Tools of Tools

Thoreau once wrote "Men have become tools of their tools." I agree. We have become so accustomed to computers and modern luxery that we might forget who is the master of our machines. I encountered this when my hard drive failed. It was a sad day. I cried. Not really, but seriously. No just kidding. It was terrible though. Luckily it was reparable (thank God!), and under warranty (hooray!) but it though a monkey wrench as the saying goes into my schedule. I had planned on doing quite a bit of writing. Well I had to go old school, way old school. Pencil and paper. I enjoyed it, it has been a great while since I have written something formal on paper. I have my notebooks for my various thoughts/ideas/musings, but very rarely do I write any sort of extended tract. It was refreshing and somehow reminds me of worthless biographic narrative. I am kidding, it is very powerful to be able to know your own narrative.

When I was a child I learned how to read quickly. It just happens. I read every book I could get my hands on. I remeber in 1st grade I would rush through my work so I could pull out a book and read. I got bored in second grade that I spend that year devouring book series. When they showed us the school library, how the dewey decimal system works, how the card catalogue (the real card catalogue, not the fancy electronic stuff of nowadays) works. I was amazed. So many books. Of course my elementary school was a bit impoverished. We had children bused in from housing projects and underfunded (as a great deal of the education system is always) so our library was not ideal; however, for me it was like a dream world. I loved flight and space. I guess everyone wants to be an astronaut at some point, maybe not, but I did. I read everybook in the astronomy section. Then I moved to biography, the best fiction as Wilde said...maybe not him...don't remember, but they seemed just really boring. They were heavily edited and just the old triumph stories. Not that I don't mind them, but I read the newspaper by this time and realised people lose as much as they win. So I soon tried to read all the "grey" books. The books at the 12th grade reading level. There were not too many.

I finally went to the principal and started to ask him what to read. He gave me a list of books, most had one something. The first one was Majorie Kinnan Rawlings' The Yearling. I loved it. The written was fun. The story had dark turns, was bittersweet and touching. Thus began the literature years. But also at this time I recived an encylopedia, the young learners edition. Slightly outdated (USSR and East Germany, Zaire, etc), but I would try to re and re-read a volume each day. I love history.

In 8-9th grade transition I was introduced to philosophy. How? The internet of course. I enjoyed quotes. Witticism are great and handy when in a verbal argument or just conversation. The king of wit, or one among them, Voltaire interested me. I memorised a great deal of quotes and then I thought, why not read his books? Well I did. Next came all this nice little aphorisms. The man writing them, Nietzsche had a rich, albeit somewhat synical humour. Okay, I'll read him. Upon reading the both of them, both of whom I loved, I realised I needed a better background for all the people they were talking about. Thus came Descartes, then Plato, then Aristotle--basically a self lead history of philosophy course.

My writing soon spawned after those readings. I began to see people and the world in a different light. The characters of lit and the problems of philosophy seemed to fill not just by readings but my world. I had to write. I had to see how the characters I read were for the most part real. The interactions real. Thus writing. Journals and notebooks upon notebooks. A practice I still continue. Write and read.

Thus my education continues, it must always continue. History, philosophy, literature. Those three summarize but not totalise my academic career. Education/ Knowledge is always something to come (a venir) like democracy it is a state of being, not an end goal. It never really arrives, it is always deffered but it is this impossbility that allows for education to continue.

There you go. Life story in a nutshell. I kid, I am deeper than my readings, but it explains a great deal.