What You Don't Know ...

I am not trying to be a snob. I am unfolding a sequence of collected experiences to illuminate a certain conclusion I have been drawn to through my own ponderings. Here are the events, and they are unrelated to each other:

The Bad -

• An acquaintance of mine has a limited scope of how she views and processes things. She doesn't have enough foresight to think of things she is trying to achieve, and because of it, she has lost out on job opportunities that would have provided for a higher income, and for a better quality of life. Unfortunately, she doesn't see her culpability in the matter. She is blissfully ignorant about her station, and how its ceiling is suffocatingly small.


• English teachers (ashamedly enough), newsmen and women, and billboards across the state, (and sadly, I'm sure, across the nation), are promoting illiteracy, and the destruction of the English language. I think with gloomy amazement about how many people will think that bad grammar and usage is the correct, standard way of speaking.


• Interest in reading is at a depressingly low point for teenagers. Granted, there are many things to have an interest in, but few interests spread the spark and rabidity of ideas the way that reading does so quickly.

The Good -

• An old dog learning new tricks: I am always amazed about how talented some of my students are. A couple I know thrive, flourish, and perform with their own musical groups, several are outstanding athletes; for someone whose athletic ability is inversely proportional to her "book smarts," dumb, speechless admiration is the only thing I can use to describe how impressed I was with this grace on the field and court. Some are so talented, as a matter of fact, that they have scholarships with "free rides" to renowned universities. Just think where their natural skill will take them. Just think about the natural skill of universities, that can open their minds to more than just the ball, but the book, as well.


• The little piece of paper that can mean so much, and no, it's not the one that puts you in a church or Justice of the Peace. A degree, Silly! Obviously, it doesn't always guarantee a person to be wiser, but if a person is wise, the person will make a correlation between what she knows, and how much money is in the wallet because of what's in her brain. It never fails to astound me in the most profound way that I've made a healthy livliehood just because I know and love English (I think to love equals to know). I've worked my degrees as soon as I've earned them, and it's amazing to realize that one can put a price on knowledge (a lucrative price, as well).


• On a grand scale: I just received an e-mail about an organization you can find at http://www.freerice.com/. Based on your skill with vocabulary, you donate, through your knowledge of vocabulary, grains of rice. The highest level you can achieve is 60, but many people don't get above 50 (I earned a 41, and donated 1,000 grains of rice). Literally, you can help save lives by what you know. Miraculous.

I guess this blog has to do with my amazement based on the knowledge one has, and where it can take him, or the people affected by his life. There are no shortage of corny maxims around teachers, and how they affect lives, but when you stop to think about it, it doesn't stop at teachers. Musicians, artists, the "movers and shakers" of this world, the people who stop to think about things in a different way, and because of it, affect something else positively. If people started looking at what they didn't know, maybe it would motivate them to find out how it could help them. The other "H" word that does much more good than the other.

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

"Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one's liberty." As I embark on my last two weeks of school, I find this idea, stated by Henri Frederic Amiel, especially poignant, as the last day of this school year is not the start of the countdown to the first day back. It is the start of a whole new enterprise, as I've made the decision to retire, permanently, from teaching. So, yes, I hope to find many secret joys, as I sever a major tie to my identity, and more fearfully, a tie to a livelihood that, if not always competitive, is always consistent and stable.
I firmly believe that we are who we are, even starting from the beginning of childhood. It's not that we necessarily change, but as people who mature, we change into our ultimate selves - our honed "irreducible self," as James Joyce so aptly put it. Because teaching is the conveying of knowledge, my alternate line of work is not far from it: I have opened up my own tutoring business, and am planning on changing the way kids not only learn knowledge, but how to appreciate it, as well. It is our responsibility in life to acknowledge the exigent inside of us by showing others that they have an inner "something" that makes them tick. One of the chief means of doing this is by education, as it shows people a myriad of ways in which to reflect on themselves, and on the things they will experience in life. In art, it is argued that artists do not create because they want to, but rather, it is because they have to do so. The inner fire that burns within them won't let them cease creating an expression of themselves. But, why draw the boundary line at artists? Maybe one of the secret joys of life is to realize that we all have an artist within us, and we just have to learn how to coax it out with the purposeful strokes of the brush.
And as far as gaining liberty goes, an idea that seemingly contradicts the previous sentiment is one said in the literary world: that nothing new can ever be created or written. That each theme written upon deals with the universal ideas of God, love, and death. Certainly, these things have been written about, and mulled over through the ages, but the challenge in self-education, or helping someone else with his education is seeing these universal ideas in a way that is uniquely impacting to him. Not only can you teach an old dog new tricks, but the old dog will be thrown a bone in this sometimes harsh world in which we live. And sustenance, of the literal and metaphorical kind, is a freedom that has no value.

An Out from Down in the Dumps - Art as Weapon

"The first condition for the liberation of mind is the liberation of man...." Andre Breton figured it out. As an individual in society, one not only contends with who he or she is as a person, but to compound the issue of finding one's place in the world is the idea of being encumbered with the responsibilities of mundanity (at this moment, I have ten research papers in my car that I still have not graded, but I'd rather talk about my liberation from the papers to discuss art). Ahem. My witty repertoire aside, the idea of freeing man to expand one's mind is seminal in understanding what makes for a satisfied humanity.

So, clearly, one has to determine what is the cause for the feeling of satiety in her own life; I think we get glimpses of it in who we are as people, and also, the things that we are exposed to as we develop into the "irreducible self" (thank you, Mr. James Joyce) we inevitably become. However, I think exposure to art, and the arts in general, help us in discovering the divine within ourselves. Quirt, a Surrealist artist, argued that, "...we all have essentially the same fantasy life ... and [the artist should learn to] release his own fantasies ...." in order to evoke something from humanity. Maybe one can argue that part of this same fantasy we all share is the desire for beauty, in any way one thinks of it, in order to remind us that there is something divine within us inherently. Even if it gets mired down in the "everydays" of life, we always see, read, or experience something that breaks through the stupor of life's heavy burdens. And even if we don't literally shout for joy, we can feel that joy surge. And that is the purpose of art. If life beats us, and can at times make us downtrodden, then art as a weapon makes sense. The troubles of life could use a cudgel from life's beauties every once in a while.