Plans and hopes

The spring semester at CUNY just ended a few days ago, Tuesday, when I handed in my last paper (which I worked on with fellow students). Likewise, my tutoring for the 2011-2012 school year ended at roughly the same when I handed in paperwork for one my last students to my supervisor. Well, more precisely, my tutoring ended on the morning of that Tuesday when I met with my supervisor and she checked over my documents. Later, my formal springtime studies at CUNY ended when I turned in a final paper at around 5 PM to my professor.

The simultaneous conclusion of the spring term and tutoring means that I'm free for a few days. So ever since Tuesday I've been sleeping in, taking it easy like never before. I haven't had a moment to really kick back and relax so my chance came just recently. Unfortunately, my skin condition, eczema, has also been acting up so that meant I had to see the doctor yesterday and get an injection. That threw me into a terrible mood, although I'm still trying to at least enjoy the down time.

So...... well, so far as plans for the summer go (and even my tutoring company supervisor asked me if I have plans for the summer), I'm hoping to do research at CUNY and the New York Public Library while keeping up my studies. I'll be in a class at CUNY, but in the meantime I can still do what I want to do at the intellectual-academic level. Obviously, I have no grants and I'm not working with a professor on a research project, but all the same, I'll go crazy if I don't start work on personal research projects that I've been dreaming of (yes.... I'm a nerd).

Since I don't like eating my words, I'll divulge my research from time to time over the next few months.

I should add that I still need to make precise plans.

And as for my hopes and aspirations...... at this point I'm making this entry into one of my most personal entries, but given that the people who read this blog tend to be people I know on a personal level as friends, I think I can be honest online.

I've been thinking more and more, constantly, about relationships. Whenever I'm out I see people roughly my age holding hands or I see people who may be my age (more or less) or who are older than me with children. Now, so far as the latter group of people goes, I know I'm not ready to be a father even though I'd like to be in the future. But as for the former group, I always find myself thinking about what being in a relationship is like because I've never been in one although I'm in my twenties (which pretty much makes me a late bloomer.). I don't know if I'll be a good boyfriend (I certainly hope I'll be one) and I doubt I'll run into somebody who'll become my girlfriend anytime soon, but I'd be lying if I said that I don't have this longing.

So much to say, yet with no idea how to say it

I have a confession to make: It's hard for me to write. That's pretty much the reason why I don't update this blog as much as I should and as I can. Or rather, update it with original entries that I've written. Maybe it's self-consciousness, maybe it's because English actually isn't my first language, maybe because I overthink things, maybe because I tend to be preoccupied with other things, maybe...

"Excuses, excuses, Stephen," you may say, understandably. After all, I still need to review two books. And I've been thinking of writing two follow-up entries for this entry. I promise, I'll get around to writing and publishing them. It's just too bad that right now I'm still wrapping up the spring semester at CUNY.

But getting back to why it's hard for me to write. I supposed it's due to me becoming more reflective. Ever since I graduated college two years ago, I became more appreciative of books, thought, the "life of the mind," etc. I started paying more attention to my surroundings and I slowly realized that while life can be unpredictable, it can also have its patterns. Furthermore, the meager life experience I have has given me some perspective, as things that once seemed so important become, in hindsight, rather trivial.

And that's probably the reason why I find it hard to write. Because deep, extensive reflection and thought are needed in order to write something meaningful, if only to you and people you're close to. You can't really mass-produce that kind of writing, although the acclaimed/notorious "Shadow Scholar" has been able to write term papers for undergraduate and graduate students.

So with that written, for those of you frustrated with the slowness of my blog in terms of updates, please accept my sincere and humble apologies.

Have I become anti-social?

I could probably come up with a better title question, but I think what I wrote is a good lead-in to a remark or two about my decision to not use social media except for web logs (like this one).

So.... what prompts this discussion (or monologue)? A few factors: I quit Facebook, I received via email a couple of social media invitations from somebody I know, etc. The most important factor is, probably and sadly (and probably sadly. Sad in the sense that you'd think quitting Facebook is a trivial decision.), quitting Facebook.

So what's the big deal about quitting Facebook? Well, big enough that it warrants a search phrase on Google. No need for me to go into the various reasons for quitting Facebook (most of which I either agree with or at least don't disagree with), about which even respectable, mainstream newspapers have published articles (see here and here).

But what's my reason for quitting? I want some solitude in a world that seems so fast-paced. Years ago (not that I mean to imply that I've been alive for all eternity, but you kind of notice in an after-the-fact way that six or seven years is a long time), I thought that a quick, ever-shifting world was a fact of life and a sign of something progressive (and not just in the political sense). Of course, in an abstract way that's true. I should also note that at roughly the same time the warmongering and opportunistic neoliberal-yet-also-neoconservative propagandist respectable New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman published his book The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. It's a book on a more-or-less-the-same theme. More recently, he's published a book on the decline of the US. The more respectable David Harvey published A Brief History of Neoliberalism. 


But how about in the concrete sense? How true can it be? In some ways, yes, it's true. Social media like Facebook, not to mention the Internet itself, does provide new opportunities for connection and collaboration. But let's be honest, if you're on Facebook then the people you're likely to "friend" are people you already know or have already met to begin with. Furthermore, a Facebook "friend" is a "friend" in the most superficial sense of the word. Social lives and circles don't grow by leaps and bounds (although many people probably think that that's the case).

How can it be untrue? Or not quite true? Insofar that we might not have a sense of humanity anymore. A generation ago, cyborgs were the stuff of imagination, more likely to be found in science fiction works like Star Wars and Star Trek rather than in real life. Nowadays, it's not at all uncommon to see people plugged into their iPods as they go about their daily routines and for people to be hunched over their laptop computers at public libraries and coffeehouses (... Starbucks). None of this is meant to be moralistic; I've done both myself. However, by becoming so immersed in digital technology and cyberspace such as Facebook and other types of social media like Twitter and LinkedIn, we end up thinking that everything has to be uniform, automatic, and quick, thus "efficient." There's no room anymore for reflection and thinking about how we can live differently since, after all, cyberspace (thanks to advances in computer technology) is the end-all and be-all. Nothing can change beyond this point, and that's the opposite of progress.

Good grief.

I'll repeat: Good grief.

Step Across This Line (part one)

Several days ago I found a book that I thought I had given away, titled Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002. It's a book that consists of various essays and op-eds by the noted novelist Salman Rushdie. The title comes from a lecture that he delivered in February 2002 at Yale University as part of the Tanner Lectures on Human Values. And at this point I know I sound like broken record, but I'll add that I still have a hard time believing that almost ten years have passed since then. 


So, bland first paragraph aside, I decided to leaf through this book again years after I first read it. Back then, I thought the book was brilliantly and deeply insightful, especially the lecture that was originally titled Step Across This Line (the book was published in September 2002). Now, I find it to be at best an average-quality collection, probably in light of the passage of time and the evolution of my own perspective. Furthermore, given that the book consists of fairly or relatively brief nonfiction pieces of writing that appeared in daily newspapers like The New York Times, it's a tall order to demand that any writer publish an article or essay that winds up in the annals of classic literature (and I don't intend to cast doubt on Rushdie's reputation as a fiction writer either). The same goes for the lecture, this book's title piece, which I thought then was the strongest part of the whole compilation. 


Yet I still found myself re-reading the book when I was on the subway the other day. Granted, I was just reading here and there, focusing on one piece or the other in the book. There's a concise, plain-spoken approach in Rushdie's nonfiction writing, a quality that actually makes him eloquent as he sets forth his views and arguments. I gave away the book on the same day, so I won't be able to go into depth with this entry, but I plan to write one or two follow-up entries so as to do this book some justice. The next entry will focus on the lecture itself, which is now available online. 

Given that I don't pay much attention to holidays...

... I thought I can at least express my appreciation for parodies such as these:

In this spirit (or lack thereof), happy Easter and Passover to those who celebrate either holiday!

The consequences...

... of the general law of capitalist accumulation at their worst.