The Renter

Now I think literature is rich with weird, secretive, and otherwise strange characters that occupy the attics of the normal main characters of stories. I believe Mrs. Rochester is probably the most notable. Totally unintentionally I have become such an attic dweller. However, having realized this, I intend on making the most of it and totally fulfilling the expectations of this literary tradition.

photo credit: wordpress.com

About 3 months ago I entered into a rental contract with a very nice old woman. I would rent a room in her attic that was very much to my liking and she would live on the main floor. This was very good. However after about a month the old woman left to take care of a relative and a family replaced her. A family complete with 2 young girls. Now the shift was rather odd but I acquainted myself with the parents and things looked to be on the verge of continuing on quite normally. That is until I noticed that a pair of small eyes were seemingly following me about my day.

I first noticed my wide eyed followers peering out the window at me as I was headed to work. I quickly turned around in a fury but just like that they were gone. Obviously these children meant business. Next I noticed little sounds coming from the bottom of the steps. Like large rodents creeping about trying to eat my shoes that were kept there, but when I opened the door to confront the rodents all that remained were giggles. Giggling rodents? Not likely, they don't much like eating shoes.

It was clear I was being watched so I have taken up a new personality to increase the intrigue. Whenever I leave I do so with the collar of my coat thrown up as high on my face as possible and with a hat scarf or newspaper covering the rest of my face. So dressed I come storming down the stairs stopping only briefly to look over my shoulder before running out the door to my car. I have also started taking my trash out just at the onset of dusk, dragging the bag along the ground and being sure to check for any observers before stuffing it in the can and then again dashing inside.

The next steps to completing my persona include dropping pieces of papers with magazine letter cut out messages and stashing things in a hole in a tree across the street Boo Radley style.

photo credit: thedeathwriter.blogspot.com 

This should keep me entertained for some time and the children seem to be quite enjoying it. Even the parents seem to be getting in on the game.

AJM

Still Waiting on an Education

Just finishing up the first month of business school and planning to go on to medical school I am at an interesting intersection of education. As exciting as it all is I can't help but feel that in my 17 years of schooling that there have been some things that have just never been delivered. Perhaps working in higher ed has heightened my focus and perception of these things, but lately I can't stop thinking about them.

photo credit: http://technicalwritiertalks2.wordpress.com/

Probably the theme that has been irritating me most lately is the persistence of by-the-book teaching even in post high school, post graduate education. How far can being able to follow instructions and directions really take me and in what sense can that really be called an education? It seems that every time I try to do something out of the ordinary or not according to script my professors just insist that if I wish to do well in the class I ought to just follow the syllabus. It seems to make more sense to me that courses at this level ought to follow around the theme of "Here is how we do it now, imagine a better way". Is that not the kind of thinking that of the most social value in reality?

In the same line of thinking as my previous complaint, because let's be real for a second, this is just a rant, is the idea that failure is to be avoided at all costs. Taking a risk on a project that could result in getting a lower grade is universally advised against. Furthermore the immense amount of shame attached to failing or not achieving the expected grade or outcome is so enormous that it imprisons any student into walking the narrowest line possible. This paranoia acts as blinders, shutting out all the other wonderful and possible ways of getting from point A to point B and only showing the ones that have already been laid out. When in reality it is precisely the supposed mission of formal education to prepare students for the future, for discovering these new paths.

photo credit: www.sottt.net

An education should not amount to two decades worth of reading instruction manuals. There is nothing in a book that can equip a student to deal with the challenges of the future; the only thing that can do that is the student's own mind. Education has long been seen as the equalizer between social classes but how can it continue to hold this title when it seems perfectly designed to produce graduates whose primary skill is following the direction of others?

End rant. Comments welcome.

Fetching a Dog Toy

My loyal followers, do I have loyal followers yet? Probably not or ever. Anyway, my loyal followers tonight I did something that I suspect might qualify me for institutionalization. So if there are any pathologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, fortune tellers or other interesting viewers among you all feel free to comment.

So it being Sunday, today I had to go to the local laundromat and engage my time in the washing and drying of my garments. Usually this process continues pretty unremarkably. I put my laundry in the washer go to CVS and grab some Arizona green tea and then read my economics text book for the remaining 27 minutes of wash time before transferring everything into the dryer and resuming my reading. Today, however, as I was transferring everything from washer to dryer I discovered something that was decidedly not mine in with my clothes. Quite beside myself at having discovered such a strange thing I thought to take a photo.

Now it was not only the missing eye and general demonic presence of the thing that alerted me but the fact that it was apparently a dog toy. A dog toy on which a dog had presumably been chewing and slobbering. A dog toy which I had just washed with my clothes. So I immediately rewashed all my clothes double checking to make sure there were no other treasures to be found. An hour and eight minutes later I packed up my laundry and returned home leaving the little bugger on top of the washer in which I found him. 

Some hours later I decided to upload the photo to instagram and to document my experience with some catchy caption. After some time a girl with whom I retain some feelings that are romantically inclined commented on the photo describing that it was her dog's toy and asking if I took it. Now naturally this caused an irreversible cascade of ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and then actions that ultimately ended in me immediately driving back to the aforementioned laundromat and retrieving the little bugger before it closed for the night.

Fetching the toy became absolutely compulsory. I left my dinner on the table and charged out the house with out a jacket. Now as I was driving back from the laundromat with the damned thing stuffed snugly in my breast pocket I realized that it was very possible that the above mentioned girls comments were in fact a joke. As I walked back to my room passing under street lights the whole began to seem quite foolish. I had gone 20 minutes out of my way to retrieve an old nasty dog toy that may or may not belong to a girl that may or may not like me. 

So now here I sit. the damned bugger mocking me. For I cannot sum up the courage to ask if the girl if she would like it returned for fear of it having been a joke yet I cannot dispose of the cursed thing for fear of her asking for it some day. So here I sit. Writing as a man that is wholly imprisoned, thought and deeds, by a dirty, old, pink, one-eyed dog toy. It's like some stupid child's re-writing of the raven. Only instead of saying nevermore it says "fetch boy."

A Brief Figure on Barton Fink

I'm tired, so let's keep it short tonight. 

Photo Credit: tvtropes.org

Today a rewatched part of Barton Fink. It is a cult classic that everyone out to make time to see (See the trailer here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK0WjWlVO9w). In the very opening of the movie Barton is asked "What do you do for a living?" to which he responds "I'm not sure anymore. I guess I try and make a difference."

This admission of confusion and helplessness beautifully captures the ever denied simple purpose of life. The desire that my existence has made the world some how different than it would be due to my absence. That through my being I have pushed the stream of time ever so slightly in a direction according to my will.

AJM

Cracked Eyes

Photo Credit: Emily R. Feingold

Over the years I have had the pleasure, honor, disgust, confusion, and concern of meeting a whole host of people from dust ridden janitors to polished politicians. In all stages of life as well, gasping tearing desperately at fading threads to this world to testing their will against insurmountable obstacles. Now please don't take this to be me bragging. For it is more true to say that this events and people were as determined by me as was my losing my hat to the wind this morning than to say that I was in anyway involved in their development. Rather this is a means by which I hope to establish credit for what I next wish to discuss.

On the corner of Cedar Lane today I saw a man. Dressed in a dirty poorly tailored black suit with a white shit and blue tie. What was most distinctive about him however was his bruised face and the funny state in which he wore his hat. The hat was so tight about his head that at first glanced it seemed to be the very cause of the pink, flabby, swelling about his eyes and nose. Needless to say this man was terribly confused. I don't believe he was well acquainted with the sunlight, so its being 4:00 pm it was quite difficult for him. Amid a flurry of  shadowing hands, tripping feet, and an overall disconnect between the desire of the swollen man's brain and his body, I caught his eye with mine. 

This leads us presently to the point of this story. You see, in that glimpse, which by any standard measure time only lasted a fraction of an instant, I was assaulted by flashes of anger and despair. His eyes were so worn down that they had cracked. 

I suspect you have seen cracked eyes before. I certainly have. They are eyes that are no longer capable of hiding. Flashes of emotion stain their withered lenses like ink on water. The pressure of containing and pretending force them to break, leaving deep cracks through which the truth, whatever it may be, comes pouring out.

I do not know how our eyes come to be cracked, only that it is an observable phenomenon that has occurred many times over in my life. Some cracked eyes can be repaired, either washed with tears, patched up with apologies and confessions, or entirely closed off behind a waxy veil of drugs and alcohol. I suspect however that there is a point at which the cracks run too deep and can no longer be hidden or repaired. A point this man had arrived at. A point I am deeply interested in learning more about.

An Audience, You: The Potential of

Alright, well I have a blog now. Why? Good question. It has come to my attention that my best writing, thinking, eating, lying, sinning, and damn near everything else I do comes about when their is an audience involved. So it is in that spirit that I have created this. I hope that you, the audience, or perhaps better yet the potential of an audience, will compel me to continue to write and to give me cause. 

I don't have a terrible amount to write about at the moment, even less of it merits anything that I suspect you would enjoy. But a Jack Kerouac quote has been tumbling through the cervices in the space behind my eyes for some time now and it is the quote for which this blog has been named; so is rightly appropriate perhaps then to introduce it.

"the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'" -- Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time. Let's burn.

AJM