Favoring Blurred Memories

Coming home to the place you grew up can be a difficult, yet rewarding experience. Many people, especially teenagers, in this ultra fast paced society, yearn to be anywhere else but where they are. I think a lot of young people today live in a constant delusion of grandeur. We live in a world where we idolize celebrities. We long for bigger and better places, and we ache to be these larger-than-life people. I believe that this stems from a subconscious desire to be an individual, yet still part of the whole. The desire to be special, but still accepted. However, the most important part, the Ð''coup de gras' of it all, is to remember. No matter what a person does in life, it is useless if you do not remember it. Nothing makes this point better than two specific, yet very different pieces of literature. The first is a story called "The Triumph of Burbopolis" by Michael Pollan. The second piece is Green Day's American Idiot. Both pieces, in their own way, do an amazing job of saying, "What is the point of living if you do not remember doing it?"

Both pieces, in my mind, pose very different, yet very similar arguments. Both deal with the idea of soul searching and personal exploration. American Idiot is really an argument to meditate. It is a young kid trying to find out who he really is. It takes a long time, and a lot of hard lessons, but the main character finally finds himself. That, I think, it the message that Green Day is trying to send out. A person has to lose oneself in order to find oneself. If people never lose themselves, than what is there to find?

I see Pollan's "The Triumph Of Burbopolis" more as an argument of exploration than anything else. However, it is more of a personal, emotional exploration than any kind of physical exploration. Yes, he goes back to his hometown to see how everything looks in the present day, but it is more than that. The realization that his idea of home is gone takes an emotional toll on him, and that is where the real personal exploration comes into play. While he is going around town and seeing how much everything has changed, he sees that his memory of his childhood home is all he has left. And that, I believe, is the main point that the author is trying to convey to the audience. A person has to remember what they have, or had, in terms of that idea of home, and know that their childhood memories become important later on in life, because one day it will all be gone. Society is forever changing and growing, and the places that a person remembers, thirty years from now, might not be there anymore.

"Finding your way back to your suburban childhood home is harder than you might think." This line from "The Triumph of Burbopolis" is, in my opinion, the literal and metaphorical focal point to the entire story. Pollan talks about how after thirty years he is finally going back to Woodbury, Long Island, where he grew up. He explains how he is expecting everything to be exactly the same as when he left. However, he gets a cold slap in the face when he steps off the train, and doesn't recognize a thing.

"My first impressionÐ'... was disorientation. Every landmark on my mental map of the area had been stripped and replaced by a big-box retailer, such that it took me the better part of two days to locate my junior high schoolÐ'...."

There was nothing in his hometown that still looked the same. His entire childhood had been rebuilt. Farms had been replaced with shopping malls, and every house that he had ever been familiar with had been remodeled.

Slowly, Pollan starts to realize that the home he once knew no longer exists. It has become something completely different. The mundane suburbia he grew up in, and so desperately longed to escape for a bigger, city life has become just that. The "Leave It To Beaver" suburbia that he knew as a child has become a sprawling extension of city life. By the end of his visit, he starts to understand that his childhood is not always going to be there, and that eventually the only place his childhood is going to exist is in his memory. Now, to some, that may seem kind of depressing. However, it brings Pollan a sense of relief and comfort. On his drive back from his childhood home, he reflects.

"SuburbiaÐ'... is no longer somewhere you go, or leave. Wherever we live now, it's where we live."

In this moment of sudden realization, Pollan reaches a new level of maturity and self-understanding about his existence through his own memories.

This point of "existence through memory" is made abundantly clear on Green Day's Grammy Award winning album, American Idiot. The record tells a tale of a young man, named Jesus Of Suburbia, who sort of loses his sense of self, and goes on a wild tear of sex and drugs trying to figure out who he is. In the beginning, he is this suburbanite kid who really begins to realize that he does not like where he is, he does not like who he is, and that he is generally dissatisfied with his life. There is a song on the album called "Are We The Waiting?" that, I think, best expresses his feeling about his dissatisfaction.

"Are we, we are. Are we, we are the waiting unknown. This dirty town is burning down in my dreams. Lost and found, city bound in my dreamsÐ'.... Are we, we are. Are we, we are the waiting unknown. The rage & love story of my life. The Jesus Of Suburbia is a lieÐ'..."

At the pinnacle of his dissatisfaction, the Jesus Of Suburbia morphs into this other person known as St. Jimmy.

St. Jimmy is angry, he is offensive, and he does not give a shit about anybody. However,

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