blogs are kinda awkward. Yet here I am, at 5:08 am- although its not so much 5:08 am as it is 2:08 am- (see I'm in Cali but I'm still on NY time- I have been for the past 2 months, and I will continue to be until I am back on the east coast) my fingers raining on the keyboard, like I know how to type. I don't. I guess I'm not really the blogger type. At least I'd like to think I'm not. Blogs are kind of brainy, or hipster, or starving artist with a Mac at Starbucks. I'm not really any of those things. Not ridiculously artsy and I haven't a crazy GPA. Or actually any GPA at all. I haven't had a decent English class since the emotionally sadistic Mrs. Efron in the sixth grade and I'm really more of a PC kind of gal. Besides, cyber desperation was never really my thing because the thing is, I like to keep my secrets, well....secret.

Still the blogging thing was bound to happen sooner or later.

This was just one more obsession I vowed never to fall for, along with the slimy MySpace, generic Facebook and for some reason....Snapfish, but later gave into. I can sometimes see Twitter, with a dumb look in its eyes, teasing me from afar. I can't only hope I'm strong enough to contain the temptation that must be building just inside my wings.

So why'd I fall for the cyberglitter surrounding societies' ridiculous time-drinkers in the first place?

Good question.

Well it all started with AIM. 10 years old. miks6. I think I had a grand total of 2 buddies for about three years before I climbed the social rungs in cyberspace. But I'd still sign on in hopes that some random uberhottie would somehow stumble upon my geniusly adorable SN and take me to cyber bliss. Oh, SN. That was just the start of the awesome abbrv. which soon evolved to OMG, wth and brb. I didn't know of any others, but as far as I was concerned I'd snagged the classics. I absolutely loathed only LOL, and LMAO, because they were clearly the cyber version of a nervous giggle. I've since succumbed to LOL, but I'm cool with that only because sometimes I really do laugh at loud and who can write 'laugh out loud' every time they want to express laughter, or the thought of laughter. No one, which is why I've okay'd it. I've yet to have laughed so hard that I started shedding important limbs, but I'm open to anything so I haven't yet damned LMAO to cyber hell. ROtFL, on the other hand, is unacceptable. I'm not even quite sure I know what that means. It sounds dirty.

Anyway the buddies came in seventh grade, (btw, do you know anyone who refers to their friends as 'buddies'? Because if you do, I suggest you de-friend them immediately) when I went to overnight camp and befriended some computer savvy campers. Jewish Heritage Day School didn't seem to brand people with internet skills. But Camp Emunah, now that was a whole other ball game. I was sure I'd arrived at internet paradise, when I found those little girls with SNs to tote. And at one time I thought it was my final cyber-destination.

But no. At 15 I discovered MySpace. And it was then that I took the oath to never ever have one. Super lame. It didn't impress me. I didn't think the 13 yr olds who, in their words, liked to,
"...bikeride, take trips to the beach and post naked pics..." were very cute at all. But soon, I found myself logging on to see certain people's pages and after a while of the site subtly recommending that I register onto MySpace to continue the rest of my stalking, I had to submit to a power much greater than I. Plus, all my friends had it and I kind of wanted to talk to them but didn't necessarily want to see them. And since AIM was getting kind of so eight grade this was my only option. Plus I sort of liked the idea of having the liberty to embed any crap on my page and force other people to listen to Hey Mickey You're So Fine, every time they clicked on my profile. Also I'd finally discovered a hairstraightener and a way to pout in pics so that my braces didn't show. I thought the rest of the online community should profit from this metamorphosis. And they did. Until halfway through 10th grade when Facebook winked my way. I controlled myself for a while, mocking the replacement of something that was perfect in my eyes. Granted, MySpace was a little cheesy, the slut of websites, and a tad dizzing, nonetheless, it seemed to me a harmless (unless you count the minor abductions and murders) diversion and a fantastic way to market ones fabulous self.

But soon I fell servant to Facebook. It was the poking that reeled me in, I believe. And the fact that my big sister told me it was for college students. Ubersophisticated. The transformation was kind of rough. Transferring all my albums. Deciding which photos were too juvi for Facebook. Learning to navigate through pages that seemed uninspiring and naked in the shadow of the pimped out pages at MySpace. But time told. People started writing on my wall. My friends were piling and I'd come to appreciate the fact that people actually had to write their full name instead of some idiot nickname or something. This seemed to help curb some of the stalkers. It's also tremendously fulfilling to live life vicariously through the exciting lives of the people who post on FB. But after a while, we all had to admit that there's something kind of dull about Facebook.

Which brings me to this blog...Writing is to me what crack is to you. Makes me feel like I'm flying. I'm not a hipster off Haight but I love the idea of immortalizing myself, kind of Elvis, whatever that means. (Btw, is he really still alive? Plus why doesn't anyone argue about that) I am getting way off track. I was talking about Candy Hearts. Isn't that what we all have? Hearts that fall too fast, break too hard, shattering in a fine powdered sugar?

Don't we take our hearts waay too seriously? Seriously, if our hearts really broke every time we recorded it in our poetry we'd pretty much be dead, wouldn't we? How many times can you put a fragile Humpty Dumpty organ back together? Honestly.

But obviously we love being melodramatic. It's super fun. It does get old every once in a while, though, so maybe we should just keep in mind; it's just a candy heart...