Life Update

After three months of pensive waiting for a reply in regards to my application for graduate studies at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I received the much-anticipated reply this weekend: Accepted with both a Teaching Assistantship worth $ 13,480 yearly, and on top of that, a tuition scholarship worth over $ 17,000 a year; meaning that Marquette has not only decided to accept me as a student, but they've also some how found within the goodness of their own hearts the ability to give me over $ 30,000 next year to study. Now, one would think that upon hearing of such great news, I would have been ecstatic? Yet, it was far from the case. I seem to have talked myself out of studying history before I even got started. I am honored that Marquette has offered me such an unexpected incentive, however, the three months hoping and pondering whether graduate school is the right "next step", seems to have really altered my outlook on this next journey in life. University and academia to me are constantly nudging me to think of myself as not being qualified or smart enough to cut it. It's really--at least what I have been conditioned to perceive--a cut-throat world of papers, deadlines, grants, animosity and charlatan showmanship. Not to mention that getting a Masters Degree of History is generally considered not the most prudent of moves, as the degree is really considered just a rest stop on the way to the real prize, THE PHD. What will I do with a History degree? Who will I meet next year Marquette? How will my mind be transformed, reformed, challenged and set to lofty new heights? What friends will I make? What new interests will I acquire? What hidden talents will be unveiled? I don't have the answers to these quandaries. So I sit here, less than two weeks away from my decision deadline, jaunting back and forth between "to go, or not to go." But, with money on the table, would I be silly to resist?

I am now going to enter into a not-so-often-attempt of stream of conscious writing. I feel I have a lot to say, but not the time nor the chance to write it or say it. So, here I go:

Last night I came across the Danielson Famile again, a band that I have not heard since the year 2005; I found their weirdly-Christian lyrics and tantalizing beats enchanting; I then went on youtube and looked up one of their concerts from the Purple Door Festival of 2003 and found myself and two of my old-time friends (Jake Nelko and Ben Brewer) standing in the frame of the shot at about 1:55 of the video; this got me thinking about the messages and places we leave in our own history, and that probably many years into the future, some nostalgic young man will look through the pictures of a hundred years ago and come across a picture of me with curly hair and shell-laced necklaces, wearing a too-tight t-shirt that I bought at the thrift store because everyone seemed to be doing it: I wonder what that person would think. I wonder if they'd see themselves in me; I'm reading a phenomenal book from the author Cormac McCarthy entitled Blood Meridian, which is a truly haunting novel about the demonic forces that drive human kind, set within the context of American history and the Manifest Destiny doctine; I know that there will be a battle in the book, and I hope so badly for good to win out; at work I often find myself in contact with so much bad, that I can't seem to soften my own heart and care; I've been beaten down by impatience and the recurring problem of me feeling like I do EVERYTHING, that I don't seem to take the time to play, or to nurture or to really FOCUS on improving the situation of the needy immigrants and refugees who come into my office on a daily basis; the shrill of their voice and the laborious way in which they speak makes me want to slam my door in their face, and wish them a good night sleeping on their soggy-rugged floors in the spider-infested adobe that is their Housing Authority apartment; I guess working my ass off for a whole year and getting little in the way of monetary incentive makes me bitter and tired; I'm tired of pinching my pennies; I'm tired of having to fight to make the bill this month; and I'm tired of seeing listless teenagers wearing nicer clothes than myself, and then chastising me for my money and looks just because I'm white; I know that I've been fighting the urge to move abroad again; I'm not so sure that this comes from a weakness of character in regards to the fact that I always need to feel as if I'm on some kind of cerebral--or very real--adventure in life; I'm also not so sure that I can leave my family; oh, the dichotomy of wanting so badly to live so far away, yet realizing the futility of ripping up roots and never laying down my own perennial root system; yet, I'm drawn to the road, to the path, to the steam streaking across the sky to lands often encountered only in books, in thoughts and in periodic spouts of National Geographic marathons: maybe there are those of us who are just made to be wanderers,souls at home on the move, at home and in love with all those places and people they come into contact with; I'm often content in Erie--surprisingly so; I never did expect to find myself enjoying the Great Lake region so much, but I've slowly become fond of the old clapboard houses that look cozy in the night with their glowing windows, or at the bitterly cold winds that shoot off of the bay; I enjoy the accessibility of Erie's bar scene, and of the library that is perched out on the pier near our house; I'll miss these things when we're gone; I love going into the library and seeing a homeless-looking man read Shakespeare; it just throws my whole notion of perception and judgment into a cavalcade of uncertainties; my stream of conscious is ending, as I find myself thinking about what to write next, so I'll just leave with you a quote:

“Their sprit is entombed in the stone. It lies upon the land with the same weight and the same ubiquity. For whoever makes a shelter of reeds and hides had joined his spirit to the common destiny of creatures and he'll subside back into the primal mud with scarcely a cry. But who builds in stone seeks to alter the structure of the universe and so it was with these masons however primitive their works may seem to us."

Who will we be, oh builders of prefabricated homes, wal-marts and indulgent egos? Will we be builders of stone, or of reeds?

I am, in all honesty, attempting at many times in my life to leave stone structures, but I have only hands enough to carry reeds.