*I don't know what this. It's part fiction, it's part reality . . . but hey, isn't that what every piece of writing is? Anyway, here it is. I'm not necessarily looking for it to be critiqued, I just felt like putting it out there. Do what you want with it.*
Writing is absolutely disgusting. Yet here I am writing. Why, oh why do we have to be forced into this tiny oblong-shaped frame of mind, forcing us to put into words what the “teacher” wants to hear? And yes, I use quotations when speaking about a teacher because only once in my life have I ever been taught by an English teacher, or any teacher for that matter, and since he’s left, I’ve yet to meet another who actually cares about what they’re talking about. Sure, you say, why don’t you try being a teacher? Well I am going to be. So don’t patronize me before you actually know the whole story.
So here I am sitting downstairs on my computer, disgruntled at the fact that I am not able to write a story for me nor one that the teacher wants to not so subjectively mark. Although, is it possible for a teacher to not mark subjectively? That’s pretty well how I’ve gotten through life. In high school, it got to the point where I never had to actually do work. It wasn’t that I was lazy, don’t get me wrong. But it was just so easy to manipulate the teachers. Take my history class for example. Our tests consisted of questions that asked us to write, essay-style, as much as we knew on a person or event in ancient history. By the second test in the semester I cleverly discovered that all you had to do was write enough for the question, and he wouldn’t even read it. It got to the point that I wouldn’t even write about what I was supposed to be writing about, and sometimes not even in the right language. Coherence was in the eye of the beholder. But what did he care? As long as I wrote enough, he was satisfied. Although, when you think about it, it’s not the teacher that asks the question, it is merely a question demanding to be fulfilled by offering you a petty percentage that will somehow dictate your future. The question is the demander, the teacher is merely the vessel for the question. It’s like life; we ask the questions, and it is life that allows us to find a way to answer them. Life is not the answer; life is merely the filament that helps us to build the tapestry.
But nonetheless, how ironic. This misguided philosophy coming from a teacher who had a doctorate in Italian literature and history. You would think he would have learned something. I guess that gives credence to the phrase, “The more you learn, the less you know.” That’s an understatement.
You know, at the beginning, I felt bad. It was sort of like cheating, but not actually knowing the answers to the questions ahead of time. In some realm of his mind, he must have known what I was doing, but doing nothing is much easier than doing something. But as the months progressed, my emotions, or lack thereof, made me realize that this was actually not cheating, and that I should not feel bad, for if a man of such high intellect was too lazy to actually do his job, then he deserves to be a little deceived. It’s like Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”, except in this case, he chose to be ignorant to what the world was trying to show him. And it makes me wonder if this was the only aspect in his life that he chose to ignore. I felt bad for him, I really did. I could never imagine living in the dark like that, alone and scared, unable to communicate with the rest of the world and drowning in a sea of ignorance, where I myself jumped in without learning how to swim. Tragic. I wish I could help people like that, I really do. I think that’s why I want to be a teacher, so that I can help people, and not become one of the ignorant myself.
In the back of my mind though, I want to go back to being just another innocent ignorant kid. We always long for yesterday. But, isn’t life just a perpetual yesterday? We think we want to go further when all we want to do is subconsciously go back, when all our troubles seemed so far away. That’s what I think about when I think about human “progress”. Have we progressed at all? How can you define this “progress”? Our progress, or perhaps lack thereof, is just the lamentable story of man. Think about the Holocaust. We had gotten so far, yet in a few short years we went back to nothing but apes acting upon primitive, unconscious expressions of aggressive tendencies of the biological necessity for ruthless competition. It makes you wonder how the road to utopia ended up at the gates of Auschwitz. Whenever I think of this, I try to put myself into the shoes of someone who was there, although that’s not possible. But I can dream. In my mind, I can talk to them, save them maybe, if that’s what they want, but most of the time they don’t. They usually just asked me why and, honestly, I can’t answer them. However, in a sick sort of way, they learned something from this. They became more human than probably most of us ever become. I do not think that they felt sorry for themselves for being on the inside, but rather for those who knew no better on the outside; it’s exactly as those of the ignorant in the world. I can imagine that if only one cry of angst could be heard coming from the concentration camp in Auschwitz, it would have been one crying not for himself, but for those who put him there, realizing that because they had finished history and could move no further, they had forever devolved to their soulless, depraved primordial state. Upon crying out, this man would see what remained of “civilization”: simple monkeys reduced to killing one another out of the sheer ability to do so. In a sense, this rise to power is one of the truest tragedies in human history. As man climbed upon his pedestal, his inevitable fall only became greater. When he finally fell, he plummeted into the deepest depths of hell, only to realize that he was still on Earth.
But, I am an optimist, and the fact that we can actually feel any of this or comprehend it is incredible. We are not apes; we were merely misguided. It’s amazing though, life, when you think about it. I think that’s mainly the problem. We don’t think. We just accept. Accepting is for those who would rather throw away reality and substitute their own. Those who live in the now, and would rather surround themselves with a bunch of people just as ignorant as themselves instead of breaking out of their bubble and experiencing exactly what the world has to offer. Mind you, those are just the musings of a seventeen year old girl, at an age where society generally throws away any notions suggesting that I am actually capable of formulating a justified opinion. Age is not only a number. It’s a noose around you neck that society only tightens as the years grow old. Heaven forbid us to have any moral thought or ideas of any sort, for if we did, we might send someone else’s picture-perfect reality askew. Wouldn’t that be tragic.
And yet here I am, trying to find an outlet where I can have my own justified opinions and where I can actually have the ability to question someone else’s reality. For if we just accepted, what the hell would be the point? And yet, as I sit here and write this, I am still being censored. Censored by my own mind into pondering what someone would think if they were to actually read what I was writing. To me, I reserve a spot in my soul that is used for writing and writing only. My outlet that lets me be who I am and who I want to be. Not something that someone else wants me to be. Hence we have the problem with all English teachers except for one. They say, “Write a short story”, and to anyone who loves to write, their heart skips a beat, for this is the true freedom of speech. With any sort of prose, you allow yourself to open up your mind to something you didn’t know before, or want to discover, an option that actual spoken word does not allow you to have.
So then you say, “A short story about what?” To which they reply, “Anything”. Now, herein lays the problem. What they mean by anything means something that isn’t too abstract, that still tells a very clichéd story that is original none the less, and can be creative, as long as it is still “in the box”. Obviously, they fear what they do not know, and really, who can blame them? For it couldn’t be possible that maybe, before hell freezes over, they would actually have to work? Of course, not to say that all teachers don’t work, but the majority find it easier to sit back and enjoy the ride instead of going against the grain and maybe actually learning something from their own students. Can you fathom that? A teacher learning something from those who they are supposed to teach!
Of course, we are conditioned from the moment we are born how to think and who to be, without ever having a grain of originality left in us. Sadly, we ride the wave of life never actually living, with few of us ever able to transcend into the great unknown and be put upon the path that leads to the answers. In this way, I was lucky. My transcendence came in the form of a person, one of the last who I would expect would actually teach me anything. Yes, it was a teacher.
He left my life as quickly as he came into it, and honestly I think he was put on this earth to help people to see. His job wasn’t a job; it was his life. Not to say that he was an obsessive compulsive or anything, be he actually believed in what he was doing. It was the first time in my life that I actually ever met anyone who actually believed what they were teaching. Yes, it was only English class, and yet it was so much more. As I have newly dubbed it in my mind, “Life 101”. I learned more in the four short months I spent in that class that I will probably ever learn in my life. It wasn’t even that he necessarily taught me all that much, but what he did teach me will remain in my life forever. He taught me to think, to question everything, to never stop learning and most importantly, to feel. Yes, I know that sounds ridiculous, but damnit, it’s the truth. I realize it now, and it’s probably too late to thank him. The odds are he’s already left. It’s funny though; he’s gone, and yet he’s still here. I’ve seen him, like I usually do, on the other side of the subway tracks. I don’t know how to explain it. He’s still here, but he’s gone. In my mind, he’ll always be there on the other side of the subway tracks, and maybe all I have to do is reach across the long road of my mind and find him.
I’m not the only one that thinks this way about what he did. If you’re lucky, an event such as this one will happen in your life before you die, and for me, it happened at the tender age of seventeen. Even if I become homeless and have no material possessions to my name, I will always remember what he taught me.
That’s what’s amazing about a story. It’s not that I have to remember exactly what this teacher looked like or what he was like, I just have to remember his story. He taught me that too. Stories are forever, even when the memories aren’t necessarily there anymore, there will always be the stories. No one can take those away from you. Stories are for those nights when you’re alone, or those moments when you feel lost in the world, and all you have to remember are the stories. Stories can save you, that is what they’re for. But they’re your stories, and yours alone, no one else’s. Stories aren’t what your English teacher wants you to hear, but rather a medium in which your soul can relay its message, and through truth and imagination, we will always have our stories. Even when our bones are dust being blown into the wind, we will always have our stories. No one can take them away from us. But the sad truth is that most of us will never know it.
because I think they would've seen you in an entirely different light. I remember writing an essay based on Karl Marx, that showed how teachers are all oppressors and jailers; it can actually make them respect you more.
And yes, Abbey Road rocks.
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