July 25, 2013
XI
For years, I have been learning about the mind and sufficing my relentless yearn for truth and knowledge, only to find myself feeling very empty. I was pondering on what the word amateur meant to me and I associate it with the word love. It is doing something for the sheer love and fulfillment, and I have to remind myself of the etiology of the term. I took Latin in high school and I remember coming across this word thinking it meant something you are not so great at; I still actively work for a positive connotation for the meaning of amateur. In about 5 months I will have my master’s degree in clinical mental health, my undergrad degree is in psychology with a minor in philosophy, and I have an associate’s degree in applied science. I am not giving you my resume, albeit; what I once pursued as an amateur—I have now almost ‘Mastered’. I have gained knowledge and expanded my mind; all while I have been neglecting my heart.
I feel, and I feel to a great degree—I am one of those people with passion and expression in my style. I tend to ‘wear my heart on my sleeve’—but I’d say it’s hidden under my iron shirt. I hold myself contained, until I unleash…and I wonder why. The battle of the mind vs. the heart seems to unfold exponentially with experience in my personal experience. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever stop defending myself with my intellect and come down to Earth. And then I feel like I am pretty grounded, and I have been called down to Earth—but I get caught up in my thoughts. I tend to be a lofty individual caught up in my mental processes, then I start to feel, and everything changes. I am an amateur at pursuing matters of the heart. I am passionate about writing, I have always loved to write, and I do it to exercise my feelings and thoughts into a constructive outlet. This magazine is completely free and accessible. We all work diligently in between taking care of kids to studying for graduate work for twenty to thirty hours per week, jobs, cooking, cleaning, late nights, early mornings, lots of coffee, cigarettes, alcohol, smoking, a shitty system and low wages, no insurance, fixing stuff, breaking stuff, reconstructing stuff, and loving people. I write because it is my release, my mind meets my heart on some issues and some issues not so much. But, expressing myself brings me to the present moment and I feel for all its worth, and I process things in a healthy way. One of the things that I am most grateful for is my education, my ability to articulate these things, but mostly my right to do this because I want to, I love to, and because I CAN. I am exercising my “Right to Write” as Slug from Atmosphere would say. I that have a voice that matters, and I feel like the balance of my expression counters the madness of my profession—my amateur tasks have always kept me sane. I spend all day working and going to school, and it is those really early mornings or nights that fade into mornings that create projections like these. My time to be in my zone and just vibe out is my serenity and where I simultaneously find and lose myself. I need music, to write, possibly a few other items, but it is that combination of all of my mental faculties relaxing and just allowing myself to be. Being an amateur writer is my freedom and space in the universe where I find my balance. I do not want to make it a profession or get a master’s degree in English; the luster of desire thrives on the choice to do so because I want and because I love to—it has no limitations. No one is telling me that I have to write this or should write like this, it is my own.
-Sunny
Liberated by the digitization of so much of our world, where once stood immense barriers, now more and more doors, windows, and outlets are being created that allow people to express themselves in countless ways that have yet even be invented. Using our voices, words, pictures, videos, music, sounds, noises, technology, animation, and so many other mediums we have found a way to create a new reality that has connected this world more than ever before, thrives on information, and has a substantial foundation in a culture of the amateur. Coming into our vernacular from the latin for lover, or to love, by way of the french, the concept of amateur as we are discussing it today mean those actions that we do because we enjoy or love them, as opposed to the things we do strictly for monetary or social gain. With Napster, Wikipedia , and the apple and android app marketplaces serving as some of the largest examples of what can be accomplished when whole groups of strangers connect through digital media to contribute to something they love, the internet is full of examples like these.
For so long we were all fed a story about finishing high school, then college, and then good jobs awaited us on the other side. Well, in a pattern that has characterized so much of our lives, just as we were about to complete the final stages of their plan, everything changed, and what seemed like a simple A leads to B leads to C equations, suddenly found itself overflowing with new variables. Forced to reconsider everything that we had accepted so blindly, adaptation to the quickly evolving world around us would prove to be an invaluable skill, but this would also require a long hard look at what was assigned value in our collective culture. While there are those that are still clinging to traditional roles, standards, and expectations, a growing number of people around the world are searching for real answers to the numerous problems facing the world today.
One of the ways our culture has chosen to address this is a distinct shift in values away from such a heavy emphasis on monetary gain towards one that more highly values free access to information,knowledge, and technology. Made possible by computers and the Internet, old distinctions that barred people from pursuing any number of various interests have been replaced by the ability to create in any number of mediums often for free or a much reduced cost to just ten years ago. From a personal perspective this has allowed me to create music where once stood countless barriers, to create art in a world that is once again learning to appreciate its inner artist, to write to a global audience, and to create website with no experience, to bring all of these aspects together and share it with the world, not for monetary gain, but simply for the love of creating something beautiful. What did you create today?
-Joshua Genius
I started as an artist. Sketching out the super heroes that would save the world from evil and myself from the mundane. My mother worked a lot. I'm always down to keep friends and family company so I would tag along to the radio station and chill while she played music for the city and held conversations in the air waves. I found a type writer there. So I started to ink out the background stories I created for super heroes. Like Rat-Man. He pretty much had Batman's body but the head of a rat. I don't remember what his story was. If I had to guess, it was a guy who got bit by a rat and got rat powers. What powers does a rat have? That wasn't a set up. I'm asking YOU, the reader, what powers could a rat possibly pass on to you? We could leave a Q&A to another issue though. There was also Lightning Hawk! He was a hawk that was struck by lightning now he was a hawk with a bolt of lightning for a body. thinking about it now, I'm not sure if I was super imaginative, or not imaginative at all.
Either way, from there I was a writer. I started keeping a journal in 7th grade thanks to an English teacher. Starting writing song lyrics my freshman year thanks to Alternative rock and my best friend Taylor would expand music taste far beyond anything I was willing to give a chance, who would also be the front man to the band we never followed through with No Kure. We were fans of KoRn and The Cure. Go figure right?
My senior I started writing poetry and got wind of the national poetry slam in ABQ, New Mexico. After watching an entire week of the best of the best battle it out I went home with my mind racing lines over and over again. And finally reaching the conclusion that it was all... pointless. I would NEVER be as good as them. Our levels were too distant. And with that much of a head start how could I ever hope of even catching up?
I wrote my short stories because I wanted the origins of these super heroes out of my head, and so I wasn't bored keeping my mom company at work. I started journal entries so I could get my thought and feelings out of me. Songs lyrics to lay out the words I heard to music I listened over the ones actually being said in the song. And finally poetry because there was something inside me that finally clicked. This is how my heart thinks. In verse and untamed meter.
Once I realized that being better than any of the poets I had seen that week wasn't important, I picked my pen back up. It wasn't a matter of being "the best". It was just doing what I had always done. Wrote because there was something in my head that I wanted to make Concrete to the world. Share the stories I watched in my mind and let the world know of my loves and hate one verse at a time. I might not ever make money off of it or become famous. But if I didn't share these worlds, they might not exist. And to those worlds, its a matter of write or death.
-DCR
Matter of Write or Death
Lately my patience has been pushed to the edge with certain things. It could be a mixture of emotions concerning the ‘Stand your ground because I am a complete cowardouche (just made that up) law.’
It could be because I am in the process of moving or getting ready to go to the UK for a vacation.
Or…it could be because I am sick and tired of hearing people say ‘turtle’ in place of ‘tortoise’.
Seriously.
I hear and see it ( there is an at&t commercial where a dude sits around with kids and chats) all the time.
I think it may stem from teenage mutant ninja turtles where it shows tortoises (which are land dwelling with four legs and feet) get covered in the secret ooze. Or it could be because people are plain stupid I don’t know.
All I know is that if people confuse land dwelling animals such as the tortoise with its water dwelling (has flippers instead of legs and feet) cousins, no wonder the powers that be have an easy time in manipulating people’s perceptions to get the end result that they want.
I was actually doing research on this very subject and there are fools who think that they are the same. The name and images seem to morph into a single hybrid in the minds of these dolts like their cognition can only go a certain amount before their brains implode. So, magically in America turtles and tortoises are the same thing even though if you exchanged each one and put them in the environment of the other they would both perish.
I love both animals as turtles and tortoises are known for their longevity (mythologically speaking even though tortoises out live them considerably) and wisdom in many cultures.
So it seems to me that the humble, slow land dwelling tortoise is being usurped and not getting its ‘props’ as his cousin seems to be whilst stealing his thunder.
So I am now going to order some pepperoni pizza and chill watching TMNTortoises.
Cowabunga dudes!!
-TDB
The Maligned Tortoise
New Variables
