By: Sebastian Gladstone

This project is an exploration into what it means to be an immigrant in a contemporary American society. What values hold true from the old country, and where do acceptance and integration lie on the road to assimilation?

By: Sebastian Gladstone

This project is an exploration into what it means to be an immigrant in a contemporary American society. What values hold true from the old country, and where do acceptance and integration lie on the road to assimilation?

By: Sebastian Gladstone

This project is an exploration into what it means to be an immigrant in a contemporary American society. What values hold true from the old country, and where do acceptance and integration lie on the road to assimilation?

By: Sebastian Gladstone

This project is an exploration into what it means to be an immigrant in a contemporary American society. What values hold true from the old country, and where do acceptance and integration lie on the road to assimilation?

By: Sebastian Gladstone

This project is an exploration into what it means to be an immigrant in a contemporary American society. What values hold true from the old country, and where do acceptance and integration lie on the road to assimilation?

Seven stars, said the Guts Man, seven stars for the seven hid deep within us like a birthday.

I’d like seven stars, please, I henceforth told the ice cream man, but he misunderstood and sprinkled in sevens like a desert prince mystically releasing a handful of sand to the unknown nameless wind.

I knew that wind once; I spoke with it ferociously, and I was angry then. Those days were unsweet like thick coffee and the wind would give me no give, but only pattered on the red rocks so unlike rain that rain was the phenomenon I thought of at once.

I have a thing for colors, you see, and the desert has colors that one man who called himself Guts Man told me were alien. I have always wanted to meet an alien and ask it where the spores float from, the wispy seeds hailing solar winds as some golden outrigger adventurers exploding on dark seas, for an alien would have an alien perspective and I would like to adopt that perspective for a time. Then I will know in which direction an alien heart beats, and mine as well, you see?

There has yet been no end discovered for the stars, all seven of them, no matter how wildly they flail their massive missives and hailing mists, hailing like larger captains hailing smaller, I have always wanted to ask them what is bigger? Do they bulge like some absurd fruit into an unseeable gap, and in this gap can they see our own bulges like thirsty fireflies who control not their lights?

Some runway strip will be strewn with those lights, yes, seven of them, for the vessel captained by Star Man to rise downward into our atmosphere of bone and love. The bridesmaids will be genderless that day, for truly it is absurd to call a woman maid and deny that noble title to a man fulfilling all of the requirements. Why yes, I have worn a dress, my ducklings, and the parachute folds did not castrate my dignity; I merely picked up an umbrella, turned my buttocks to the offenders, and listened to their lusty catcalls, unslakeable, amusing.

Seven stars. It is the only thing that makes sense anymore, so I believe I shall take the seven stars and open a sense factory, with seven senses to capitulate dishonesty. It is a hard, hard thing, to pretend that seven makes five, or even some lesser number. I would not wish such a fate on anyone.

And if you clasp my hands, I will clasp back; after all, I have seven stars, a long road home, and much fondness. Seven billions, well, my hands may just be big enough; I shall have to ask the stars.

Something tells me they will laugh and tell me to go ahead anyway, as great gods do.

Twenty-five years ago, Ronald Reagan ran an advertisement for his incumbency entitled “Morning in America.” It showed a productive and proud workforce sloughing forward into a sound economy and sturdy psychology. Looking back, that spot can hardly be viewed without a derisive chuckle. In “post-industrial nations,” that exclusive club of countries without anything to strive towards, a generation figures approximately 25 years. The perfect alignment between Reagan’s reelection campaign and today cannot be overstated in the mentality of today’s youth. Those of us between 15 and 25 have watched our world all but fall apart under the nonchalant greed of the preceding two decades. We have watched a market far more free than the people that comprise it run straight into a wall of its own devising. We have watched American military prowess, so enamored with itself over destroying the “Evil Empire,” fall to pieces in ambivalent wars in countries most Americans could not have found on a map. But most striking of all, we have witnessed a crisis of faith in the reigning elders so deep that their acrimony poisons the air.

I say it is time for a moment of pause. It is time to reevaluate the goals and ideals that have governed the past two decades. Young people across the world have listened to messages of hate almost since we were born. We live in an age where a message from Karachi to Washington can be instant, yet its deciphering may never come. This cannot stand. Weapons of mass destruction need not be implemented to force society into collective anxiety. Weapons of personal destruction suffice to turn High Schools into prisons and funeral parlors. No longer will it do to point fingers at each other, at media outlets and governments. We are of an age to decide our own future, but can only do so by understanding and ameliorating the past.

It is not where I come from that dictates who I am. I grew up in a house of means, with parents who loved me. I was sent to NYU to study history, my first love. Yes, I had crises in my life deep enough to turn me embittered, but I remain hopeful. It is my direction that will matter. I know what I must do; I must write one profound novel that expresses the zeitgeist of the 2010s. Babbit, The Hobbit, Rabbit, have all been written expressing the struggles or lack thereof of their respective generations. I want to be the herald of our own anxious yet optimistic age group. I have less than half completed. It is a daily struggle, but the most rewarding part of my life. But to do this properly, I must better understand social psychology in general, and that of young people in particular. I hope that an internship in social psychology may be both a means and an end, a way to help people while learning enough to write about them. Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you next week…

By: Sebastian Gladstone

This project is an exploration into what it means to be an immigrant in a contemporary American society. What values hold true from the old country, and where do acceptance and integration lie on the road to assimilation?

“He who binds to himself a Joy

Does the winged life destroy.

He who kisses the Joy as it flies,

Lives in Eternity’s sunrise.”

- WILLIAM BLAKE

I.

On the day you stake my heart

thunder, rain.

On the day

I know your sin and resolve

love it

minutes before you call,

on

thunder and rain, the day

rains thunder here, there

are no coincidences – you digging

on the banks of a river

in Spain, pouring rain trash and mud

the stench of bums,

home-less-men, your

nails in all of it, frail May of shit shit

flies hatching shit on your face

you find your letter – K -

the ceramic tile azulejo I left

a gift

buried below one bank, but my bank

the other bank – A -

the letter of my name

I left as my gift

before I left

the country

was not there.

KA. The double. Human. And. Being.

You had just K. And that is Katherine.

Just you.

The internal manifest external You said of it.

You little screenplay writer you!

synchronicitus, syllogisticus, serendipitus . . .

do we laugh?

do we bow?

he who laughs prays twice?

we must

we must

it is not funny, not

very funny

laughter – reaction of the bone

broken and still working

with a smile.

Raining when you leave the house

on fire and drown

in the street.

You are this

you are my kind of irony

a silly serious thing

a slap and a kiss wrapped up in the giftbox of a wink!

impossible beauty

simultaneous Truth

too good to be awful to be real

too two too true

not you not me just us

yeah yeah none none us

us

Love

Love

is this.

Love,

the distant intimacy

of exile.

I make my crown for that cave kingdom

And sit and wait for you

to come back a conquistador! or wake up by me

because you were never away

though you were gone

and I love you

and I love you

I’m not histrionic or codependent or a lover of antique crucifixes

I’ve just decided on you.

So drag off

your whoring robe

and throw it on the fire to keep

us warm

it will be a long time before the sun again.

II.

On the day you stake my heart

thunder and rain.

On the day I feel your sin and forgive

minutes before you call

to tell me

how could you tell me

On there are no more days

only darkness image

sink and surfacing in this pathetic

control box;

your dark asian hair, dark slick cunt

riding his staff in a room

of black banners and wind, long

white couches, women

standing in shadows, watching

mourners

of the delicious birth, thrill

shining in their black

dilate pupils

The white fire of an adulteress

burning on the stake

III.

Carry the urn of my left

ventricle, place

it by the ear of my head that sits on

the altar of my Anger

so I continue hearing

the ashes throb.

Ta-tum. Push. Rich

toxigenous mind. Those little red

blood cells tumbling

within the tunnels of my body,

sickled in the shape of hearts,

soft and round, like love-seat cushions you

made his fuck on.

Katherine, I don’t want to fuck

anymore.

God made me to live with everything at once,

not cut up

my pieces, and throw them to the dogs

of appetite, three-headed

Cerberus, who guards the gates

of hell, so he’ll lay down

and you can go to a table with a stunning

vista of the river Lethe, second circle, fire

burning in the distance, and have

another margarita

just to remember what bad Heaven feels like and good Hell,

before

you can be selfless for peace

again, monk in a city of coke-white angels

a little longer in “healing” this

next time before

you need to—

come back! come back come back cum

Cutting, cutting, cutting

come back! come back come back cum

Cutting, cutting, cutting

come back! come back come back cum

Cutting, cutting, cutting

That’s what happens when the big parent’s

Head and Heart

divorce.

A door slams

on the little girl in the heart who wants

so badly to believe in the voice

of God as she felt it

in the sky once; but can’t

because when the center

is not

whole, nothing seems whole.

And we let nothing be but seems.

Put stakes in holes.

Cutting, cutting, cutting.

Crank

V.

On the day you stake my heart

I take an ice-cold fucking shower

On the day you stake my heart

I do not run it deeper down

On the day you stake my heart

I do not run my car into a car or tree

I do not kill a Pig

I do not run into open houses and slaughter everything I find there

children’s voices

children’s voices

o god, the children

I do not run

your sickness

into mine.

There is great peace in me,

and I wonder if I’m dead?

In this

Serenity

I try not to think

is a refusal

to feel real things. Safe

in the Lord

who most of the time I think

makes me just a looser

and a wuss

A hole in the doughnut.

I can climb

through any of the slits in the big teeth grin of hurt

to fall flat off the body of the world

into darkness.

We love to look at torment

not torture.

“O that I were a man!

I would eat his heart

in the marketplace!”

This is not a staff.

This is not the horn growing out of my head.

This is not your stake.

I cannot love because me I do not love, loving the pain

that gives self-pity a purpose.

The sucking image sucks

love, leaves

the spit of hate

in my pride’s mouth.

VI.

I accepted you – quoting Rilke – “For believe me,

the more one is, the richer is all

that one experiences.” Everyone

needs

to heal.

We have to want it.

We don’t want it.

For that

We must lose our minds, dig

to the bottom

of the bank

of our river

in the foreign land

looking for the letter of

A name

of a hundred A’s

and find

they’ve all been washed away, stolen,

given bad directions to

and taken back, or just turned

into dust because it was

too long a waiting for.

You said I’d given you clarity. I asked

what you were going to do?

“Dinner and a concert.”

That is when I felt the hatred – how

could you live again

after what you’d done – and what did I

want—you to die?

The blood is over A wound needs no proof

To strike is nothing To

heal is the pain

I will desire your happiness

and by that see

you didn’t take mine.

VII.

Sunsetting. Sunsetting. Sunset.

Will the sun also rise?

Eternity takes this long.

Eternity takes this long.

I blow kisses—my Joy

gone I let

go

ANDREW DITS

South Bend, 2009

By: Sebastian Gladstone

This project is an exploration into what it means to be an immigrant in a contemporary American society. What values hold true from the old country, and where do acceptance and integration lie on the road to assimilation?