I Found El Dorado

Twice.

"Why didn't God make us all rich and healthy?"

I was on the train this morning, half-way between reality and illusion, when we made the usual stop at Grove Street. A man got on the train and took the seat across from me. He was wearing a black wind breaker with the hood up, blue jeans, and comfortably-worn-out tennis shoes. Hanging from his shoulder was a rather large Eddie Bauer book bag, which he placed on the floor between his feet. He pulled back his hood and I checked.

He was beautiful. Not 'handsome', not 'hot', and not 'cute', but beautiful.

He was well proportioned, but average in height and built. His eyes were the most brilliant citrine color, deep and yet translucent. His hair was a mass of copper ringlets, gleaming underneath the poor lighting of the Path Train. His sharp nose, rose bud lips and cherubic cheeks made his appearance hover somewhere between teenager and adult. It was impossible to tell which he was.

I watched as he opened his book bag and rummaged through its contents. Finally, he pulled out a small writing pad. The front pages were scribbled on in curvy handwriting, and the corners were frayed from use. He flipped through it until he found and empty page, and then put his pen to the paper. Suddenly, he looked up at me, and I looked away quickly, embarrassed that he had caught me staring at him.

"Why didn't God make us all rich and healthy?"

I glanced at him, and he was looking right at me. I suddenly gained interest in my shirt sleeve, which allowed me to avert my eyes.

"Why didn't God make us all rich and healthy?" he asked again. This time, I realized that he was talking to me. And he was expecting a response.

My mind raced, and I stared at him stupidly. I needed a good solid answer, which shouldn't be difficult, right? I'm on the MSA Dawah committee, this shouldn't be a problem, right?

Wrong.

I couldn't think of anything that would make sense. I realized that now everyone on the train was looking at me, and I at the man sitting across from me.

The train stopped at the Journal Square Station, and the man stood up. He still looked at me expectantly, and I fumbled for words, anything at all. Finally, I sighed.

"I don't know," I admitted ashamedly. I could feel the heat creep up the back of my neck, turning my cheeks the slightest shade of pink.

The man swung his Eddie Bauer book bag over his shoulder and smiled, revealing two rows of straight teeth.

"Because then we wouldn't need each other," he said as he pulled his hood back on.

Then he disappeared off the train just as smoothly as he had appeared.

You Are Insignificant*

I wish I knew everything. Literally. I wish I knew how to calculate the inertia of a moving vehicle. I wish I knew how the feedback system worked, how the CNS and PNS relate and function. I wish I knew how to evaluate a series. I wish I knew how birds fly. I wish I knew how airplanes stay up. I wish I knew the capitals of the fifty states of the United States of America. I wish I knew who the hell Fidel Castro was. I wish I knew who shot president James Garfield in 1881. I wish I knew what the hell the Monroe Doctrine was about.

I wish I knew everything.

I wish I could write volumes of compelling literature, I wish I could make awe-inspiring art, I wish I could recite beautiful words of poetry off the top of my head. I wish I could carry on a discussion about something vital, not why the Giants lost to the Eagles. I wish I could play the piano by ear, make a violin weep, or a saxophone laugh.

I wish.

Sometimes I just feel so bound by my own incapacity that it frustrates me.

The world...the world is just so expansive. What are you by comparison? That tiny little bubble of drama and gossip that is your life just disappears when you take a step back and see the entire picture. When there are six billion other people occupying the same planet you do, it is hard to think of yourself.

Because that's when you realize how insignificant you are.

*This post was inspired by a facebook note written by Yasmeen R.

It's Not Easy Being Green

What better way to spend the last Saturday before the new semester than to spend it at Barnes and Noble, listening to people’s conversations and adding commentary in your head?

…which is exactly what I was doing today, approximately four hours ago. I was sitting at a table reading John Steinbeck’s East of Eden (which is an excellent book by the way), when I overheard a middle-aged couple sitting one table away discussing the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes and Noble Nook.

They legit sat there for a good half hour discussing the two eReaders and giving opinions on which one is better.

Personally? I’d rather kill six trees for a 300-page book. No really, I would.

Before you kill me, let me explain it to you why it’s actually more eco-friendly to buy books than to buy an eReader, be it the Kindle, the Nook, the Sony Reader, or whatever it is that you decide to go with.

Well, first off, according to activist Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff, 99% of all electronics a person buys are discarded or neglected six months after their purchase. You know what that means? You only keep 1% of the things you buy. The rest of it is either tossed into the attic, basement, forgotten under the passenger seat of your car, or shipped off to Public Storage. Odds are, you’ll purchase your eReader, and one month later they’ll come out with a newer, sleeker, must-have version of it, and you’ll be suffering another case of the gimmes.

Then comes the issue of pricing. People think that eReaders are cheaper…eventually. Well the eReader itself costs a good $260.00, and the average eBook costs an additional $10.00. An average paperbac.book costs $15.00. If you do the math, you would have to purchase 53 eBooks to break even, and the pricing is only significantly different after you hit the 57 eBooks mark.

Well, 53 paperback books? That’s 318 trees! Almost half an acres’ worth of trees!

Well, my dear friend, you aren’t considering an eReader’s entire life cycle analysis. The plastics and metals used to make these eReaders are imported from all over the globe. That’s a lot of carbon footprints. Another point to consider is the disposal/ recycling process. Do you have any idea how much energy would be needed to recycle a Kindle? A lot. And that energy is released in the form of green house gases.

An eReader, in my opnion, is another typical example of lazy environmentalism. What does that mean?

Think of Britain's wannabe prime minister, David Cameron, cycling to Parliament followed by a limo carrying his papers.

Long Live the 90s

I DID IT.

I watched each and every episode of X-Men Evolution and Wolverine and the X-Men.

Maaaan, I love Marvel. I still remember waking up on Saturday mornings and watching these shows on (then) Kids WB. Shame, today’s Saturday morning cartoon shows are so lousy.