Welcome friends to another outstanding double issue, 24.19/20, of The Beat Within. Recently we’ve been publishing the reflections of our student interns from the Urban School of San Francisco. Our amazingly insightful interns have been transcribing writing from The Beat Without, and we’re ever so grateful for their time and dedication to our mission. This week, Tavi writes about how a function on his laptop allowed him a different way to access the writing from our authors, allowing the pages to literally speak for themselves, and listening to the writing as if it were meant for him. While Ben reflects
Continue ReadingMonth: May 2019
Advice I Would Give to My Younger Self, Part One
by Bobby Bostic As I sit and meditate on the many mistakes that I have made in life, I contemplate on the advice that I would give my younger self. Then again, I wonder would he listen? My fourteen , fifteen or sixteen year old self thought he had it all figured out. He rebelled against adults, because in his young mind they didn’t know what there were talking about. How could they, since they couldn’t see the world through his eyes. Ironically, now that I am older I see things differently. When we are young we somehow put it
Continue ReadingHow Not to Feel
by Michael Cabral He broke my heart. After that night I’d see him act the same bewildering way many more times. It was, I eventually learned, what too many beers did to him. But the first time my uncle hit me (I was four or five years old), all I knew was that something had changed. Not in him. No. something had changed in me. I was named after my Uncle Mike, and that already made me feel close to him. When he started calling me his “Bodyguard,” though, and especially when he’d introduce me to people that way (“This is
Continue ReadingRegret, Reconciliation, Repetition
by Elías People find it difficult to admit fault. We would rather receive an apology than apologize for our own wrongdoings. It is a position of power: having the ability to forgive someone or not, rather than being at the mercy of another, in a vulnerable position. We all wish we could take back certain decisions. I do, frequently. The situations I could have handled differently keep me up at night, but I try not to let them eat me alive. My father’s death was different: it continuously creeps up on me. The weekend of his death, a Saturday,
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