A Community without a Home

I came out in 8^th grade. I was outed to my parents that same year. I remember, my mother called me into the kitchen, and there on the table was my yearbook open to one of many signatures. One of my friends signed off her message “to my best gay friend ever!!!!” and my mother read it. That was a tense ten minutes, but an honest ten minutes.

My parents were accepting as was the town I grew up in. Even the all-male Catholic high school I attended was accepting. Admittedly, there were moments when I felt imperiled because someone blasted the word “faggot” right in my face. Luckily, I was equipped with two powerful weapons. One: the knowledge that my parents, sister and friends would support me. Two: because I was out of the closet, I could response to such comments with, “yes, what about it?”

           

I didn’t realize how lucky I was. Sure, it was a struggle at times. Puberty is always a struggle. Perhaps it was a little bit more challenging for me because every guy I liked was (typically) heterosexual.

For obvious reasons, around this time in my life the “sexuality” topic started making frequent appearances. So, in order to understand myself better and meet open guys, I joined my school’s gay straight alliance and encountered my first transgender (trans hopeful) person…

           

Person, guy, girl… I’m typically a strong speaker, but the terminology surrounding that friend was ambiguous, difficult, impossible and made me bungle.

           

“Can I address the GSA with my typical, ‘hey guys,’ if he… if she is in the group? Is that offensive?” I wondered things like this whenever he and I were in the same room. At the time I called him just by his given name.

           

You’ve probably noted two inconsistencies here. One being, how can there be a transgender person going to an all-boys Catholic school? He wasn’t transitioned yet and wasn’t going to go through the process until after graduation. The other inconsistency is summed up pretty well by something someone asked me in a meeting which was the inspiration for this article.

           

I said in the meeting I was the student-leader of the GSA at Saint John’s Prep. He said, “a GSA… at a Catholic school?!” I’ve already said this a few times, but I will say it again – I grew up in an environment that fostered my development as a person regardless of my sexual orientation. I really have to thank the headmaster at the time for sticking it to the various pressures (student, parent, teacher, Catholic institution) and sticking with Always Our Brothers and Sisters.

           

My point is this: when she [I will use this pronoun from now on] was in the room I was confused. I wanted to be tolerant and accepting and understanding, but I found myself thinking “how could you want to do this to yourself?” I admit, I more than once thought it was silly and unnecessary. Furthermore, I knew intuitively that making the transition would bring a lot of pain on her. My reasoning was pretty simple; I thought I’d had a pretty hard time of it (I hadn’t yet realized my luck) and I was “just gay.” I wasn’t in the “wrong body.” I wasn’t going to “spontaneously change genders.” I put this is quotes because I remember saying it. This was before I had an accurate appreciation for the breadth and width of the transition.

In order to overcome this character flaw I approached the issue from the only avenue I was equipped to approach it from – intellectually. I researched. I studied. I read blogs, essays, journals, medical dictionaries, psychology publications, and anything else I could get my hands on. But even with these I could understand.

           

After a while I just got used to it. It took me time. But for a while I reacted how much of the public reacts; I feigned tolerance, avoided eye contact, and got out of the room. Like I said, it took time. It took knowing someone to really make me understand. I think the same strategy can work to end much of the intolerance out there.

           

That was high school. So, as if it wasn’t hard enough for her at that time, she had to deal with her family’s seemingly ambiguous treatment of her. Now it’s all well and good – but there was a time when I was seriously worried that she might be booted from her home, booted from school, scalded by her friends, and disowned. She, like me, was lucky because none of these things happened.

           

Luck. Lucky to be born into an accepting family, in an accepting town with liberal views. Lucky to know what I wanted and who I was so young. Lucky, even, that my parents got a hold of my yearbook and read the entry.           

           

But is it all luck?

           

Equipped with the experiences I had in high school and oozing with existential questions like these, I began the epic quest for a college.

I loved Catholic school, but I’d wanted more in my life than just upper-middle class white boys. So, I chose an educational experience with a high level of diversity. I left home and moved 25 minutes from my hometown in Danvers to Dorchester to attend the University of Massachusetts Boston. This is the second best decision I’ve ever made, second only to choosing Saint John’s Prep High School.

UMB has a student body of nearly 15,000. Nearly all of these students work part time, many work full time, many have families and responsibilities at home. All juggle academics with “the real world.” Teachers and parents have been telling me about “the real world” since I was in preschool. This is the first time my education and “the real world” have been so inextricably interwoven.

Because of this huge diversity and because we are in such a tolerant epicenter of the US, there are all kinds of people at UMB. This is why we have such a proactive, vibrant Queer Student Center who, last semester, opened the personal narrative of transgender youth up to the school.

It was a warmish room in the Campus Center, with a projector-screen, a collection of uncomfortable chairs, a neglected podium in the corner, and some food platters on a counter in the back. After people filed in, introduced themselves, and got comfortable the stories began pouring out. These were the kind of stories that you don’t want to listen to. Their are so overpowering they actually do damage to your image of our “great country.” Unlike tearjerkers in movie theaters, these were real events that happened to real people in “the real world.”

Their personal narratives could not be anything but depressing given the subject of the meeting:  transgender, homeless youth. I wrote an article for the Mass Media on the topic and on the meeting specifically. When I turned the piece in, I described it as “the most depressing thing I’d ever written.” My editor at the time agreed. Here it is with some edits:

Many of their stories start the same way despite differences in race, gender, sexual preference, and age; upon coming out or being found out, they were all disowned.

           

One UMB student described his home life. First he was kicked out, then allowed back in after a couple week at which “the transgender issue” was strictly avoided. “I didn't know how to feel myself.”

           

After a series of comings and goings from home and climactic fist fight with his mother. Finally, words all-too-often heard by those in the LGBT community were spoken, “you're not part of the family anymore.” He was without a home for an entire summer.

           

Driven by some buried parental instinct, after the summer and after the irrevocable phrase was spoken, he was called back. Lacking any other place to go, he returned. But his parents “halted everything.” That is to say, during this period he was undergoing the process of hormone therapy to become in body who he was in mind. “Living as a female,” he said, “wasn't going to work for me.” So, while it was embarrassing for his parents to have a “daughter who was living on the streets,” they were still unwilling to accept him for who he was.

           

Others in the discussion had similar stories.

           

After being booted from their home and removed from the family the real horror story begins – they found themselves in a world without a ceiling and usually without food.

Another transgender (male to female) spoke about her experiences. Her mother died from Multiple Sclerosis and her relationship with her father was weak and inconsistent.

“One day he’d be like, ‘I don't mind helping you out.’ The next day, ‘get the fuck out.’” Now homeless since 2005, she described her whole experience.

She went through “the whole nine yards” of vagrancy. In desperation she “started prostituting in the middle of being homeless.” Prostitution gave her a house, some money and even a friend or two. Unfortunately, there were drugs and because of these, she spent a year in prison.

           

By the time she was released, she’d “stopped using.” But, she was still without a home.

           

While “house hopping,” she met the man she is currently engaged to. They sat together during the meeting, bonded by their protracted battle against homelessness.

           

What about the shelters and halfway houses?

           

She described a shelter called “the Shattuck.” Before entering the proprietors patted her and her fiancé down to make sure they weren't carrying drugs or weapons. During this, the staff member groped her inappropriately. Nonetheless, “we [had] nowhere to stay tonight.” They found a spot to lie down.

           

“They pretty much wanted to separate us,” she said, describing how she and her fiancé were treated. She had had enough. Infuriated by their treatment, she called the police and reported the abuse. The police did nothing. She described the attitude of the police towards them as, “you're fagots, so whatever.”

           

Another in the group said that he sometimes “felt more comfortable on the street” because so few shelters stop discrimination even when it’s manifested violently.

           

As if the struggle to find a shelter wasn't enough, they must struggle to find an “appropriate shelter.” Ideally, this means a place free of harassment, but typically the only option is to find a shelter where they “can hide within the crowds.”

           

There are some reliable shelters. Mark, a program director of Waltham House, stated the importance of taking a “step out of our comfort zones […] and advocating for these things that are not common practice,” such as the protection of typically ostracized individuals in hopes that he can create a “safe environment.”

Mark added, “in addition to being kicked out of home […] they're also running from the people who are supposed to be helping them.”

           

Another member of an organization seeking to improve conditions of this large population put it well, “poverty had no color, no preference.” Yet, it does not follow that those fighting poverty are open-minded.

A study done by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force recently published a report appropriately titled, Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey. The survey, as the title suggests, gathered large quantities of data from transgender individuals and compiled the information in one single massive study.

Originally, when I was looking at reports in high school, I had almost no faces to put with these numbers. Sure, I had the one friend whose transition went relatively smooth. But, this report tells the story of people far less fortunate.

Let’s begin with children. Try to take into account everything they’re going through at the time of their transition or their decision that they wish to transition. In transgender respondents between kindergarten and 12^th grade, 76 percent reported harassment; 6 percent reported expulsion (due to their sexual identity); 35 percent reported physical assault of some kind while 12 percent reported sexual assault specifically.

As if this wasn’t enough to upset you, these numbers can be broken down even further. Ethnicity and which direction of the transition (that is to say, male to female or female to male) also are accounted for. Even among this group of abused, there are subdivisions which clearly demonstrate a stronger bias against people of color. For example, the number of physically abused among blacks is 83 percent, 7 percent higher than the average.

But, perhaps the most criminal number is that seemingly small 6 percent. None of the other numbers give any identification as to whether or not administrative help was granted. Within the study itself, a girl who identified as gay said, “shortly after I came out in high school, I began receiving threats in my locker. The usual idiocy: ‘damn dyke, no one wants you here,’ or ,‘fucking fag’.” I would hope that such abuse, if reported, would result in the expulsion of those who wrote the note. The unique nature of that 6 percent is its demonstration that the administration of some schools not only fail to stand by gender-non-conforming students, but that they actively abolish them through expulsion. 

There is a related statistic for adults, or at least those who have held jobs. 47 percent report “an adverse job outcome such as being fired, not hired or not promoted” due to their sexual preference or identity. With a number like that, it’s not surprising that transgender individuals experience unemployment at twice the rate of “typical Americans” with “people of color up to four times the national unemployment rate.” Even if a sexual-non-conformer does manage to get a job, “90 percent of those surveyed reported harassment or mistreatment on the job.”

I’ve been told (and I’ve now looked it up) that it is, in some places, illegal in to be homeless. Many small city ordinances and state laws make it illegal, for example, to lodge in a public place, or a private area without the previous permission of the owner. Yet, it is two to four times more difficult for transgender identifying individuals (according to the numbers just conveyed) to get a job, make a stable income and find a stable place to stay. This is ignoring further discrimination in housing markets and apartment rental.

Do they have a family to go home to? “43 percent maintained most of their family bonds, while 57 percent experienced significant family rejection.” Thus, laws targeting the homeless are laws targeting transgender individuals more than anyone else.

“22 percent were denied equal treatment by a government agency or official; 29 percent reported police harassment or disrespect; and 12 percent had been denied equal treatment or harassed by judges or court officials.”

There is no end to the numbers – the statistics are staggering and there is no good reason, nor any viable excuse for the story the numbers tell.

I guess “the real world” my teachers told me about when I was younger isn’t such a nice place. It puts people in boxes, pushes them into a sweeping tide of drugs, poverty, prostitution, and pain and watches them float away with a smirk. Well, it’s not so much the world as the people who occupy it.

There is no good reason for the following statistic: “41 percent of respondents reported attempting suicide compared to 1.6 percent of the general population.”

I am lucky. I continue to gain greater appreciation for how lucky I am. But I shouldn’t have consider myself lucky. There is no reason that the way I grew up has to be the rare exception to a rule of oppression and abuse. The real world isn’t such a bad place and the most aggravating enemy opposing equality is apathy. Continuing studies like these and their publication is a crucial factor in creating a country of understanding and tolerance.  

Who is Cato and why is he in Moby Dick?

“With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship” (Melville 1). 

            Who the hell is Cato and why did he throw himself upon his own sword? According to every high school / college students’ favorite resource (Wikipedia), Cato the Younger (not to be confused with Cato the Elder) lived between 95-46 BC and vehemently opposed Julius Caesar. Benét’s Reader’s Encyclopedia and Plutarch (a famed ancient historian) support this information.

            According to Plutarch, Cato did kill himself by running himself on his own sword (it’s a bit more complicated and a bit more gruesome than that, actually). “Cato committed suicide rather than acknowledge Caesar,” (Benét’s Reader’s Encyclopedia 185).

            Here’s Plutarch’s passage on Cato’s death according to the University of Chicago Website:

Cato drew his sword from its sheath and stabbed himself below the breast. His thrust, however, was somewhat feeble, owing to the inflammation in his hand, and so he did not at once dispatch himself, but in his death struggle fell from the couch and made a loud noise by overturning a geometrical abacus that stood near. His servants heard the noise and cried out, and his son at once ran in, together with his friends. They saw that he was smeared with blood, and that most of his bowels were protruding, but that he still had his eyes open and was alive; and they were terribly shocked. But the physician went to him and tried to replace his bowels, which remained uninjured, and to sew up the wound. Accordingly, when Cato recovered and became aware of this, he pushed the physician away, tore his bowels with his hands, rent the wound still more, and so died (Plutarch 407).

Thanks University of Chicago!

            There was a lot more to Cato the younger than just him running himself (stabbing himself) on his own sword. He was an upstanding citizen, politician, and a skilled orator, among other things. He wouldn’t accept bribery during a time when bribery was commonplace. All around good guy who came to a bad end.

            In the context of Melville: Ishmael, rather than committing suicide (as this passage suggests, though I personally think Ishmael is hyperbolizing) “quietly take[s] to the ship.” This is a nice sentence. “Quietly” sets up a nice contrast to the death of Cato the younger, which was loud, violent, and visceral (literally). Taking to the sea is how Ishmael combats the blues.

            It should be noted that by making this reference and mentioning death so early in the novel Melville is setting up the morbidity of his novel. Let’s face it, Ishmael (and probably Melville too) is comparing going to sea to the relief suicide brings to unbearable pain and suffering. This equivocates the ocean to an afterlife, an expression of relief, and a metaphoric paradise away from earth. The sea becomes unearthly.

            If you want to write a solid essay you should strongly consider this reference. This linguistic / rhetorical flourish happens early on, you can therefore apply it to the rest of the novel without having to go back and reread too much.

            Again, I am not a definitive resource of information and I have only scratched the surface of this analysis. You should look elsewhere for further information and verification. Think for yourself!

Here’s the link to the University of Chicago website:

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Cato_Minor*.html 

PS: Unable to bear the survival and kingship of his greatest adversary (Caesar), Cato tries to kill himself. However, an injury prevents him from achieving this end. So, he rends his guts until he is dead. Sound like anyone?? 

Use of "hypos" in Moby Dick

Hypos: (contemporary usage) The chemical sodium thiosulphate (formerly called hyposulphate) used as a photographic fixer.

           

            Etymology: From the Greek hypo meaning “under.” For example: hypodermic meaning “under the skin” or hypothalamus meaning under the thalamus. Interestingly, hypocrisy (from hypokrinesthai) literally means “under” (hypo) “to sift or decide” (krinein – crisy) and has associations with the stage. An actor would be a hypocrite because he or she is acting a part – saying one thing without necessarily meaning it, playing “under the table.”

            Anyways, the word “hypos,” as Melville uses it, is making use of a subtler, psychological definition of the word – Ishmael is, after all, describing his state of mind. He (Ishmael) is talking about “the November in [his] soul,” he finds himself “pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral” he meets. These sentiments suggest that (a) he thinks he is dying or (b) he is time and time again, through no intention of his own, associating with negative, melancholy circumstances

            One fellow suggested in a forum that Ishmael’s “hypos” be replaced with hypochondria. This makes sense, the new a sentence beginning “whenever my hypo[chondria] get[s] such an upper hand of me[…]” However, does this definition hold throughout the entire sentence? How about I write out the whole sentence.

            “[…] whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires strong moral principal to prevent me from deliberately stepping out and methodically knocking people’s hats off […]”

            Apologies, this is a long sentence and I don’t want to type the whole thing out. The point is this: “hypochondria” as an insert for “hypos” works in the first half of the sentence as well as in the second half. Hypos is making him want to “[step] out and methodically [knock] people’s hats off.”

            According to the wondrous Online Etymological Dictionary (a shockingly reputable source), hypochondria did not always mean what it means today. Us 21^st century folks use it to mean a false sense of illness – hypochondriacs are those friends who always think they are coming down with some devastating sickness but never actually do and react uproariously to the slightest sniffle or sneeze. However, it meant “depression or melancholy without real cause” back in the 1800s, when good old Melville was writing. Thus, “hypos” might very well mean hypochondria.

            Then again, it might actually mean “under.” As in, “under the weather.” This might make more sense than the elaborate explanation above. Ishmael’s already referenced a “November” in his soul – cold dreary weather.

            I don’t want to read to much into this other possibility, I believe it is self explanatory. Needless to say, have your dictionaries / thesauruses / and online etymological resources at hand when you’re reading anything as language-dense and archaic as Herman Melville. 

Vent

I need to vent!

It is vacation and yet I feel overworked. There are projects and tests inching closer and closer with each passing moment... there are news paper deadlines only days away. There are article ideas being flung at me from neuroscientists at Tufts, entrepreneurs from the University of New Hampshire, bothered brothers in high positions in the Boston transportation department, eager nursing students calling for support on healthcare issues...

Vacation: An extended period of recreation, especially one spent away from home or in traveling. New Oxford American Dictionary


Vacation: Leisure time away from work devoted to rest or pleasure. wordnetweb.princeton.edu


Vacation: A period of suspension of work, study, or other activity, usually used for rest, recreation, or travel; recess or holiday. dictionary.com


Vacation: A period of rest from work. The Merriam Webster Dictionary


Nowhere in these definitions does it say: a time to spend catching up on work you fell behind on during the semester; a time to get ahead on upcoming work; a period during which certain social or educational obligations are foregone so that the individual can focus on other work.

Mass Media. School. Life. These are the paints that fill up that blank slate that is my life.

I want to see my friends. I want to write a wicked long fantasy novel then write a wicked long realistic fiction novel. I want to work out. I want to pig out... actually, I have been pigging out a bit.

These things I want to do! Some of them aren't even completely disconnected from work or school! It's true - work and school are so much a part of my life, I find myself filling my scant "free time" with school work or Mass Media work. For example, I really want to write up the two "Voices of UMB" pieces I have. I've pretty much written one (Samantha Fischbeck), but the other, an interview with the fantastic, the vivacious Donna Perezella is still waiting, an audio file in my "voices" folder on my desktop.

I, more than ever, need time. Time to work.

Despite all this belly-aching (I need to cut down on my belly-aching, complaining rarely gets anyone anywhere except the dog house) I really like school, Mass Media, and all the other work stuff that fills my time. I really like to work. But a vacation? I guess I just have to hold out for the summer when my sister and I go galavanting cross country on my first ever road trip. Because, as much as I want to work, enjoy working, I need to actually be alive at some point - I need to be more than just an animal that produces things and edits things and filters through emails. I need time for introspect and maybe some swimming. God damn it, I need a hair cut too.

I've actually been in New York City since this past Saturday. I got back early in the evening yesterday. During that trip (which was paid for by the Mass Media and thus required - justifiably - that I do some Mass Media related work) what did I do? I went to several insightful conferences on the future of the Print Media or representation of transgendered individuals in the media... hell, I spent 50 minutes of my life listening to a pleasant southern woman with a pleasant southern drawl panegyrize on font. FONT!? Okay, I shouldn't be outraged - I have spent a significant amount of time fooling around with the fonts on my mac-book and my net-book. Then, after spending a total of six hours in meetings of this sort (over the course of two days - Sunday and Monday) I had to write something about one of those meetings. So, I wrote something. Something pretty sassy, I must say, pretty insightful too and syntactically pleasing.

Saturday night, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday morning I was in the city that never sleeps. What did I do? I walked a few miles to a thrift shop where I bought nothing. I ate the most wonderful concoction (called a "concrete") at a NYC ice-cream and soul-food joint. I did a lot of walking... then some more walking. I went out to eat a couple times. But that's it. Probably a total of 72 hours.

The city that never sleeps... my fellow Mass Mediaers took advantage of this trip (more so than I did). They went out a night. The city that never sleeps... they probably got less than 3 hours of it a night - but they got out there! I slept. Goddamn my sensibility, going to bed at reasonable hours (11:30 or 12). I should have one night embraced the "fuck it" attitude that so many of my peers adopt and gone to a hookah bar. I should have... regret is a namesake of the unadventurous, the careful, and we wear it like a weighted badge of honor as it drags us into the sea of boredom...

Next time I will say, "screw sleep, screw work, screw deadlines - I'm going out tonight."

Next time. Next time we are going to Orlando Florida. I don't know if they have hookah bars there.

Alright. This is almost enough ventilation. I've got some shit to go do now (it's much easier to do things after ventilation). Let's see if I can't tick off some of those empty, check-less boxes on my whiteboard telling me what I need to do. Oh, and fuck it, I am going to publish this without editing it. Reckless, I know, but I'm on vacation.

"Common Man"

I have not posted in a while. As in so many of my ambitious moments, I planned to "follow through," to post daily, to write for my blog frequently and at great length. But, of course, these ambitious moments come frequently and are rarely followed through - or else there would be about 50 pages of content on my blog. School, the news paper, the etcetera etcetera of day to day - minutia ballooning into do or die. Excuses, excuses - I've had my free moments. 

Do I write about my days? Do I write about what I'm doing? Do I write about my life, my opinions, my hopes, dreams, ambitions, short comings...? All of these little things compose Paul Driskill - a predominantly unknown entity, drifting in and out of rooms and lives.

Let's start with this. There have been several nights during which I could not sleep because I was possessed by an ambitious idea. I'm tired of reading interviews with celebrities, prominent members of this or that, people who jumped in front of buses. Sure, all these people have earned their time in the limelight (I probably wouldn't jump in front of a bus - I'm not particularly heroic). But, who is to say that this creature known informally as "the common man" hasn't earned his place in the limelight? Doesn't the "common person" work hard? I'm fairly "common" and I think that I've deserved a little recognition. 

"Common people."
http://www.ifoapplestore.com/stores/boylston_street/photo5/pages/crowds.html

Common, what a stupid word. Who is common? Who is fully part of the status quo - there is no such thing as a cliche human being. Everyone is an individual. This is no news to anyone who might be reading this - you are in the same proverbial boat as me. 

Logo for "The Common Man Portsmouth" restaurant.

I want to know who you are! Don't you get it? I'm tired of this bullshit following of stupid nonsense. Who the hell is Linsey Lohan and why does she eat up so much attention?  Why is she more worthy of the spotlight than Joe Shmoe, who (by the way), is more interesting and more human? We are infected with celebrity. Yes, they're in movies. People know who they are because, yes, they are unusually pretty and don't flinch in front of cameras. But they play you. They play common people. We're interested in movies about ourselves, so why don't we devote some attention to reality and stop living in this false-world they orchestrate for us. If we're going to watch a movie about a bus-driver who has it tough in downtown DC why wouldn't we want to know about a real bus driver who has it tough in downtown DC? 

Reality TV? What is that? Not real. How many 16 year olds are pregnant? Why should I care about these televised ones who exploited their situation to make money? Why do I care about these people who are on an island and might not be next week - wow, really exciting... More exciting than reality? Than real people? Maybe - but shouldn't there be some subtraction from these shows based on the fact that it is entirely fake. It's fake. This, me sitting in a chair at my desk, rambling about reality television and other pointless bull shit, this is more real than anything could ever be on television or in those big dark boxes where people get together to watch false realities (movie theaters). Sorry, I'll try and stay away from such obscure metaphors.

Do I sound insane?

Am I making any sense?

Hey look, it's you, you pretty bastard.
Handle with care.
http://www.easyelements.com/photoshop-snowflake-brush-set.html

I'm interested in you. The so-called and self-identifying "common man." You are not common - it is impossible to be common. No one has lived a life like mine and no one has lived a life like yours. I'm not trying to purport to the "snowflake" ideal in which we are all wonderful and unique. We are not all wonderful, but we are all unique. Some of us are wonderful, but we're not fragile like snowflakes - we don't melt in the palm of some stranger's hand. We work hard and through our daily attempts to survive and (for too few of us) to thrive. This daily battle crystalizes into oblique, obscure ugly shapes - unique, sharp angles, cracking out like broken bones and breeching into other people. We're not snowflakes, because we're not fragile - we don't live in a society that promotes symmetry or a slow, drifting descent from high up where it's cold and clean.

Okay, I need to step away from that metaphor. 

Actors are trying to play us. So let's pay more attention to us, that's all I'm trying to say. 

Help me do this. Help me learn who you are. I don't know any of you, really, but I want to. I want to know what your story is. I want to hear your personal narrative, I want to know what it is like to be you from day to day. 

I bought an audio recorder. I have time and I'll make time. 

But where do I begin? 

Good old UMB. Taken from the UMB website.

At school. It's a project I have cleverly titled "the Voices of UMass." Why shouldn't I start at my school of 15,000 - a school with a population of 50 percent non-white in a state that is nearly 80 percent white. Where better to begin a demonstration of the diversity of the so-called "common" people? I can't think of anywhere. 

But how do I interview total strangers? Do I try and get them to talk to me in the hall when they're on their way to class? Do I go to the caff to get them to talk to me while they're eating pizza? Do I sit somewhere with a sign posted to my chest reading "I will interview you"? Do I get them in the library? 

I'm not particularly brave, not particularly outgoing. I'm not a hermit, though. But it's really quite difficult going up to random folks. So, I've narrowed my search. I'm trying to get interviews of people loosely connected to me. I've emailed one fellow in my professional writing class and sent another a message on Blackboard. They at least know I'm not trying to sell them something or trying to come on to them. 

I may try and get people closer to me to interview - my close friends, not-so-close friends, my roommates, my family... anyone. I just need momentum and some place to go. 

Studs Terkel. Holy Crap,
this dude is awesome.
http://celticwander.wordpress.com/tag/studs-terkel/

I must confess, while I have had some idea that I want to do this for a while now, the true spark that set off the gunpowder in my mind, is another book called Working by Studs Terkel. The strange thing is I haven't even read it. But the idea of it was enough. He interviewed common people. 

Maybe you're thinking "why would you do what he already did?" Well, his book was published in 1978... 33 years ago. 33 is an eternity to someone my age (just barely 21). 

Maybe I'll get someone to talk to me. That's step one.

The English Major Versus the Science Major

I am, thank God, not insane enough to go for a double major (though I still have most of my college career in front of me.) My English major is... it's not easy, but it's certainly not a challenge for me. I started out reading the hardest books I could find. When I really got into reading, back in sophomore year of high school, two of my first extracurricular reads were Moby-Dick and Atlas Shrugged. So, when I moved through the grades and finally breached headlong into college, reading the Great Gatsby (for the third or fourth time) for a 300 level course really wasn't much of a challenge.

Having written a good four or five or six or seven... many times more than most 21 year olds have (or most 40 year olds... most people) I have no problem banging out paper after paper after paper. It's a challenge, but I'm well adapted. I'm majoring in my natural state - a book worm and an obsessive writer.

Then, like the fool I am, I discovered a second passion which challenged my first. I love the brain! I really do love neuroscience. Fortunately, after taking my first neuro class in high school, I tapped the shallow well of literature on neuroscience, reading a couple Oliver Sacks books and a wonderful, almost self-help book called The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge (I think) and then letting my obsession fall to the back burner while I focussed on further refining my English abilities.

Then, after a year and a half in college, what do I realize? I've almost finished my English major. I binged English classes. I have that rare, precious thing - free time... an opportunity for another course. A second course. Reenter the periodic obsession.

I start reading online literature. I start reading chapters out of my old text book. I read A User's Guide to the Brain by Ratey. But it's not enough. So I decide to take classes. It's not enough. I'm a cognitive science minor in the psych department. I hope this is enough - this is possibly the only thing that could take the place of the goal I've had since the age of seven (to become some sort of novelist.) There were moments when I was inches from becoming a "science" student as opposed to an "English" student, though I think I could do both.

No amount of novel-reading (or even non-fiction reading) could have prepared me for the kind of reading I have to do in the classes I'm taking this semester. Well, no, not classes. One class I am in, very simply titled Perception is already challenging me beyond what any of my comfort-zone English classes could (except for maybe Shakespeare.)

I've just finished reading about the eye. Sure, in that high school class we did a lot of work on the sensory organs - but this shit is hard. Giving a damn, actually wanting to know something - not just for school / good grades, but out of a genuine desire for knowledge - is exhausting.

Satisfying! It takes me about three or four hours to read a single chapter in my text book, Sensation and Perception, whereas, had I been reading a novel for that period of time, unless it was Russian literature, I could have pounded through half the book. 30 pages in three hours. Flash cards, notes, underlining, and an online test...? Is this that other me? If I hadn't been turned on to writing back in the third grade would I have become a lab-rat, a science junky?

Would I be happier?

Would I be more successful?

I am neither unhappy nor am I unsuccessful, but there is always that "what if" itchy question scratching at my thoughts. Might it have been better if I had abandoned Rand and Melville in favor of Darwin, Dawkins, Pinker, and Sacks? Why do I feel that I can't do both!? Where is it written that I can't be some sort of neuroscientist and be a novelist? Nowhere. Why do I think that there is some edict against dual direction? Time! I only have so much time - not so much in school, but in life. School is direct. I know exactly what to do because administrators, councilors, and teachers all tell me what to do. Real life isn't so forward. I feel as though I have a one track mind. So, which way? Novelist or neurologist? I think I still need some time to figure that out.

Your brain is great

This may sound a bit strange but I really love your brain. Your brain is wonderful. 

Poor Homer.

This three pound chunk of complex meat inside your head is composed of 100,000,000,000 neurons (those feisty little electric units that unite to make your brain.) These 100 billion neurons can connect to other neurons a few times or hundreds of times. Given the quantity of neurons - the quantity of connections is astronomical, equaling (according to Steven Pinker) more than the number of atoms in the known universe (hundreds of trillions of connections.) 

Interestingly enough, babies (those little bundles of joy) have twice as many neurons as us (200 billion) and undergo a ridiculous amount of neural-cropping (exactly what it sounds like - other cells in the brain called glia (a name for various cells, not just one kind) eat up (phagocytes - name for cells that devour "debris") and recycle the energy, while some myelinate (oligodendroglial cells) the axons of neurons.) Eventually, they have as "few" as you and me.

The best thing about your brain is illustrated in this wonderful video I found on youtube (god bless the internet - which, as of 2009 (according to labnol.org is around 182 million) is less than .2 percent of the number of neurons you and I have) is plasticity. Watch this video and freak out. 

In short, the brain does not stop changing. In fact, neuroscientists are discovering that the brain is more plastic than they even thought ten years ago. What does this plasticity mean (for those of you who didn't watch the video) it means a girl who has had half her brain removed (hemispherectomy) can function almost normally (probably, to assign a percentage to an abstract concept like "normal," she is probably around 70-90%.) She was young, this helped. Even though plasticity is great, were a 30 year old to have half of her brain cut out he would have much less functionality that Jody Miller (see video) achieved. 

I'm taking some psychology classes this semester - I plant to do loads of writing about the brain (since it helps me to learn.) If you want to learn with me, your more than welcome. Neuroscience is possibly the single most important science of this generation. Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Stroke (disorders we're all familiar with) are incredibly prevalent, frighteningly so. Researching the brain not only provides insights into philosophical concepts like "the mind" and free will, it also may help us keep our brains healthier longer. 

Fantasy versus Realistic Fiction

I am cursed with a split mind - the child in me, the same one who wrote a document almost 300 pages in length, wants to write fantasy. He wants to live and breath fantasy. He wants to sit down for hours and hours and hours on end writing about dragons, quests, good and evil, things lurking in forest lakes, castles, kings, sieges, and magic. But... it's all so cliche - so overdone. So juvenile. Isn't it?

Tolkein is dead and Rowling was (is) a freak accident - she couldn't have come up with a better plot to appeal to an audience under the age of 16. Twilight doesn't even deserve to be acknowledged - it's not fantasy, it's a subdued form of bestiality. Other than these others (and CS Lewis, and, I'm sure, there are several others) the "known" authors of fantasy are known only to select readers. I don't want to write a book only 800 people will read only because it's going to be thrown into a category with those other paperbacks with sword-wielding vixens not wearing appropriate clothing stamped on the cover.

It's not like that. Good fantasy isn't as... "cheap" as all that. Good fantasy (you might even call many of Orwell's writings "fantasy" or Brave New World fantasy) is a dialogue with reality. This is incredibly difficult to write - impossible. Because, while it should be a "dialogue with reality" (whatever I mean by that!) it must not seem like it's trying too hard. I can't have terrorists wasting castles with kings running after them in a wasted war-effort. For, while a reflection of reality in a work of fiction adds to the story if well done, it subtracts if done poorly. It becomes nagging. The reader just wants the good guy and the bad guy to fight, when instead their locked in debate about healthcare (this is an exaggeration... god I hope this is an exaggeration.)

This is not the goal of fantasy - nor should this be the goal of any writing at the outset. To reiterate, writing, when I'm sitting down at my computer, is first and foremost a means of entertainment. Yes, there are some things that bother me in the "real world." But that doesn't mean I have to have the bad-guy in my fantasy be some money grabbing, loose with women, fat white man. Entertain. This is the first goal of all writing. People who write textbooks must forget this - while educating is an important part of their kind of writing, who the hell wants to read about Louis the XVI if the writing is overtly pedagogical and smarmy.

Entertain first. Goal of all writing. I don't care if you're writing an instruction manual for wall-clocks. Short of a bullet pointed lists, a writer should avoid dullness at all costs.

What else should a writer avoid? Cliche! Enter fantasy's greatest adversary. There are no new ideas - I think Aristotle said that (one of those goddamned Greeks.) While I don't agree with this completely, he is making a good point. There are thousands of fantasy novels out there with basically the same plot as one or another.

A: Little puny weak something-or-other (whether it be Hobbit, Human, or Rabbit, it doesn't matter) is for some reason driven to leave home (compelled by unforeseen circumstances).

B: Goes on quest. Makes friends. Confronts partially unseen / incredibly intimidating adversary who wants to (1) dominate the world (2) obtain power (3) kill everything (4) become immortal.

C: Little puny whatever has (surprise surprise) grown up, become powerful, defeats enemy.

I've actually read very little fantasy. Lord of the Rings (of course) Harry Potter (not all of them, I was tired of them not doing any real educating at that damned school of theirs) and those books by Christopher Paolini (but only the first one.) Why have a read very little? I can feel them all being exactly the same. I want something different. I want a non-cliche piece of fantasy! Sure, if anyone who is an avid reader of the genre looks at my splendid blog (what the hell am I doing with my life anyways) they'll yell at me, tell me I don't know, and, perhaps, suggest a book. I would be more than happy to be proven wrong.

But this isn't the only problem I face when I allow that childish fantasy writer in me loose on the page. I get the feeling no one takes the genre particularly seriously. That little editor in my head who is constantly nagging in my ear keeps telling me to write "realistic fiction" because, if you do that well, people will acknowledge you as a great writer. As if it's harder to write within reality than to invent reality then write within it... I don't know which is harder - I think both have their own trials. The trial of fantasy is rather like the trial of the main character in fantasy.

Enter: unrecognized work of fantasy that (if it were any other genre) might be highly regarded by everyone, not just those devoted fantasy readers who sat down and read 700 pages without stopping. What's the big evil enemy? Realistic fiction. The genre that is more legitimate and takes up the spotlight except for some glaring exceptions already mentioned. How do we, as writers of a unappreciated genre surpass this? Write extraordinarily. I mean it. If you want a piece of fantasy to be read by everyone, you have to write so well, so flawlessly, with such poise, grace, cadence, and power than even staunch advocates of realistic fiction must acknowledge your "writing skills." A beautiful piece of writing is a beautiful piece of writing, no matter what the genre.

Proof: if Tolkien was a writer of lesser ability, the Lord of the Rings might still be crack exclusively for fantasy junkies, and not such a widely read, world-renowned story. But he wrote it so well, with such skill, and attacked a beautiful plot with powerful language and wrote (from what little I know about the entire spectrum of fantasy) one of the greatest works of any genre of all time.

Thus, a fantasy writer must be an incredibly skilled writer as well as a creative mastermind (it takes a special kind of creativity to invent an entire world.)

Enter my other mind - my other writer. I enjoy writing realistic fiction too! That's right - this isn't just a rant against realistic fiction. In fact, I partially agree with skepticism against the fantasy genre. What does a genre set in a fake world tell us about the real world? But this is a shallow, short sighted question - I won't go into why, I think it's fairly obvious.

Realistic fiction isn't "better," but it is a better way to demonstrate the real world. This is why high-schoolers are reading Catcher in the Rye and not Dune. Sure, there are hosts of other reasons, but I think you get my point. Fantasy doesn't educate as well as realistic fiction does - it doesn't allow you to as easily enter the shoes of another person as easily as realistic fiction. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair couldn't have been written as a fantasy novel.

Realistic fiction is as informative as it is entertaining (in the case of a well written piece.) It introduces the reader to aspects of the real world (it's nice to be able to come out of a story knowing something about reality you didn't know before) he or she wouldn't otherwise understand.

Not even I understand exactly what I am trying to get at right now. What am I trying to say? I know what I mean, but sometimes the words just won't come...

Realistic fiction is like meeting someone in real life. That story about that factory worker  could be real - so, it's almost as though you met a real person. I think that's what I'm trying to say.

Let me go back to fantasy for a while (for some reason I am more equipped to talk about this genre than realistic fiction, even though I write both.)

There is a reason why lots of younger authors want to write in this genre or in science fiction (the difference between the fantasy and sci-fi is fodder for another discussion). Fantasy is an attempt to recapture the magic of the world - rather, recapture the feeling we had as children that there is more out there than just what is right in front of us. A sense of wonder. I've lost that and I would give anything to have it back. I miss the feeling that maybe there really is a Santa, that really there maybe it such a thing as "magic." That not everything in the world can be explained by science or explained by some cockamamy dictum of religious fanaticism. It was almost as though, as children, our imagination wasn't so confined to our heads. It had hands of it's own - it made legos come to life, imbued play-dough with some indefinable qualia.

Qualia... an interesting word I've come across half a dozen times while reading about "consciousness" or the brain. It's a word used in philosophy to describe subjective experience and acknowledging we can't know how another person experiences anything. Thus, by sticking our sticky imagination-fingers into reality the world is no longer an objective space, it is a subjective experience. When we are young there are so many mysteries about the world we don't even have the language to explain. So, what does that five year old do? He explains it subjective experience - he fills the mystery with the magic of his own mind.

Fantasy is an attempt to recapture this sense that maybe... just maybe... there is more out there than newtonian physics (don't get me started on quantum mechanics) and money. But to do so is incredibly challenging. In fact, it is impossible. No 30 year old woman is going to come out of reading Harry Potter and feel gypped because she never got her Hogwarts letter.

However, by creating a world of our (the author's) own subjective experience there is an allowance for the "realistically impossible." Death is no longer final - who wouldn't want to live in a world where maybe, just maybe that person you loved might come back, for a little while? Who wouldn't want to live in a world that has some magic? Some mystery?

Enter one of the most brilliant (if not the most brilliant) fantasy writers of all time. JK Rowling. She made it even better. In addition to creating a world in which there was, quite literally, magic she did what no other author has done as well - it is a world accessible from our own. That's why it was so successful. The Harry Potter series is the best of both worlds (fantasy and realistic fiction that is) - there is magic, but there is reality. Both are possible. By writing about a school she even managed to do one of the most important things a writer needs to do to be successful - she appealed to a familiar experience. As readers of the series, everyone must have gone to school - that's instant association.

God. How brilliant.

I have more to say. But not right now.

The real introduction

While this may have begun as a joke and an attempt to answer a question on a final exam (I had to use a blog as a source) perhaps it will go somewhere. Blogging...? What the hell is that? I suppose this is nothing more than an online journal, another way to inform others about my own life - as if facebook wasn't enough self-promotional masturbation.

During some meeting in the Mass Media (we have many meetings because we are a newspaper and self important so long as we're not doing too good a job) it was suggested that I, as an editor, create a blog. My sister has a blog called "Beautiful and Tiny." Her blog is much nicer than mine - much "fuller" (I don't think something existing in cyber-space can be full.)

I'm supposed to be writing an article about the University of Massachusetts Boston Dana-Farber / Harvard Care Center partnership receiving 13.7 million dollars. It sounds boring. Right now it is going nowhere. I have the research, I lack the initiative. I'd rather be writing other things or nothing or reading.