{"id":123,"date":"2005-12-18T11:39:50","date_gmt":"2005-12-18T18:39:50","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2005-12-18T11:40:11","modified_gmt":"2005-12-18T11:40:11","slug":"call_our_generation_what_you_will","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/2005\/call_our_generation_what_you_will\/","title":{"rendered":"Call Our Generation What You Will&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"juiz-outdated-message jodpm-top\">Heads up, this content is 20 years old. Please keep its age in mind while reading.<\/div><p>Occasionally, I run across a piece of literature that embodies the tone of a chunk of my life.  I don&#8217;t go looking for these; they just arrive and surprise me.  I&#8217;m sure you know what I&#8217;m talking about&#8211;that moment of recognition when realize your perception of reality isn&#8217;t isolated.  Some writer out there went through it, too.  This happened to me recently on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thewrit.org\">The Writ<\/a>.  Nicole Elizabeth Chapin&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thewrit.org\/home\/index.php?pn=writ_read&amp;pnold=issue_read&amp;issue_id=8&amp;writ_id=1442\">Tiger Chai<\/a> describes my late teenage years&#8211;if not word-for-word, then at least in intention.  If you identify at all with the path I took to get to where I am, you&#8217;ll probably see a piece of your own experience&#8211;genuinely inspiring and fashionably constructed as it was&#8211;in this reflection, too.  I give you the piece in its entirety:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><b>Tiger Chai<\/b>\t  \t\tThere was a time in my life that I actually felt I had a little something special over the next person walking down the street.I drank my tiger chai. I read my Kerouac and Bukowski. I sang poetry in my room late at night.The smell of Nag Champa eases the burden of my discontent.Inquisitive, I was. I was a writer. I played guitar. I belted out sensual blue from the depths of a bari sax, man. I wrote at his computer with my legs crossed. I smoked cheap cigarettes. I had to smoke to write. And smoke the other so sleep. I drank cheap beer. I wrote cheap lyrics. Wasn&#8217;t I nineteen?I spoke Japanese in the park. I studied symbols and people, nestled deep in my special cafe booth. I was invisible. I served coffee in that cafe. I had a red bow and a black apron. I loved tips.I loved road trips. I loved a late afternoon drive to a polluted lake with a thousand other people watching. I loved changing in the car. And a cooler full of snacks. I miss getting lost. On purpose.I am lost. Without purpose. I work. I play. I get high.I have lost me. A cloud of smoke, my memory, me. Exhale. Go drifting by, bye.I stopped reading. I stay at home. He took my guitar and the sax and her car keys. I have a real day job; I don&#8217;t think. I still smoke. I smoke too much. I stopped to think; stop thinking. No inquiring mind here.I think I&#8217;ll go read. Get me my wine. &#8212;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thewrit.org\/home\/index.php?pn=home&amp;writer_id=265\">Nicole Elizabeth Chapin<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Heads up, this content is 20 years old. Please keep its age in mind while reading.Occasionally, I run across a piece of literature that embodies the tone of a chunk of my life. I don&#8217;t go looking for these; they just arrive and surprise me. I&#8217;m sure you know what I&#8217;m talking about&#8211;that moment of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}