Social Justice was a common subject to come up in NYU Residential Education. I always complained that it was a very ambiguous phrase and creating a catch-all term for it undermined the goals and strategy of each individual -ism beneath it. (I’m assuming that social justice is solely dealing with ism’s here, I don’t even know if ism’s is a real thing, but the pseudo-word was definitely used at NYU in this way.) Anyway, I don’t really want to talk about social justice, because I still have my doubts, but I always conceded that my pessimism about social justice was probably because I had no passion myself. I had no cause, no reason to raise my voice in protest and no wick to light me flaming for the fight. Somehow I have changed.

I don’t know exactly how to define what I want. I don’t think that it is educational equality and I don’t think that it’s an increase in the capital S Scholarship. I don’t think that it’s a boost in test scores and I don’t think that it’s a rise in higher education enrollment. I might be discarding these options because I don’t really meet most of these qualifications myself. I think that what I’m looking for is simply defined in curiosity. Using KISS, this must be my final answer. What happens to childlike zeal for the unknown? I will hopefully get back to you on that.

I just finished my first can of Gillette Shave Gel today.  I bought it 5 years ago, when I first went to college.  I now shave every day when I used to shave every week or two.  Am I an adult yet?

I actually get up every day and look forward to my first cup of coffee and turning on the morning news.  I am excited to learn what is going on in the city and need to learn if there are any subway problems.  Am I an adult yet?

I recently got a full time, 9-6, job and I am very  enthusastic about going to work every day for a regular amount of time.  Am I an adult yet?

I pay for my own rent, electricity, gas, cable tv, and internet.  I actually write checks every month.  Am I an adult yet?

I still enjoy a good nap now and then.  Nope.

I have just been offered a new full time job at a web design place that makes websites for high schools.  I will be building new sites from scratch for schools that join the network and giving tech support to teachers who call in with issues.  I will be doing something that has absolutely nothing to do with chemistry.

I don’t know how to write about the importance of reading, the gravity of curiosity, and the usefulness of useless knowledge without sounding egotistical, pretentious and vain and I apologize preemptively.  All I can say is that it apparently worked out for me pretty well as most of the jobs that I had previously were solely using skills I learned as a hobby.

Reading is not a talent, nor a skill, and it really should be utilized as the ubiquitous solution to boredom and problem solving that it was meant for when your kindergarten teacher first made you sound out the words to Goodnight Moon (or Goodnight God if such was your early education).   Although personally my fight in terms of education would more likely be the proliferation of new cultural views on science and math, the idea that reading is still a rare concept in college educated folk is crazy to me.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about the reading that involves actually having to open a book and read cover to cover; I mean the reading that satiates curiosity and fills in gaps in the brain.

Whenever you wonder something, read about it.  Useless stuff comes up once in a while.  Useless stuff can get you regular full time jobs with health insurance and 2 weeks vacation.

This is a story that has inspired me in a lot of ways. It is probably the earliest story that I remember my father telling me as a kid. It is also probably the root of many of my personal views in my life, no matter how egotistic and idealistic they might be. I think it’s also the cause of my deep rooted concern and appreciation for semantics. I know you’re probably wondering how all of this can possibly be related to a story that I heard when I was 5 years old, but hopefully with the knowledge gained in one semester’s worth of creative writing courses, it will all make sense soon. Read the rest of this entry »

While considering what to write now that I have made a very-in-my-head commitment to write, I figured that a discussion of religion would make sense to elucidate my life and also, perhaps, make an interesting and hopefully didactic (there’s that old man coming through again) essay on gaining morals without religion. I grew up in a fairly atypical christian household. My mother is a diehard fundamentalist pentecostal. Her belief and trust in god is unwavering and she is a sinner by Romans 3:23. My dad is a fairly progressive catholic. His belief in god is second to his belief in moral absolutes and he is also a sinner, albeit solely through self awareness. I went to denominational christian schools my whole life and progressively jumped from lutherans, to independent baptists, to the assemblies of god(s). Throughout most of my childhood, my father read the bible to me every day. One chapter from the old testament, one chapter from the new testament, one chapter from the gospels and one 15 minute long prayer was my family’s pain quotidien. I memorized a few bible verses and went to sunday school every week. Compared to most of my more recent friends, minus a few notable exceptions, I am a biblical bible.

If you have ever seen the show 30 days, you might have seen the episode where an atheist mother had to live with a super christian, god-sanctified, and nuclear family of four with another baby on the way. The biggest concern that the christian father had with the heathen atheist mother was that he found no tangible way to teach children how to be good, moral people without the use of the bible as a parabolic tool and could only conclude that her children were unprincipled and shameless kids with no guidance in life. At the time, I only thought that the guy was stupid for not believing that children could be raised by example and not only through reading the good book of the lord god our father. Now, I think that there is a much more complicated response to his issues, especially in terms of my life. Despite the plethora of bible stories read in my household, my morality was actually defined by stories uninspired by god and his will.

In addition to the daily bible readings, my father told me stories nightly, to put me to bed as his father did with him. These stories were mostly folk stories of his region in south India mixed with redesigned-in-the-moment stories he read when he was a kid. This included the story of the bishop and the candlesticks in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables to small excerpts from the Sultana Scheherezade’s tales. Without my real conscious understanding, these stories were in direct competition with the morning biblical fables for the prize of capturing my mind and shaping my morality.

I need to express what I am doing here. I don’t really want this to be a famous blog or anything. I would just like to remember some things a little more formally than I am used to. I have grand intentions of making this somewhere where I can publish worthwhile prose but I have to conquer my two huge problems in writing. It takes me hours to write something that would take a normal person 20 minutes and I write like I am a 70 year old man who dreams of the days when judges had white wigs or MLK was a person instead of a boulevard.

I’ll figure these things out eventually. (The previous sentence used to be ‘I’ll be addressing these concerns eventually’…see what I’m talking about; I’m George Washington’s pen.) Practice is the only way to make yourself better at something and I can get myself dedicated to things when I want to.

I am now a real life working class citizen, getting up every day to increase the GDP of our wonderful US of A. I have five jobs and hopefully that will soon change to just one or two.

I am reading a lot nowadays. I finished 1984, The Arabian Nights, all the Sherlock Holmes stories, and the Importance of Being Earnest, in about a month. I just started Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield yesterday. This was the first book that my dad ever read in english, when he was about 10 years old. His old English grandfather diction makes so much more sense to me now. The only problem with this discovery is that it annuls the idea that my writing style’s seriousness could have stemmed from the same cause as my father’s speech. I never read these books when I was younger and god only knows what my great christian school taught me. (Although, I must admit that the ‘Literature Department,’ if you can call it that, was run very competently.)

Gone are the days of “I had a muffin today” posts.