One of a kind of...

I do not have a problem with being unique, or should I say not being unique. I mean, I suspect beyond a hunch that I am exactly like many people-most people even-but not all people in more than a handful of ways. I like the uniqueness of others. I am not unique though. I am like many people that are as just different as I am.

“I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.” Harper Lee

Americans love sugar, we even coat our fondest words with it. And fat, we love to chew our fat too. It seems most of us will eat whatever is placed in front of us. I lived in Texas briefly and many, many men (and a few women) called me ‘Sugar’ or ‘Hon’ or ‘Doll’, I only took personal offense with ‘Sugar’ and actually adopted the habit of saying ‘Hon’. Not many people say ‘Hon’ in California, I guess that’s different. Californians don’t actually say ‘DUDE’, not all Californians are actors, athletes, hippies or hobos although we do have these citizens. Most Californians say, ‘it’s all good’ or ‘no worries’ –but we are only trying to convince ourselves with an encouraging Mantra. The majority of Californians willingly pay more for everything under the sun and couldn’t care less about the noir political cravings across the rest of the nation for blood and property other than for good plot lines.
Californians respect distance between things- despite the dense photographs of Los Angeles and San Francisco personal space is religion.  If you could categorize Californians into just one mentality-space-that would be the word, just space. We get more fresh air, we get the freshest produce, we start and end trends, we embrace our differences, even differences of opinion but get too close-you will find a New Yorker-not a Californian.

As a little girl, I used to watch college football and golf with my grandfather. My grandfather was the most important man in my life and I try to keep him close to me through my continued viewership of these All-American pastimes. But how the two sports have changed over the last decade. I would not call myself a sports fan, in fact, the very idea of watching a “game” versus spending that same time reading is appalling to me-just shoot me. I can do both anyway. I can read with interruptions, I thought we all had MTD, Multi-tasking Disorder? We are all apparently able to drive and use our cell phones, we certainly all should be able to read and do other things or read instead of doing other things. My generation was forced to watch the Challenger Space Shuttle blow up in their faces while at school, we were forced to watch the OJ Simpson trial during school, and I hope you would agree that these two events inserted into our education are symptomatic of a scholastic American disillusionment that is never discussed openly-failure to focus on learning.

Fear of Failure is another American quality that we should embrace. Failure is what we owe our success to if we have learned from our flop.  Failure is not a dirty word it is not a shameful word. Failure is not a destination we travel toward or the End of the road. Ignoring facts spells ‘The End’ -as it did for the passengers on the Challenger.  And after OJ escaped justice without a scratch, I realized the influence of the court of public opinion and the irresistible magnetic pull of bias. Perhaps it has something to do with tapping into potential too early. We should let that potential mature. And we probably should do something about the athletic departments running the school's budget (to and fro) for broke. Then again Philosophy and subject matters like Reason (aka Liberal Arts) aren’t worth 2 cents anymore but cost an arm and a leg or equivalently, your firstborn child’s livelihood.

“The proper study of mankind is books.” Aldous Huxley

Like most Americans, I am bitter not like immature grapes. I am bitter I am a woman because I am not a minority because I have always been too curious to just do what I am told to do.  I was marginalized and swallowed up into the satin sheets of the American Dream.  I was not able to afford to put myself through college despite several attempts to make it work. I graduated high school at sixteen, I was always in a hurry. I was in a hurry to get out of the forest for good. When college proved to be impossible for a woman to pay for and live even with three jobs I got hitched, got pregnant and worked long hours in office jobs to finish putting him through an excellent University where he received multiple minority and athletic scholarships. My turn would come-I was told. American Dreams disappear when the sun rises.

“Experience teaches only the teachable.” -Aldous Huxley

My son was supposed to inherit some money for school from my grandfather-whom didn’t know I was also going to have a daughter before he passed away. Ironically my sons' schooling was more affordable than my daughter who is an exceptional traditional college student. We were all sold paper. The investments made into our future have been all Junk Bonds. It doesn’t matter who needs the money the most, my own mother spent that education money for herself. I will find a way to get her through college if it kills me and some days I think I would be better off as a victim of murder.
I never lost the desire for my liberal arts education and am fortunate enough to have found MOOC’s (Massive Online Open Courseware) proving the fact that those that want-do and those that don’t won't. It has beyond fulfilled my neurological cravings and overall has exceeded my greatest expectations-except these classes don’t really count for anything. I mean, what does taking an abbreviated 6-week class on Rocketry do? It makes me interesting. I will not be trying to get a job at SpaceX. I skipped over all of the math content.

I am not unique though. Hundreds of people are in these classes from all over the globe. I don’t know how successful statistically the MOOC model is, what if everyone could read-between the lines? Scary. I have done some heavy debating on this issue, I can only speak for myself and my own discoveries and I have gotten gold nuggets out of them thar hills of Academia! There is a wealth of knowledge at our fingertips in these MOOC’s, but beyond that, there are highly qualified, sometimes intriguing, sometimes annoying, sometimes confusing, most of the time fascinating, enthralling, inspiring instructors that are giving lectures and even interacting with online students in these MOOC modules. There is no doubt my grandfather would be pleased at this opportunity for higher academic development. I used to debate with him about the tangible value of a degree and after my graduated ex-husband wasn’t able to find a job (although now I know it was him and not his lack of skills) but I was making all the money, I told him how thought degrees were worthless but the knowledge invaluable. Both my grandfather and my grandmother majored in Journalism at the same University but neither ended up writing anything other than Thank you notes, grocery lists, checks and a few fragmented and unfinished ideas. My own mother and stepfather could give a vermin’s derriere about the Humanities (my humanity) or my interests, but it is all good-space-that is.  We have plenty of it between us and we are not unique in treasuring it.

“Leaving home in a sense involves a kind of second birth in which we give birth to ourselves.”-Robert Neelly Bellah

My grandparents went to church sometimes. I was not force-fed any religion, but they did serve plenty of leftover clichés like, “Patience is a virtue,” and it stuck. I have found that raising two children (humans) speeds up the fertilization of the patience process.
“Perhaps I am not as wise as I think I am.”-Umberto Eco
My mother used to say to me (without knowing whom she was quoting), “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” and I valued that wisdom which seemed true in every instance, unlike “two hands for beginners”. I used to think that the harder I worked someone would take notice and reach out a hand to help or pat me on the back, but when everyone thinks you’ve “got it” nobody gives a hand or lifts a finger. That is a benefit to being a white middle-class disadvantaged non-minority that is smart (capable), healthy (competent) and ultimately self-sustaining (motivated). Helping myself to free knowledge via MOOC’s has provided more than sustenance, it is my guilt-free dessert and like my grandfather told me, ‘you always want seconds of dessert which is why there are two “s’s”. Learning later in life has ultimately has improved my character as a whole. But I am not unique. Education has this common side effect.

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”-William Butler Yeats

By now I’m sure I’ve given plenty of fresh ammunition for even more people, not just women, to abhor, resent, stereotype me, and join the cavalcade of pessimists that think the liberal arts are all just a big waste of time (unless you are a celebrity and/or millionaire)-your time is only wasted if you don’t do the spending but let others control your purchase power. The opinions others have about you are pretty much empty calories, junk food. Only you know the only you ever made and all of your ingredients, only you know what you need and only you will be challenged when it comes to getting what you want and you find exactly what you need, no more, no less.

I have crossed paths with many of the same people or avatars online in various MOOC classes.  We are all there for the same reasons primarily; curiosity, to learn, to engage, to glean, to improve our own ‘corner of the universe’ aka ourselves. This platform is better than physically attending any one of the Universities for many logistical reasons; for example concurrent enrollment at Georgetown, Harvard, and UC Irvine. So what’s so special? Nothing. I told you. Nothing unique or special, just undiscriminating free for all knowledge, exposure to diversity, an invitation to formal higher education curricula, and an opportunity to learn whatever interests you. That unique you, the one intrigued by the Higgs Boson, inspired by the musings of poets and philosophers, and an insatiable hunger to know everything conceivable about everything that there is to possibly know in one lifetime.

"Knowledge is successive approximations, an accumulation/collection of corrections of mistakes"-Italo Calvino

What am I going to do with all that knowledge?
Well, if you cannot tell by now, write. Don't worry, nobody reads-especially to the end of anything.
I shouldn’t need to spend $60k+ for an MFA to write well and get paid nothing.
The process of writing is an intimate love triangle drawn behind closed doors between the writers’ two ears, projecting words on the page and resulting bottom line of the reader, it is a private conversation.
I dabble in rhyme, prose and poetry for the brevity and meatiness of the form, but I am writing my way through long(er) tales (tails)-I actually have one of those, a tail, a remnant of one anyway…maybe this leftover appendage means I am not quite done evolving into something else. I’ll let you know after I finish a class on Evolutionary Anthropology and Compositional Repression-but it may be in a poem-for brevity’s sake.

“I would define the poetic as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed.” -Umberto Eco

In the meantime, you can go on being ultra or uber-unique like everyone else. I will go on happily being an active member of a statistically disadvantaged middle-class American woman who is pursuing a greater purpose and taking up valuable space on this planet at the disapproval of the uniquely successful one percent. I am ninety-nine percent sure I am not unique in anty of my endeavors or experiences in this by-gone era.

“That’s (almost) all, folks.”-(almost) Porky Pig

One more morsel to leave with you, someone else’s words that could have easily been mine, or yours, since we are all a lot more alike than we like to admit.

"I've kept these early essays to myself...clumsiness and disorder reveal too much of the secrets closest to our hearts; we also betray them through too careful a disguise. It is better to wait until we are skillful enough to give them a form that does not stifle their voice, until we know how to mingle nature and are in fairly equal doses; in short, to be. For being consists of being able to do everything at the same time. In are, everything comes at one or not at all; there is no light without flame. Stendhal once cried; "But my soul is a fire which suffers if it does not blaze." Those who are like him should create only when afire. At the height of the flame, the cry leaps straight upward and creates words which in their turn reverberate. I am talking here about what all of us, artists unsure of being artists, but certain that we are nothing else, wait for day after day, so that in the end we may agree to live."-Albert Camus