If I had to make a list of the symbols of Gen X 's formative years, this giant slide would definitely make the list. I remember being at a carnival as a six years old - climbing the colossal staircase and racing down on a rectangle of burlap.
I call these kinds of slides Gen X slides
I remember standing at the top of the slide like I was on top of the world. I refused let fear take over as I stood looking at all the faraway people below. Instead, I chose to embrace the rush. I think I'm in that place in life again now....
This week my family and I went to Oaks Park in Portland and it was my little one's first time to go to an amusement park. She loved it more than I would have even expected. Whether it was the mini roller coaster, or the kid-sized hot air balloons, she was fearless.
May your last days of summer be full of sweet moments, and firsts, and fearlessness.
The West Coast is such a Gen X place, from the film studios of Southern California where they made the movies we watched in theaters up to the Northern CA and Oregon coasts where they filmed movies we watched on VHS. The Pacific Northwest is an especially big piece of the landscape of Gen X since this is where grunge emerged. So many stories are here. So many of our stories are here.
There is an amazing film about Generation X currently in production called Xingularity.
The film's web site defines singularity:
a point or region of infinite mass density at which space and time are infintely distorted by gravitational forces and which is held to be the final state of matter falling into a black hole.
In Natural Sciences: a point in space time in which gravitational forces cause matter to have an infinite density and zero volume.
And the film itself is described by those creating this amazing project:
Xingularity is a wholly independent, raw and unflinching deconstruction of the variable that is Generation X.
An attempt at exploring and redefining aspects of the most unconventional, ill-defined and misunderstood generation in American history.
Much like our lives, it is a 'work in progress'.
Here is the YouTube teaser - I shed a few tears as I watched many important pieces of my Gen X history and the history of the Gen X collective experience unfold...
The film's web site is beautifully done and you'll find a nostalgia link listing many events and issues that Gen X is familiar with, along with many words that describe who we have been or who we are now like: indefinable, angry, rebellious, abandoned, questioning, and anti-establishment.
Manny Merchan, Kerri Merchan, Kendra Kabasele, and all those working on the project are in the process of creating something well-researched, insightful, and undoubtedly profound. I can hardly wait to see where this will take us...
