Final Draft

마음을 단정히 하고 도를 닦는 삶.

math is like a puzzle sometimes; some questions get your heart thumping with a possible road of solution beckoning just far enough..

is what I said, and have long forgotten, about post-secondary education.

I was immensely fortunate to be wrong, but I can still sympathize with the naive me back then at the tail end of highschool who could no longer believe that the world was endlessly inquisitive and intellectual like I had envisioned as a child. The world of a highschooler is very suffocating; all the world's sophistication, intellect, wisdom and intricacy is shut off from you because the world assumes you are too dumb for it. Everything is explained in plain and blank logic, with no ironies, special cases, or contradictions. Oh what do you know - the world has all been discovered and it's quite simple how it all works. It's a deadend story, a deadend world, and a deadend you.

I have since forgotten that I've even felt that way; I love the uncertainty, the rigour and the endless road down to the world's thoughts, ideas and concepts. But now that I've remembered, I decided; I will not shut off this wonderful world to the young. I will show them all the beauties, difficulties and challenges of this forever mysterious and vast world. I will never tell them it's all very simple, thinking that they could not handle more than what we choose to feed them. No - I will tell them, here is the world, it's frightening, it's huge and it's full of unknowns and uncertainties. You are weak, dumb and clueless about how it works, just as the rest of us are. I will teach you what little I know, and you decide for yourself if you'll dare to get in here to find some things out for yourself. That's what I'll tell them.

Because, after all, there is nothing more depressing than a dumb world. 

I have a chatty head, noisy with questions and thoughts popping and linking themselves further into the rabbit hole constantly. Most of them have to do with the way I perceive and identify things and events, and most of times they are a lot more conceptual than practical. I don't know what goes on in the brains of others, but from my experience theirs are a lot more practical than mine at most times, and even the dreamy ones are of more emotional kind - fantasies or musings - than the kind of ideas I indulge in which are more analytic kinds; perhaps its rarity stems precisely from the fact that such things as logic, analysis, investigation, theories are not usually associated with subjectivity (i.e. the personal intepretation), assuming, rather, the idea of objectivity and disinterestedness. But whatever the reasons, the kinds of thoughts and ideas I delve into are not easily shared with others and end up as my private storage of endless conversation with myself, usually in the form of writing.

and this rarity is exactly why it's the most exciting ever when I get the impression that I've found just the book that will explore my questions. I was googling Howard Gardner, the famous psychologist of multiple intelligence, just to do a light leisurely reading on him - and bam! this book - Responsibility at Work, his latest book of research findings on the behaviour in the workplace and experiments into effective work habits and some more - surprises me like some unexpected semi-precious stone on the beach of countless pebbles. The idea, implication and meaning of 'work' is one of the concepts I'm very interested in (along with art, or love, or different manifestations of self, and the like) and the book seems to touch upon the facets of work that have not really been studied or investigated before. I'm gonna have to pass off on judgement until I actually read this thing, of course, but I was nonetheless a very pleasantly surprised surfer just then and had to write it here. Moments like this make me feel like my head connected to heads of others - not something I feel often.

what a long-winded introduction to having found a read I find interesting. but it sounds more than just interesting. I'm excited.

I guess I'd have to try getting into figure painting or screenprinting in the winter semester...

If I can do that, I'd graduate next year nice and easy, I think?

shame I don't get to do senses in art or more asian art courses or even more drawing courses.... damn