The Second I in Identity

There’s a dent between the “I” I was before and the “I” I am now. Life batters us. Damages us. We try (and sometimes we succeed, yet sometimes we fail) to rebuild ourselves, but no matter how close to perfect our handiwork becomes, we’re never quite the same as we were before. We change. Piece by piece, part by part, cell by cell, until we are all unrecognizable. But bits remains. Bits will always remain–in our appearances, perhaps, or our temperaments possibly–but in time we become someone different. Someone new.

It’s this tide going in and going out that’s the journey of our lives. Through sorrow and joy, through love and disappointment, each instant shapes us for the next. We are a function of powers beyond us, yet we cannot be differentiated–nor can we be integrated. What leads us is all that we have. There is no other relation.

Metaphor aside, where do I stand? In this moment, I am more than a man sitting before a screen, typing furiously upon a keyboard abused by his hands. Nor are you–my audience, a reader, a friend perhaps, or even a stranger–just a person behind a computer or on the other side of a tablet or e-reader. You are whole, as I am whole, and the missing pieces are not quite missing, but not yet discovered, not yet chiseled from this form we call our bodies.

I’ve come a long way, yet sometimes I fear I haven’t come at all.

Confessionals

I must confess. I’m not entirely honest. I don’t deceive, not intentionally at least, but I usually know a thing or two more than I let on. It helps me hold onto something, a sliver of control, a ground wire to make sure I don’t shock myself by coming to a dead end. If I don’t have the whole picture, I hide the pieces I have in pursuit of those I need to hold. When it’s all put together, and I meet someone, I don’t enlighten them. They need to come to it on their own, I might say, or it’s better to wait–maybe what I think is whole isn’t whole yet.

It’s not exactly deception. It’s not exactly honesty either.

As many of you may know, there’s been a couple people on campus that have made this semester hell. I mentioned their backstabbing in “Awfully Whetted Strife” where I discussed how my very sense of trust has been injured. In a few words I expressed my rising indignation over the one of them in “The Man Who Lied to My Face.” You don’t need to read those, not unless you want to, but it’s worth knowing how long this has been going on.

Because today it’s going to stop.

Organic Evolution

I’m of a mindset that things must grow organically to be genuine. If forced, failure. My goals… sometimes they feel forced. My mind simply isn’t always upon them. But I promise it’s not for a lack of genuine concern, is it?

Sometimes I don’t know.

A Beautiful Lie

I’d like to say my silence this week has been a part of the blackout in opposition of SOPA, but that would be a beautiful lie. I’d like to say the bill will do as it promises and end internet piracy without infringing upon our individual rights and freedoms (I’m an artist, too–I support intellectual property as much as you do), but that would be a beautiful lie. I’d like to say I have complete faith in our legislation to do away with SOPA and its ally, PIPA, that they understand freedom and the importance of its protection, but that would be a beautiful lie.

If I can pass on but one lesson before I die, it’s that information is power and you only need information to arm yourself against all the evils of the world. Some may argue it also takes action to implement that information and put it to use, but even action means nothing without information.

If I can impart two lessons before I die, the second would be that we each–as individuals–have the power to effect change upon the universe itself. A single action can seem small and insignificant in the moment, but the consequences are perpetual and the tides, once set in motion, will never return to the same shore.

I’d like to believe that reading these words will inspire you to inform yourself about these dangerous bills. I’d like to believe that reading these words will compel you to take action and fight for a difference in your world and mine. But that, I fear, might be a beautiful lie.

Please prove me wrong.

Arm yourself with information and fight to the end with all of your ammunition: Your voice, your keyboard, your phone, and a pen.

Black and White: Part Two

Today felt sideways. I woke up feeling like I hadn’t slept (and that’s nothing new, and it’s not anything untrue, but it’s the mindset I rose from: that someplace I was going to, on the edge of the horizon, still a blur but something, and I didn’t know where I was going, and I didn’t know how far until I got there–dreamstate, waking, that’s where I was). I got dressed. Left on time. Got to class.

For the first time all semester, programming didn’t come easily. And though I got my unicorns to whinny-whinny and NEIGH, how I got there was like a bridge I’d forgotten I’d crossed over. I could see the code, could emulate and imitate and remarkably recreate, but I could not just create. I could not start from scratch and get there. A piece was missing.

After class, I wanted to speak with my superior for a few moments, felt obligated to help clean up before I got anywhere else, but knew I needed something else. So I went where I had never gone before, a place I had only ever seen from the edge. My secret place.

All the Beautiful People

Today things finally felt like they’re back to usual.

This made me happy. It was only a few moments after leaving my religion class that I came to my statistics classroom and as I walked toward my seat and saw familiar faces and one of my best friends I thought to myself, It’s good to be back in my old seat. To be honest, after two weeks of not being in class, I was afraid I might not have a seat to return to. I’ve witnessed it happen plenty of times before: Someone stops showing up to class and after an absence or two, someone else moves forward into the more favorable seat. It happened to half the class in chemistry. It happened with the boy I liked in precalculus. And we had worked together during class, so his loss was especially poignant.

Later in the day I felt something unusual. Something not just beyond two standard deviations from the mean, but something uncanny, something I haven’t felt in a long time, something that changes how we see the world and in fact changes the very world we see itself. And as I walked into the cafeteria, an overwhelming sense of gratitude filled me from head to toe as I realized what it was that I felt and I said, Today, today I know what I’m thankful for.

I am thankful for temperance.

Destiny and Rebirth

I’d like to begin by saying Shanah tovah to all my readers! This past Wednesday began Rosh HaShanah, the celebration of the Jewish new year and one of the most important holidays in the Jewish year. The ten days following until Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) next Saturday are referred to as the Days of Awe and are a time to seek forgiveness and make amends for the coming year.

Today, however, my focus is still on the Pirkei Avot.

2.20 Rabbi Tarfon taught:

The day is short, the task is great;
the workers indolent, the reward bountiful,
and the Master insistent!

What is this, a piece of poetry? Though I’m apt to adore art, I must wonder what is meant by this, what lesson was intended, what pupils were at his feet when he spoke these words….

If I Could Tell the World Just One Thing

Ten years ago I was twelve. It was a Tuesday. We were already up, had gone about the day as usual. We were turning on the TV to watch MacGyver like we did every day. My mom was taking a shower before we had to leave. The only problem was, all the TV channels were interrupted by a live newscast each showing the same thing.

The scene was this: Two towers, a billowing cloud of smoke from the second.

My brother told me to go tell our mom, so I ran down the hall, banged on the bathroom door, and shouted the news to her. I didn’t know what it all meant, though: I was twelve, what did I know of World Trade Centers and terrorist attacks? To me a plane had flown into a building. It was tragic, maybe in those first few moments scary and exciting, but what did it mean to me–a twelve-year-old boy a thousand miles away?

Time is Not on Our Side

There’s a strange sequence of events that flourishes with any venture between deadlined tasks. We are harried and rushed for release, then harried and rushed for return. In the midst of this tumult I find myself now, pacing and aching in any number of ways and directions at any given moment. I feel akin to a vector turned into a field, a being capable of but one magnitude and direction in an instant but suddenly forced to move outwards with no aim in sight.

It started simply enough, I told myself. There would be time. So much time.

G is for Gophers

G is also for gays, great, goodness, good-will, and God, but as we all probably know, all of those are–can you guess it?–givens. (Did you see what I did there?) I could easily speak of all of these, and I’ve especially already spoken of the first and perhaps the second and third as well, and good-will is easily covered and God is a topic always burning with new ground to cover (better question: did you see what I did there?), but today, I’d rather speak of something more important and more pertinent than any one of those: Gophers.

A bit of background is in order, and the beginning of background comes in the form of frogs, which is not a g-word unless there’s only one and it’s hopping backward, at which point you can call it a gorf. In any case, I happily admit that I knit, and in the knitting community, the technical term for unraveling a knitted piece of fabric is called “frogging,” because you “rip it, rip it.” (True story: That incredibly punny pun is not of my own crafting, no pun intended.)

There’s a few other animals that also need some mentioning here: There’s wolves when we choke down dinner, there’s bears when we have things to carry, and there’s always donkeys when we do thing half-assed (don’t disagree with me, I’m positive that’s where the term comes from, and since the human body is electrically neutral, you can be sure that that means I’m certain).

We deal with many other animals on a daily basis as well, although unfortunately we don’t usually wish to remember them: We all have a sad tendency of being involved with too many pigs, snakes, and female dogs, don’t we, even when we wish to leave the petting zoo and come home at last, not to mention the occasional chicken, rat, or cougar that we cross paths with. It happens. We’re only human.

But there’s one more animal often neglected, and it’s this animal that I’ll be speaking of today.