ArtPrize 9/11 Installation Hate Bigotry Intolerance Racism Bias Front Street 9-16-09 5 (Photo credit: stevendepolo)
Just for the record, the whole thing sucks! Parents, being young, being ignorant, educated via bigotry and bias, confusion and last but not least, distance.
My Mum has taught me to keep my distance. My father is the distance that she keeps. My desires, wants and beliefs are the distances that I keep. I’ve kept them locked up behind the white house pillared with black shutters and off white blinds.
When I was a child, more so than I am now, I took riding lessons at Windswept Farm, the horses taught me to love something other than hate. The farm and its owners had been my release from a rich society to which I had been adopted. I was pulled away from riding lessons at a young age. Why? Mother Theresa needed me to keep my distance from the working class people.
I drew upon Canterbury NH as a shining little burg with promises of pastures, dreams and butterflies. I attended the Canterbury’s Children’s Center, an alternative school. I had found my niche. The kids loved me. I had been anything but myself. If they laughed, I laughed. If they cried, I cried. For once, the distance between me and the outside world seemed to shrink.
Mother Theresa put an end to that. The teacher had been back woodsy. Not well rounded and obtuse to the fashion of being a snob without the benefits of earning the title. Again, the distance had been formed. The anger set in. The little town of Canterbury stood off in the back of the road as I looked out the rearview mirror. As my family sought refuge from the Hippies, Yuppies and Earthy people; I found myself and my mother at odds with all that was interesting, different and edgy.
My family and I are the box of categories that others refuse to believe in. We are white, upper-wardly middle class, educated to the point of ignorance and normal from the outside in.
We are the epitome of happy blues and sad love songs.
