September 5, 2010
-
Launchpad
Trumon and I have different personalities - he's lazy and I'm self-driven, he bends where I rebel - but for the most part, we think alike.
One of my favourite thing to do is to listen while my brother tries to explain his theories to me; I love it when his hands are gesturing, his eyes are looking up and out at the corners, and the words are alternately stumbling and streaming from his mouth. I can see the gears running in his head and I'm so proud because it was I who made him that way; I who I raised Trumon with words and ideas. Sometimes I wish I could start over, do everything differently and build our relationship again. But if nothing else, I showed him how to think in circles, cause that's the only way to wind yourself out of the box. I want him to be his own person - and only self-expression through the arts will do that for you.
Trumon's an arts student through and through - you can tell by the way he talks. But when he told the parents what he wanted to study they put their foot down. Arts, apparently, are okay for Alex because she's a girl, but boys should study math and engineering and computer science.
---------------------------------------------
Both [Shark] and [Banker] are my age and in 3rd year like me. If all art is quite useless, then Shark is the artiest of us art students - she studies extinct languages and ancient civilizations and wants to become a librarian. She makes money, however, as a programmer, and it's only by doing that has she earned enough to move out on her own.
Banker was driving by the field yesterday when he saw us playing and decided to join us for a little while, like how he did every summer day when we were younger. He just came back from his high-profile co-op job in Toronto, where he was chauffeured around in a limo, had nightclubs emptied out on account of him and his, and had upwards of $100 a day on his corporate credit just for food. Banker told me how his bosses buy yachts and luxury cars in various colours with their $12 million per year paychecks and he's soon to join them himself; he's already poised to make six figures a year once he receives his degree in investment banking.
I used read my dad's copy of Rich Dad Poor Dad as a kid and think that I was interested in business and finance. But now I couldn't care less and that's dangerous; a person who doesn't care and doesn't want to know about money can never be rich and will only create wealth for other people.
But where is your humanity when you're counting dollar signs? I like art and music and words and people and stories - and doesn't everybody? Next to Banker, it seems juvenile of me to spend time writing lyrics and catching frisbees. My daily concerns are if I'll meet my quota of prose and poetry, if i can find enough time to read. My personal development, that of my artistic abilities, is directly related to that of my career's. Cause what's the point of doing things if your work stays shut in a filing cabinet? To do things that you can't share with or help you relate to the people you love?
The rat race will put your nose to the grind and squeeze out every living dream inside you, but that's not supposed to happen until we're old and have kids and mortgages. I think about [Yonex] telling me about his decision to study business ("You can't make money working for someone else!") and about [MileyMakeup] who will one day do marketing for some evil corporation. I see all these young people in business school and I wonder if they ever had the ability to dream at all.
I think about [DaisyDuke], who's brillant and beautiful and treats us stupid, struggling students like shiny stars. Even with his Masters he only gets the $14.50 per hour (it's not like the rate's stellar once you're a professor). How is it possible that Banker, who is ten years Duke's junior, is the one who's paid the big bucks? I love what I do, and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. But I look at my job prospects and think maybe it wouldn't be so bad if Trumon went down a different path.
