.From your Ghost World into a hurricane of fresh air.

"It's true that fresh air is good for the body, but what about the soul that grows in darkness..." Frank O'Hara, Ave Maria (full poem: Ave Maria)

Somehow, it is not just fresh air, but it is reality itself which nurtures the mind and soul of the youth, young people who struggle to define their personalities in a world that expects them to grow into fine adults.

Of course being a witness of society is not enough. It takes the courage to experience it. An experience that often overwhelmes these kids that are so afraid to face the fact that adolescence does not last forever that, almost as an act of rage against time and its changes, they put the worst of their fears into words that convey a message for society and even for themselves. 

In this Ghost World between the end of a teenager stage and the beginning of a life as an adult (an awkward space in time that we may also dare to define as a transition), Enid and Rebecca project their own fear and melancholy towards everything that surrounds them. They do not only fear to become responsible grown-ups, but they also fear to become what they consider the misery of the real world: pretentious people, lonely people, abusers, sex addicts, mentally disturbed men and women, liars, among others. And so they begin to label every single human being that they encounter, without knowing details of their private lives, in fact, their mere appearance gives them a reason to diminish their humanity, almost as an unconscious will to turn their fear into a hilarious joke.

They have tasted the fresh air; they are two girls who have decided to put themselves out in the real world, although they do not feel they fit in well, because the panic that invades them is so strong that making up stories about their milieu sounds so much better... and so they never really know reality at all, they are blinded. From the very first moment in which they judge (or misjudge) a stranger, they just create a story within another. That is, they only see in reality what they choose to see, so as to feed the anger they carry within.

It is not a matter of cruelty, but it is a shield, or a way to protect themselves from what they fear the most: to come out of their Ghost World, their comfort zone.

Aren't we all, adults or adolescents, afraid at some degree of giving up our comfort zone? Aren't we all somentimes making up excuses or projecting our fears with no certainty at all about the real conditions in which change may happen?.

Perhaps, Daniel Clowes did not only intend to show us a bit of every teenager's mind, but also what every human being may experience in a certain transition throughout their lives. However, the truth is that "hormones or not", a teenager's point of view might be the most crude and honest one.




Sources:

- Ghost World, Daniel Clowes. 1993-1997
-http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171382 
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