hypersexualized generation or moving on down the road of life

I woke up one morning with the desire to write a book. The same book I have started over and over and got frustrated and quit with maybe a page or two written. Being a reader, a book I guess is my measure of a successful life. It's one that I really put on the shelf like being able to turn a cartwheel at 50.

As a teacher, I had always socialized with people my age and older. People younger were to be talked with, I liked them, but they were not someone to be friends with. I know that sounds terrible but it is the way I felt deep inside. I did not know I felt that way but looking back that sums it up.

Anyway in helping to make a feature length film in which everyone thought I was incredibly incompetent; I made my first venture into hanging out with the younger generations. The fact that I was out of place did not bother me. I am a lifelong geek which I can assure you is not as glamorous as the television will make you think.

What I learned is that each generation has its own baggage. My generation in which the hippies came from only wanted a nice home with central heat and air and a new car. We would work on Saturday, midnight or whatever as long as we got the stuff we needed. Sounds terrible but once you get exposed to central heat and air you never want to go back.

What surprises me most about my generation is how religious some of the folks are that I grew up with. I am a cultural evangelical Christian. Hey if a Jew can be a cultural Jew, I can be a cultural Baptist. I was handicapped in the religion department in that my own parents did not believe everything they said in church. Heck, my own dad discussed that a preacher can be flawed or even more flawed than the rest of us.

What doesn't surprise me is that most of the people I grew up with are believers in a higher power. Really difficult times in your life lead you in that direction.

Anyway - to get to the title of this post. I have observed a hamburger advertisement in which the woman is biting into a hamburger and looks like she is having an orgasm. Now I have been lucky, hunger is deliberately skipping a meal for me. But, hunger has a different face. Eagerness to eat has a different face than this woman.

I have been watching a television show. Some of its attention focusing charm is the nudity, nudity of less than perfect body of star, sex and sex acts. I realize that if I write a screenplay, I've got to have scenes that jolt people. How well they sell, I don't know. Every other word is not going to be F----. Matter of fact, that quick version of "swell" in this generation of movies will not be used. 

I won't give the name of the show since I don't like it. However, I watch it on a regular basis in morbid fascination. I even note the writers. Some episodes are better than others.  

It's just an orchard.

It's just an orchard, peaches ripen every year. Commuting each weekday, the orchard seems to flash by. Bare limbs in winter, sometimes nonexistent as I fumble with the radio, adjust the heater, perhaps sneak a look at my cell phone.

I stop each summer to pick a bucket. Wearing protective long sleeves and looking for or perhaps hoping to see a snake, I wander deep. Picking up a soft ripe peach from the ground to bite. Wiping the juices running down my chin, I stand and stare at the limbs drooping from the weight of the with fruit. A small cloud of gnats pass between trees.

I remember as a teenager working at the packing shed, the smell of fresh peaches. I would watch the men who toiled in the fields at the end of the day. Strangely envious even though the moments I spent picking, no matter how careful, I would rush home to shower off the peach fuzz.

Every spring the field dances from the road. Ribbons of pink hued trees in contrast to the green grass lay across the fields. I always plan to stop and take pictures. This year I pull my car to the side of the highway, half the trees are just stumps. A sketchy orchard remains for a final harvest. 

Some of the stumps have a branch covered with the familiar pink blooms with a heart of deep red.