On Leaving New York

I have been here in New York now for just under six full years. Tomorrow I will leave. I don’t know exactly what to say about this; rather, there is too much to say, and it is hard to say it all at once, it is even hard to think it all at once. Perhaps I shall just start from the beginning, and go from there.

My first day in New York (as a resident, not a tourist) was August 26, 2001. In fact, upon first thinking about it, I thought that it was the 28th, but it was easy for me to find out the exact date, and correct my thought. On the way to the airport, early that morning (I suppose that it was about five oclock because I remember seeing the dark sky beyond the orange streetlights that followed along the freeway), in the car, news was airing that a popular music star, Aaliyah, had died in a plane crash. She was younger than my 23 years at the time. She had died the previous day. Having looked up the date of her death on the internet, it is easy for me to find the exact date that I arrived in New York. I suppose that the 28th sticks in my mind because, perhaps, that was the first day of school.

I came to New York to attend Columbia University, en route to earning a master’s degree in philosophy. I thought that I wanted to be a philosophy professor; in order to do that, I would need to get a doctorate degree in philosophy, thus, the master’s degree was the next step. (I imagine that I still want to get the doctorate and become a university professor, but it will have to wait for the future.) In fact, I had wanted to move to New York for a long time. In high school, I applied to New York University as an undergraduate, and I got it. I expected to go there, but it was far too expensive, and my parents could not afford it. (When I was a freshman in high school, my guidance counselor passed out a questionnaire that asked about our expectations about going to college. I put that I might go, rather than certain. I knew even then that finances played a huge role in whether or not I would go to college.) So I ended up going to Cal Poly, Pomona for undergrad, and having to wait until graduate school before I could move to New York. Such is how things happen, I suppose.

The master’s program at Columbia was structured so that it could be completed in one year. That year was the greatest year of my formal education. There were thirteen new graduate philosophy students, I think. Five of them were doctorate students, and the rest of us were master’s students. (Thinking about that, perhaps there were more than only eight of us master’s students, but I can’t be sure.) That year was great because it put me in my place; while at Cal Poly, I felt that I was the most brilliant philosophy student around, but having spent that year at Columbia humbled me a great deal. That was such a good thing, though, because I realized that there was so much more that I did not know or understand, so much more that I needed to learn. I loved the idea that the world before me was so much more vast with so much more to explore (this is an idea that still lives in me, and drives my soul).

The brilliance of the professors goes without saying. Akeel Bilgrami would walk into to class after all the students filled the room, some even sitting on the window sill as a seat. He never had anything in his hands, such as a bag or brief case or even a folder containing class notes. He put his elbows on the podium, an looked down for a moment, silently. Then he would lecture for the whole class time with such command of the subject matter that the words flowed so simply, as if delivered by an actor (in fact, someone had said that he had trained as an actor in his youth). Whenever he wrote anything on the board, the words would be in illegible scribbles, except once. I don’t remember the context, but he used as an example the phrase “Unpunctuality is the cancer of my soul,” and wrote it perfectly, so as to make clear to all of us that this aphorism meant so much to him.

Another professor that particularly left an impression was David Albert. I thought it odd, or at least presumptuous that for both of the classes that I took with him, the assigned texts were his own books. In any case, I did learn a lot, and philosophical ideas were made clear to me that other professors had left murky. He would always make clear his distinctly Jewish background by often making exclamatory remarks with Yiddish words. In fact, it was the first time that I had heard my name used as a word. He remarked that there was a big problem in physics, and that physicists and philosophers were looking for a solution to this “tsouris.” Having made contributions to this problem, he had interesting stories to tell about the character and personalities of the physicists that we were reading about. He told us about David Bohm telling Albert Einstein about his own solution to this problem, to which Einstein replied that, although it worked, it seemed cheap. Professor Albert then explained to us students, “Where I come from, cheap is good.” I think that the most valuable learning that Professor Albert imparted to me, however, were his stories about famed Columbia philosophy professor Sidney Morgenbesser, who, unfortunately for me, was retired by the time I had begun my studies there.

Having never known or met Professor Morgenbesser, I don’t feel adequate to give a proper summation. However, there are quotes that I might be able to relate. Remarking on his own lack of published output, he said, “Moses published one book. What did he do after that?” Another time, while in the audience of a lecturing philosopher who claimed that while a double negative amounts to a positive, a double positive never amounts to a negative, Professor Morgenbesser said, “yeah, yeah.” It is these short, witty, yet insightful remarks that reveal to me what a tremendous mind he must have had.

As much as I learned from the professors, I think that I actually learned more from my fellow students during my short time at Columbia. I loved sitting in the library with friends, and actually discussing the ideas from class. I did not do that much, if at all, at Cal Poly. Bouncing ideas off of one another only lead to greater understanding of, not only the subject matter, but what I believed, and refinement of those beliefs, and even prejudices.

Neil and I were sitting in the library, trying to figure out how some math problem was put together. I saw another student, Damien, from class, and called him over. I thought that since he had his bachelor’s degree in math from Harvard, that he would be able to help us out. He didn’t. But he did keep remarking that the solution had to be so simple. After he left, Neil told me that he had wished that I did not call Damien over because he had a pompous air about him. It was something that I didn’t see before, but after he said it, I could understand where he was coming from. Neil said that all people that he met from Harvard were like that. Ever since then, I have had this prejudice in that everyone that I meet who went to Harvard seems pompous (I am sure that they are not all that way, though).

There is so much more that I can tell about that year at Columbia, but for now, I will leave it at that.

After finishing my year at Columbia, I was worried about what I was going to do. School was the excuse for me to come and stay here in New York for a year, but now what? It seemed that I needed to find a job. After that one year, I realized that I was not yet ready to apply to a doctorate program; or perhaps I was ready, in any case, I did not apply to one, and thus had nowhere to go in the fall. I wasn’t even sure that I would be able to survive through the summer here. I had not really thought about what I wanted to do for a job, and now it was biting me in the ass. To be honest, I didn’t even know what I was qualified to do. My plan was to be a perpetual student, and then teach, but I didn’t apply, so it seemed that the perpetuity was at an end. I saw an ad on the subway train to teach in New York City public schools. The idea of teaching primary or secondary education had occurred to me before, so it didn’t seem like such a big leap for me. This time I actually did apply.

I remember that the job interview went well until the end. It seemed to me that I had expressed to many of my political ideas, and when I left, I felt that there was no way that I was going to get the job. About a month later, I guess, I remember thinking about the possibility of going back and living with my parents. It did not seem attractive, but I couldn’t think of any other possibilities. As I was thinking about this, I got the mail, and there was a package informing me that I had been offered a job to teach. So I didn’t have to go back and live with my parents after all.

I remember thinking that the job teaching little kids would be easy, despite what all the people said who were giving us a crash course on teaching during the summer. I also remember thinking that most of the other future teachers around me seemed particularly stupid (in fact it is one of my tremendous character flaws that I often think I am much more intelligent than most other people). In any case, the job ended up being very difficult, and taxing on my soul, and many of the people whom I thought were stupid were able to adapt remarkably well (or at least so it seemed to me). I had an awful first year, and the only reason that I kept working at the job was because I didn’t think there was much else out there to do with my limited qualifications as a philosophy student. Furthermore, I had acquired a lifestyle over the previous five years or so that put me in a bit of debt, and having bills to pay is not conducive to quitting a job without any prospects. I ended up staying at that job for five years. During those five years, there is not one day of work that I really enjoyed.

That said, I do feel that I can say that I learned a lot at that job. Mainly what I had to learn has to do with the nature of people. I do not mean it in a derogatory manner (though many may take it that way), but it seems to me that people are no different from other animals. This goes for the children that I taught, and the adults I worked with. It seems to me that when you want to train a person, it is not at all different from training a dog. Why should this have surprised me? Afterall, people are just animals in the evolutionary web. So we happen to think a little bit more than dogs do, but we still want the same things: food, sex and reproduction, security, and praise and acceptance from those around us. There cannot be much more to it than that, can there be? It seems anything that might be added to the list of things we need would also be added to the list of things that a dog needs. (Now the reader is able to more clearly see how the job has destroyed my soul.) Only one time did a remnance of my soul seem to exist while teaching.

I had heard several people talk about the good feeling that they got when a young student finally understood some concept. I never got that good feeling. Perhaps I never taught well enough for a student to understand anything, but I don't think that is it. Rather, seeing a kid add some simple numbers just doesn't do it for me. Instead, something else did it for me, only once. One student of mine, Leslie, was having a bad day. For whatever reason, he was upset at everything around him that day. At the end of the day, he was still upset, and I walked with him outside of the school, and then back inside so that he could go to some after-school program. Right now, I don't remember what I said to him, but I must have said something, because by the time we got back in the building, he responded. He thanked me for walking with him and calming him down, and he stuck out his hand to shake mine. I was touched. In five years of teaching, it is the only memory I have that I feel is worth having.

I did enjoy my life outside of work, though. As much as I disliked the job, it did afford me the resources to follow other things. The most obvious example of this is when I went to Europe during the summer of 2005. I had always wanted to go to Europe, and now I had the money and the time to do it. But that trip was only as valuable as it was because of other things that happened.

I don’t know what spurned me to do it, but one day I decided to go to the Museum of Modern Art. I had taken an art history class in college, but I never really had that much of an interest in painting or sculpture. I think that having been out of school for a while (although I was actually taking courses to complete a master’s degree in education as a requirement for my job, ironically I did not really consider those classes to be educational to me in any way), I needed something to challenge my mind. There were three things that drew me to art.

First, I had always been curious about what made modern art interesting to people. Certainly, one can look at classical art and find beauty in it, since such paintings typically look like something that the viewer can identify with. However, there is so much in modern art that just doesn’t fit that standard. What is it, then?

Also, I had seen paintings at people’s homes that I felt like I could make, and I felt like I should do something to hang on my own walls. To be sure, I can’t even draw, but I felt like I could splatter paint so that it would look acceptable. Before doing that, though, I wanted to actually look at these paintings in person, and see if there was anything that I was missing, that might actually stop me from trying to smear paint by myself.

The third thing that drew me to art was the desire to know about the world around me. What was this modern world that I was living in, and what about it would compel someone to completely throw away all classical notions of art, and simply spill paint on a canvas. Even more, what about the modern world would make someone else accept that as art?

During my first visit to MOMA, the main museum was closed, and they instead had a satellite branch open in Queens. The place was small for a museum, but was big enough. The first painting that I saw on the wall was Picasso’s seminal work, Mademoiselles de’ Avignon. This is certainly the most important painting of the 20th century, and while I had seen it a book during my art history class, it didn’t make an impression on my the way it did upon my first time seeing it in person. Perhaps it is an exaggeration, but only slightly so, to say that it knocked the wind out of me, with all the straight lines, sharp angles, and deformed women. From that moment, I wanted to immerse myself in art, and understand everything I could. In fact, I did start smearing paint on canvas and put it on my walls. While I was doing that, I was also studying art history, and in doing so, developing my own style of painting, which only recently matured to something presentable.

Along with art, my musical education also expanded while I was in New York. There were very much the same questions and problems with music that I had with art. Again, I wanted to know about the modern world that I was living in, and the art and music that was being created. All in all, I needed to know because I also wanted to create art in this modern world. I have little interest in saying things that have already been said (although there is some good exercise that comes with doing what has already been done ages ago). (The good thing for me is that in this modern age, there are a variety of ways that I am able to overlook my lack of traditional skills.) I am not quite there yet with my other artistic pursuits, like poetry and animation, but I’m working at it.

The point is that, although I had creative projects before I lived in New York, it was while living here that such creative projects really took off. Who would have guessed that I would have gotten into painting or poetry or opera? I don’t know if it is just maturity on my part, or how much the city did have to do with it, but in any case, there is so much I learned here about the world and about myself that has made me such a happy person.

There is one recurring thought that I have about my having come to live in New York. I remember walking one late night outside of some midtown restaurant that I had just eaten at with my girlfriend. I remember looking up at the stars in the dark sky, and feeling the cool air breeze, and being surrounded by tall buildings. I thought about how proud I was of myself for having come to New York. It was a dream of mine to live in New York, and I had done it. Of course there was help from people along the way, especially my mother during that first year while still in school. I don’t really express too much pride for my accomplishments (perhaps my standards are too high), but this and only one other thing am I so proud of having done. Often, when I see the tall buildings, and I am in a contemplative mood, I look up and think, “I have done it. And I can do anything.” I am leaving tomorrow.