Squonk

I believe there's more to life than being successful in the materialistic meaning of the word. It seems to me that a very distinctive Western culture has developed and begun to undermine other traditional cultures and values. I personally feel entrenched in the ideal of American consumerism. I have multiple material possessions—when I went to Peru last summer, I went crazy with buying things because of the very low offering prices. I obsessed over buying presents for everyone back home, and when we ended up traveling to tourist cities I spent nearly all my time searching for alpaca sweaters and other less than meaningful gifts. It was the trip of a lifetime and I spent about the whole time thinking about souvenirs. When I came back to North Carolina, no one cared about the stories I had about haggling in the little shops.

It really does frustrate me that I live in a society that places such emphasis on consumerism. I feel that a side effect of this value is unhappiness. Possessions are prized far more than personal relationships, spirituality, and knowledge, for the most part. Money can be measured, and a person can be judged based on their clothes, house(s), jobs, and friends, who are judged using the same system of measurement. It's pretty pathetic when the celebrity who makes millions of dollars on pitiful excuses for movies, blows the money on a mansion in California, and parties all the time, gives nothing back to society except a bad role-model.

In my opinion gift-giving is a way for people to focus on themselves rather than others—it was (and is) used as a way to replace intangible things, such as lost parents or friends, love, and broken promises. The best presents are instead either extremely practical or useful or very meaningful to either the giver or the receiver. I think that most people recognize this, but not many know how to give gifts like that. There's the saying "it's the thought that counts," but seriously, most people don't put any thought into gifts they buy for others; At least not any affectionate thought.

I worked in a Hallmark store for a year and after a while it became extremely apparent that none of the people who came in to get cards ever wrote anything other than the word "love", a comma, and their name on the inside of the card, and then perhaps the name of the recipient on the outside. It's almost rude. Quite often when customers couldn't find the perfect card, I would suggest that they pick a nice blank one and write a message inside it. Not once did any of them take my advice. We also sold a huge number of worthless knickknacks in there. To see people buy them with the expectation that the poor soul receiving the useless item would actually like it, was almost more than I could take, other than seeing women spending hours in the store and walking out with near on a hundred dollars of merchandise (which was horrendously overpriced). I always worked with at least one other person, who was always female, and I can't even recall the number of times I ranted about my problems with the capitalist society and how much I hated working in retail. However, being hypocritical, I joined them in crowding around a calculator to see how much our 30% would take off on our frequent purchases of equally useless merchandise.

That first job really exposed me to the world—I learned what people really do with their time and money, which Western society finds so precious. I won't try to blame capitalism on America, because the economic system started far too long ago to account for. But materialism has become so prevalent in many people born today, and I feel that anything in the world that is more important and innately satisfying to people will be lost in the influx of consumerism worldwide.

Recently, my research on the Mbuti pygmy tribe of the Ituri rainforest in the Congo made me realize, through some very moving passages in a National Geographic article, just how unhappy the majority of Westerners are with their lives. The author, who spent some time in the rainforest itself, said "I was impressed with how happy and comfortable the Pygmies are in the forest. Sometimes I would hear one of them tell a story, and the others would start laughing so hard that they would have to hold each other up. By my estimate they are a lot more content than Western culture because they don't care about acquiring and maintaining material possessions. They live off the forest and take only what they need. Hopefully, we can let that survive." Indeed. I take the most pleasure in knowledge and learning. To me, the most important thing in life is learning—in my passions there seems to be a thread of the communication of information. I would write or make films (not the Hollywood kind, the Indies and documentaries that tell stories about real people or create a real-life story in a creative way), or maybe become a politician and try to change things in the world by studying issues and history in detail.

I envy the people who ignore the societal pressures to conform and be successful in the material meaning of the word. I'm stuck in the rut of pushing myself to follow inane orders from equally crazy teachers in a high school that is based on a very specific set of values and teaching/learning goals. My parents emphasize the importance of getting my applications into the admissions offices in time (I haven't started yet), and since I'm already focusing on schoolwork, the stress builds and builds. Mary, my psycho-therapist, has been telling me how the ability to function in this fast-paced society is necessary to survival. I can just see myself in ten years, with a perfectly good college degree, working in a boring sit-down office job for some dysfunctional company that just perpetuates this crazy consumer culture. If I'm lucky, I'll have lost all these beliefs about capitalism and Western society because then I'll be focused on the money I make, the car I have, and the house I can afford. I'll aspire to something that can be measured, and even if it all comes back to haunt me, I can just put up that mind-block and ignore the absurdity of it all. Just like everyone else.

posted by Sarah Ruiz  # 11:43 PM 0 comments

I remember a certain book that we had in the bookshelf back when I was in elementary school—a large paperback entitled "What Every 3^rd Grader Should Know." There was a collection of stories focusing on Greek and Roman mythology. I read that book nearly cover to cover, fascinated by the completely different take on what children of a certain age should be learning. To me, that book was a fountain of fascinating information.

There's a point where the mundane information in textbooks that almost require rote memorization becomes background work, something that loses appeal despite any interest you might have in the subjects. It's the sheer amount of work, the balancing of seven classes at once in varying degrees of difficulty, that causes many high school students to snap. There are two extremes: one of utter indifference and near hatred of having to learn in the first place, and one of complete craving for more information that one has a hope of actually retaining in the overstuffed mind. I have fallen into the second category. I can find history and literary analysis and foreign languages all intriguing, but I also find myself reading every article in the Discover and Newsweek magazines, perusing the daily paper for interesting headlines, and even searching for, and saving on my hard drive, the Democratic Party platform.

Academics have taken center-stage in my life. I go outside less and less often, lie around the house reading for English, research for projects online, and organize and reorganize my increasingly messy backpack. I believe I'm an intellectual person, and I certainly enjoy many academic subjects, but sometimes I find the strict educational institution to be too stressful.

I want to go to college for the experience, for the classes and professors, and for the degree. But most of all, I want to go to college to do what I've never done before. I want to find something about which I feel truly passionate. I want to grow as a person, emotionally, mentally, and socially. I want to have the opportunity to become whoever I wish myself to be.

Swarthmore seems to me to be everything I need in a college, and a place where even I, strange as I am, will find a niche in which I can prosper and learn. There's a certain magic to learning, a breathtaking feeling that says, "I don't have to stop here."

I see higher education as a route in life that is meant to foster the inquisitive and talented mind, to raise the next generation to as high as it wants to go, and to create an atmosphere in which the young and old alike can grow together, symbiotically and because of one another. This is what knowledge is: it's the thrill of reading a book and traveling to the world the author has created; it's the analysis of one's own thoughts and life and the insights it creates; it's the imagination and hope it takes to pursue a dream. But it's always, always the curiosity to ask "Why?"

posted by Sarah Ruiz  # 11:39 PM 0 comments

Kilroy jumped up from his stool and ran to the chalkboard, nearly knocking over Dr. Sone in his hurry. Furiously, he wrote the end of a complicated equation with the last nub of chalk clutched tightly in his hand. As he stepped back from his work, the two other colleagues crowded him, staring at the white writing. Dr. Sone ignored them all and continued to mold a metallic polymer, kneading it with her hands and staring into space. A small smile crept over her delicate features as she heard the breathing of the students behind her grow hushed and ragged.

“See! There! There!” exclaimed Kilroy, too excited to say more than one word at a time. The young man to his left started dancing.

“Kilroy, my boy, you’ve solved it! You’ve completed the last calculation!” he shouted, as he hugged the grinning Kilroy.

The splendor of it all lay in the meaning behind the strange markings on the green board. It was the last step in the mathematical and physical planning behind the creation of robotic body armor. The idea was still in the works, but the three graduate students and their advisor, Dr. Sone, were making significant progress in the physics behind the outer shell of such technology.

The year was 2123, but life was not so different than it had been for the last century. Technology had continued to boom and the number of corporations all over the world grew, though some were specific in maintaining a monopoly. Modren Technologies was just one of at least fifty international organizations that had gained funding from large corporations in order to conduct research and eventually produce new types of technological advancements. To save money, the organizations hired graduate students as interns, and used them in all departments. Kilroy was one of three students from the prestigious MIT University, all of whom were chosen by their mathematic brilliance and intuitive foresight, who worked in Quad 19 sector 5 designing the exterior of what Modren Technologies hoped would be the world’s greatest robotic advancement since the invention of the first computer nearly two hundred years ago.

Kilroy was overwhelmed with the social encounters his friends exposed him to later that afternoon. They had all gone to an O₂ & N₂O bar, where Kilroy had slipped away after the first hour. He returned home, somehow feeling upset, despite his success with the crucial equation. The smell of the three-room apartment was still remiscent of new-base type Clorox the cleaning-assistant liked to use. He could never remember the name. Sitting down in his favorite chair, his nose twitched at the heavy fragrance of citric acid. He was reminded of the physical and chemical properties of the substance, which helpfully blocked out the hollow feeling in his chest.

The room was cold, and the dome-like window that extended out into the street was covered with frost. Kilroy sighed, realizing that he could hear himself breathing in the dead silence of the apartment. He fingered the metallic model in the pocket of his windbreaker. He took it out to examine its features. Dr. Sone was a genius at sculpture, though it was a talent that she could never allow her colleagues to know about. Besides, her models of robotic creations were not considered particularly artistic, though Kilroy thought the expression on this tiny robot’s face was fantastic. She was used for her mathematical talent at Modren Technologies.

Kilroy sighed. Just the way he and his fellow grad students were used because they did not have to be paid. The government covered student expenses because of the aggressive Stotti campaign that placed enormous emphasis on learning. Kilroy supposed that this was a great benefit to him, but it also left him out in the cold when he decided finally to get his degree. Holding his head in his hands, he turned his thoughts to the calculations he and his colleagues had been working on.

They were standing in a circle around the head manager for this particular phase of construction. Kilroy had been there since 0600, when the call for the meeting had first gone out. It was 0636 now, and it looked like everyone had arrived. The middle-aged woman, Rosine, in the center of the circle of engineers, technicians, mechanics, and mathematics began to speak. The speech was dull; merely a status report that she was required to give everyone once the organization proceeded to another step in the creation process.

A small man beside Kilroy murmured the catch phrase of Modren Technologies simultaneous with the head manager; “That’s what we’re here for; advancing technologies since 2002.”

The team dispersed to their separate wings of the building to await their next assignments. The minds behind Modren Technology didn’t like everyone to know exactly what their new project was, so all they ever knew was what their individual job was. Except the mechanics. It was their task to assemble the final product, and he identified them by the soft excitement that covered their face. They wore superior smiles as they lingered together when the rest of the team left the conference room. Kilroy hung back as well, pretending to want to ask the manager a question, but he overestimated her attention to mere mathematicians. She ignored him and led the four mechanics into a side room that had escaped Kilroy’s notice. He ducked behind a cart of scrap metal, hoping to hide, but a sub-manager called Ganix was watching him.

“Kilroy?” the older man asked curiously, as if he couldn’t quite believe who was crouching behind the cart. Kilroy sighed.

“Yes, sir?” he answered respectfully, already planning how to bluff his way out. Unfortunately, his mind was preoccupied on the line of technicians leaving the room through double doors at the far end of the conference room. He barely heard Ganix’s next words, “...we’ll need it.”

Kilroy snapped back to reality and hastily agreed to whatever the man had said. He hoped it was something better than going to the superiors.

“You’re a lad. Now, just take this cart through those doors and down that hall. There’s no one to follow anymore, but just turn left at the Bunt corner, and then walk past the yellow force field until you reach the third security checkpoint. Tell Teddy the password and he’ll lead you to a hidden door three levels down. Now, hurry, because Rosine will need those materials soon.” Ganix patted Kilroy on the back, who had found the instructions slightly confusing.

“The security in here is batty,” he muttered to himself as he pushed the cart of metal—parts, he guessed they were—through the double doors. Just as he was wondering which way to turn—for he was now facing the other wall of a long corridor—the blank wall before him began to move. A door opened. Rosine yelled at Kilroy to get inside with the cart.

Happy to escape the spatial directions, Kilroy retreated to a corner of the laboratory room. In the center was medical type equipment, an operating table, and three very serious looking mechanics. It appeared they were waiting anxiously for someone to enter the room through a side door, one that led outside the building. Kilroy looked around the room, growing more and more amazed at the primitive technological machines that lay covered in dust along the edges of the huge room.

Real sunlight diffused through the room as the side door opened and three men entered. Kilroy realized what the room was—a storage building. He wondered if perhaps this was what the original Modren Technologies building had been built off of. The sudden light disappeared, and Kilroy could make out the faces of the men who had entered. Two were large and forboding, apparently security guards, and the other stood between them, small and pathetic. It was a homeless man. In fact, Kilroy was familiar with the man, from passing his makeshift home in the park nearly a dozen times every week. Everyone was supposed to be provided for under the government nowadays, but either people slipped through the cracks or the administration wasn’t as effective as it made itself out to be.

The mechanics began to talk amongst themselves as the guards led the slow-moving man to a fancy machine. Kilroy watched in fascination as the man was hooked up to the medical equipment and apparently tested. Footsteps approached him, and Kilroy jumped, only to see Ganix again. He was staring at the procedure when he said, “Do you know what this is, boy?”

Kilroy shook his head and answered, “No,” with a sort of breathless and wondering air. They kept their eye on the homeless man as the other technicians started moving around again, preparing equipment and moving the operating table. The poor victim looked inhuman, entirely dirty and with an expression of resignation on his face. Kilroy was struck by the scene before him, and a code of ethics so little followed in that technological world.

“Are...are they going to use him in an experiment?” he asked the older man, trying to keep his voice level and quiet. Ganix shook his head.

“Not any experiment. The experiment, Kilroy. That man there is going to be incorporated into Modren’s newest advance, a technology that we are only able to create thanks to your formula!” His voice still hushed, the man was extremely excited, and Kilroy began to feel sick. The technicians took the arms of the homeless man and led him over to the operating table. The man’s eyes were hollow and as he turned his face to the shadows, where Kilroy stood, the young man was racked with a horrid feeling of responsibility.

“No!” he yelled before he could think. Everyone in the room froze, and Ganix’s grin faded. He backed further into the shadows and left Kilroy alone to be the focus of attention when every eye in the room turned to look at him. The head manager stood aside, her mouth screwed up angrily. Kilroy turned to her to plead his case.

“You can’t do this; it’s wrong,” his voice echoed in the empty rafters that extended far into shadow above.

“He volunteered,” answered Rosine tightly, clearly lying. Kilroy felt desperate, so he groped for an alternative.

“Do you really want someone inexperienced in the field of robotics to take on such an important assignment?” He had begun to beg, and surprised himself at his sympathy towards the homeless man he didn’t even know personally.

Rosine twisted her frown into a grimace, “And what would you, a veteran technician, suggest we do?” Her silky voice dripped with icy sarcasm. Kilroy’s knees nearly gave out, as he realized what she was suggesting. But another glance at the homeless man convinced him to dare.

“I’ll do it.” A collective gasp covered the silence that followed his statement. Though Kilroy had to force the words from his throat, they flowed off his tongue easily. Behind him, Ganix gaped in surprise at the foolish boy. He gasped, “Do you know what you’re agreeing to, Kilroy?” This saved the technicians from having to ask his name, and nearly caused Kilroy to fall down. No, he had no idea to what he had just agreed, but it was all the more reason to save the homeless man from that fate. His heart beating through his Modren uniform, he thought how easy it would be to just run away, run back through that door and give up playing the hero. But he said nothing.

posted by Sarah Ruiz  # 11:35 PM 0 comments

She sat on the side of a crude road, drawing in the dust with her fingers. Sometimes she would look up from the pictures to watch down the road with an intense stare. The sun was still low in the sky that morning when she took a break from watching the dust to glance again down the road. This time she could make out a lone figure approaching from far off. Halfway from the horizon to where she was sitting, her brother had walked a far distance within her sight as she had been drawing pictures in the dust. Slightly put off by this, she sat still for a moment, reveling in her waiting frustration until she could not ignore how close he was. She stood up and ran the remaining distance between them, legs pumping with excitement.

Cathan had been walking all that morning and felt somewhat cheated out of a day, realizing that he had been far closer than he had imagined to his childhood home. A smile had dominated his face since the moment he saw his little sister Ailill sitting far in the distance, probably only an ell away from their home. When she began to run towards him, he felt everything come pouring out of his mind, everything about his whole trip that he was storing in his head. Before he knelt to meet Ailill, a solitary tear traveled down the young cheek, in solitary rebellion to his actions. She came barreling into him, a tiny ball of reserved energy, and hid her damp face against his shoulder. Upon feeling her small body against his, trembling in what could only be small sobs, Cathan could not help but feel all his strength disappear for a moment as he allowed himself to agree with her relief. He recovered quickly, not wanting his return to be inhibited by grief of any sort, and picked his sister up to carry her the rest of the way home.

The familiar weight wiped its eyes and as soon as the breeze revived it, was squirming to be let down from its brother’s arms. Seeing the cottage clearly now, he set the excited girl down and stood to watch as she ran with the same fervor towards home, eager, no doubt, to announce her brother’s arrival before he could. The second he reached the door it flung open and his mother collapsed into his arms with hysterical sobs. Behind her stood his father who was grinning ear to ear, his eyes clear and bright in their familiar way. Cathan patted his mother on the back as she gasped her astonishment at seeing him home at long last, all the time aware of that nagging feeling in the back of his mind that reminded him of his past wish to never see his family again.

He had left home with no intention of ever returning, furious at his parents for his isolated upbringing and wishing to experience the rest of the world as it was and hoping that he would find something amazing that would make him forget about home and going back. But what he had found had the opposite effect on him. He yearned for home even while fascinated by the local customs of other towns and heard rumors of lands even more distant where he could find adventure and riches. Now his mother was ushering him to the table and pouring him a bowl of hot broth and he was outwardly agreeing to tell them all of his travels and all the while wondering whether he ought to speak of the allure the outside world had on him, even now.

Sitting across from him in their usual way, the two of his parents together still had that uneasy effect on him and he bowed his head to drink the broth, aware of the two pairs of eyes watching him without rest. When he reached a point in his meal, he paused eating and first told his parents that his heart had changed during travels and now he felt remorse for having left so hastily for the world but after it all did not regret the decision. His parents were silent receptors in a way they felt was encouraging, but their combined gaze Cathan found to be intrusive and demanding, halting his words at inconvenient times and causing him to stutter when under any other circumstances he could have spoken fluently and with passion. He told them of his wanders to the high cliffs where the ocean met bare rock and the towns where very drunk men explained the mystery of life to one another. He told of the strange customs he encountered in some towns and the monasteries that produced great works of art though it was rumored the world was under a dark influence back on the continent. He spoke of the stories he heard from numerous peddlers about foreign lands and the trades he saw and some of which he learned a bit. Reaching into his bag he produced a fipple flute, which he handed to Ailill and who took off running with it, abusing its high pitched notes but fortunately going outside with it to practice. When he had finished telling the stories, he returned to the soup, which had grown cold but was tasty nonetheless.

That night he could not fall asleep with the usual ease he had after a full day of traveling. Getting up quietly, he left the house and walked for some distance down the abandoned road. When the horizon was level and clear on all sides he lay down on his back in the grass. Now this felt familiar too, for while traveling he had slept outside most nights, sometimes unable to find shelter for the night or unable to pass up the beautiful weather. Gazing up into the heavens, he was struck by how clear the night sky was of clouds and rooftops and mountains and trees. He felt he could see for miles across the land and for millenniums in the heavens. He lay between reality and a dream for a long while, oblivious to the sounds of small animals and insects in the field around him, engaged in battles of universal proportion within his mind.

At no particularly special time he opened his eyes wide and took a very deep and long breath from the night air. The moon was in another part of the sky now, and Cathan wondered that its crescent shape might now be fuller than it had been when he was walking. Laying still and silent for innumerable more minutes, he focused meditatively on the sounds he heard there and the feeling of the grass beneath him and the breezes that passed above him and the light scent that he finally distinguished at the end. And he opened his eyes unwillingly breaking the delicate connection he had forged with the nature around him. Feeling robbed he sat up, aware suddenly that dawn was fast approaching, and fearing that his mother, finding that he was not in bed, might worry. He started back, walking at a pace slightly more than leisurely, thinking that it would be a huge mistake to let either of his parents feel worried about him while he was visiting. For while lying in the field a ways from home, he realized that wandering would always be in his heart, as would a longing for something familiar, though far stronger. There was nothing for it but to leave again. He had greeted this idea with warmth and the more he now thought of where he could go, the more excited he became to finally be going there. He reached his parents house just before dawn, and peering through an open window was shocked to see his mother already awake. But when he walked in, she beamed at him and praised his “new habit” of rising early for a breath of fresh air.

When finally the rest of the family rose for breakfast, the guilt in Cathan’s throat was threatening to choke him. There was no conversation as they ate their last meal together. Ailill was playing with her flute rather than eating, and nicely filling up the space with meaningless noise rather than awkward silence. Perhaps it was by his expression or either by his mannerisms that his father had picked up on his intent to leave, but anyhow he had told his wife at some point before the meal, and now both acted cold towards Cathan. He felt trapped in an callous situation, but his desire to leave was never stronger. He almost felt a pull from another direction as he offered to clean up. Ailill was running outside with her flute, now able to play a few more notes and put them together into a tune. It was mindless and filled Cathan’s head as he tried to ignore his parents sitting at the table and whispering to each other about their son.

When the plates were clean, Cathan called his sister into the room with a resigned feeling of agony. Seating his family across from him, he told them without distractions that he received an offer from an important man in another town and wanted to head in that direction to see if there was any opportunity in it. It was a lie of course, but he couldn’t bear to tell his parents to their face that he wanted the exact same thing he had wanted so long ago. The goodbyes were tedious, for he spent most of it with Ailill, for she had started crying and did not appear to be recovering despite multiple hugs. His father had held out his hand to shake and his mother had given him a less than warm embrace. Cathan was beyond all of them already.

He disappeared in that early morning haze where the air hangs over the land like translucent low-lying clouds. Upon reaching the edge of the cliff where the expanse of water below reached out to the corners of the horizon, he stood back against the less traveled road. As he watched the sun’s reflection off the lightly rippling waves, a breeze rose up from the road behind and blew out to sea and he knew that he was dead to them.

posted by Sarah Ruiz  # 11:34 PM 0 comments