Dead Innocence
“Always there is the realm of innocence, always there is the realm of knowledge. Always there is some area of innocence untouched by knowledge. The more profound the growth of knowledge, the more aware the individual becomes of the dimensions of innocence”
Those not constantly pursuing knowledge might develop an unhealthy attachment to their innocence. When I was younger, I always wanted to hang out with older guys. I desired to leave the blameless black boy inside of me on the porch and venture from street to street until the angelic gleam of street lights directed me back home like trail angels. These were the angels: street lights and black folks who watched from front porches. When the lights had to help you see the roads, it was time to go home. Street lights told me it was no longer safe out, no matter where we stayed.
Growing up, we lived on both sides of town. All the older guys had knowledge I thought was critical for my survival. They created the rules of their world. As spacious as my reality was and as promising as my future, I attached significance and pride to mastering their particular way of being.
I was young and wanted to stuff my feet in old shoes. More than wanting to grow old, some of us want to be old.
The wisdom and transcendence kept by old years amused me the most. Accepting the nearing of age looks like grooming gray hairs, not cutting them off.
Talking like the boys I was told to stay away from, I tried to embody the paradigm they carried. I could get it anywhere else if I got it where they were. If I could, I would flee all innocence and expose myself to the natural elements of life until they wore me down.
Anything about me that was pure and guiltless was eroded in exchange for grit and boldness– juvenile-like audacity. That was the shit the girls liked. The girls who wore hoop earrings and all the new retro Jordans. The girls who spoke loudly and clapped their hands as if they were counting each word that flew from their sharp tongues.
I wanted to mold my imagination with curse words and images of gold teeth and Cuban links. I always had similar goals as niggas grinning in golds, not those with Eminem flows. Anything that was opposed to the innocence that chased me was what I was curious about. I was convinced knowledge was evil, yet it was a risk I was willing to take.
Innocence gripped the collar of my shirt, widening the distance between myself and knowledge. Maybe my conscious was molded by church values or a generation of folks who wanted me to be everywhere but in the streets. I was taught innocence would preserve my life, and knowledge was the gateway to death and destruction, like Adam and Eve with apple juice falling from their lips after the serpent’s sweet nothings.
When we abandon our innocence and drop our ignorance, we pick up the fear and anxiety of not knowing. But many of us fear facing the reality we have not been exposed to. So we create a world propped up by the lies our innocence tells us is accurate.
Ironically, when I couldn’t hang around the guys I believed had the answers, when the men I wanted to be like never came around, I watched myself evolve into who I wanted to help raise me. And after, I became who they would’ve told me to be without them telling me. I played their voices in my head when I didn’t have them in front of me. My sense of self-awareness and confidence are so ingrained that they’ve created an impenetrable rough exterior. When I didn’t have men to teach me up close, I had to develop what they had on my own.
I abandoned innocence to teach myself just how this shit went. And even as a grown man now, I sometimes feel innocence making its way back. As I wander in Atlanta, seeking a new future, I watch opportunities run the streets with open arms and reflect on voices that were never there to beat the innocence out of me. And the curiosity of the little black boy returns and carries me further away. Curiosity is what saved this boy.
My innocence was and is a gift. More than this, acting as if you don’t know when you do is a way to preserve leverage. Keeping your innocence alive gives you a place to hide. But we must learn to expose ourselves to the dimensions of knowledge, or we will forever be on the porch.
Told by: Kwon
