Walking, graduate studies and other preoccupations
WHILE I consider walking a romantic activity mainly because ever since I could remember I have always walked to wherever I choose to go or to be, or simply because I must have read Henry David Thoreau’s essay on it from Walden and later romanticized the whole idea by treating it as the best daily exercise, I also realize that doing so in the city does not make sense at all.
Funny how I realize that walking from Katipunan Avenue going to the Loyola campus cannot always be a leisurely activity—especially if I have to do it towards noontime. Sun’s heat just becomes unbearable and then it is up for me to be pissed off by the stress it causes me—that later determines my tasks and activities inside the university library where I have to read for my graduate studies.
This morning I realized that taking a tricycle can make a big difference. I chose to ride a tricycle and not walk and that saved my time, effort and energy so that, minutes ago, I already started pounding these keys to write this lament, thus, [this] discourse.
I just realize I am a subject of the urban culture that rather compels people to buy cars so transportation and mobility are a bit easier for them.
Now I also realize I cannot just cater to the demands of such culture. Not right now, at least. I understand I cannot do much to change such culture as I know I am even the object of generosity of the ruling class [my scholarship tells me I am a recipient of their being able to provide for others].
I ride along. There is nothing for me to do. According to literary theorists preoccupied by their presuppositions on the experiencing self, or the subject, I am only a subject.
In fact, I have many subjectivities. I am also a graduate student at the Ateneo de Manila University, an academic institution run by Jesuits that, in more ways than one, have always allowed all kinds of human beings to thrive and live—the dominant ruling class whose names are carved in its buildings, the struggling middle-class who compose the Ph.D. faculty members, and the white-collar workers belonging to either the canteen cooperatives, the maintenance personnel employed by their respective agencies, or the job-hire construction workers hammering at the scaffolds being built for the new social science hall named after a Chinese benefactor. Such culture where I am right now just allows people to live. Yes, live.
That is the essence of life. To live. The purpose of me [read: I] as another subject.
Every single day I get opportunities to study and learn new concepts from reading at the library, attending campus lectures, or sitting in my teachers’ classes. And here I am learning and getting to read many things about my presently being a subject of different social structures—from the traffic rules in Katipunan Avenue to the undergraduate class schedules to the terms of use of computers in the Rizal Library.
My graduate studies are not in vain. While a graduate degree will help me land a university slot in teaching or related work, there is much to savor as I finish it. One of the payoffs is being able to realize and understand some terms in my studies that parallel or reflect the things in my present circumstances.
Class mobility, a phrase I caught from sitting in my professor’s undergraduate class—figures in the Marxist reading of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. The Marxist train of thought reads that Jane Eyre’s marriage to a wealthy man rather helps her attain class mobility.
The then orphan girl who struggled her way through the social ranks to become a governess and worked her way up the social ladder is sadly just appropriated by her marriage to the dominant ruling class. Class mobility, vulgarly translated or appropriated, refers to people’s ability to further on with how to go about their lives in a society that is both patriarchal and ruled by the dominant class.
There is much truth when I realize that literary theorists—classic or modern, recognized or unacknowledged, mainstream or recalcitrant—have really something to say whenever they claim that to study literature as it relates to social structures is to help define life itself.
I feel relieved at the end of this lament because bit by bit my ideas are being put into paper. Thoughts become my words, and they become truths, at least my truths. I feel justified and lucky because I am learning beyond what books say or what I understand in books—or maybe I am just learning what the books indeed say—I am living a life that goes beyond what can be taught.
Funny how I realize that walking from Katipunan Avenue going to the Loyola campus cannot always be a leisurely activity—especially if I have to do it towards noontime. Sun’s heat just becomes unbearable and then it is up for me to be pissed off by the stress it causes me—that later determines my tasks and activities inside the university library where I have to read for my graduate studies.
This morning I realized that taking a tricycle can make a big difference. I chose to ride a tricycle and not walk and that saved my time, effort and energy so that, minutes ago, I already started pounding these keys to write this lament, thus, [this] discourse.
I just realize I am a subject of the urban culture that rather compels people to buy cars so transportation and mobility are a bit easier for them.
Now I also realize I cannot just cater to the demands of such culture. Not right now, at least. I understand I cannot do much to change such culture as I know I am even the object of generosity of the ruling class [my scholarship tells me I am a recipient of their being able to provide for others].
I ride along. There is nothing for me to do. According to literary theorists preoccupied by their presuppositions on the experiencing self, or the subject, I am only a subject.
In fact, I have many subjectivities. I am also a graduate student at the Ateneo de Manila University, an academic institution run by Jesuits that, in more ways than one, have always allowed all kinds of human beings to thrive and live—the dominant ruling class whose names are carved in its buildings, the struggling middle-class who compose the Ph.D. faculty members, and the white-collar workers belonging to either the canteen cooperatives, the maintenance personnel employed by their respective agencies, or the job-hire construction workers hammering at the scaffolds being built for the new social science hall named after a Chinese benefactor. Such culture where I am right now just allows people to live. Yes, live.
That is the essence of life. To live. The purpose of me [read: I] as another subject.
Every single day I get opportunities to study and learn new concepts from reading at the library, attending campus lectures, or sitting in my teachers’ classes. And here I am learning and getting to read many things about my presently being a subject of different social structures—from the traffic rules in Katipunan Avenue to the undergraduate class schedules to the terms of use of computers in the Rizal Library.
My graduate studies are not in vain. While a graduate degree will help me land a university slot in teaching or related work, there is much to savor as I finish it. One of the payoffs is being able to realize and understand some terms in my studies that parallel or reflect the things in my present circumstances.
Class mobility, a phrase I caught from sitting in my professor’s undergraduate class—figures in the Marxist reading of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. The Marxist train of thought reads that Jane Eyre’s marriage to a wealthy man rather helps her attain class mobility.
The then orphan girl who struggled her way through the social ranks to become a governess and worked her way up the social ladder is sadly just appropriated by her marriage to the dominant ruling class. Class mobility, vulgarly translated or appropriated, refers to people’s ability to further on with how to go about their lives in a society that is both patriarchal and ruled by the dominant class.
There is much truth when I realize that literary theorists—classic or modern, recognized or unacknowledged, mainstream or recalcitrant—have really something to say whenever they claim that to study literature as it relates to social structures is to help define life itself.
I feel relieved at the end of this lament because bit by bit my ideas are being put into paper. Thoughts become my words, and they become truths, at least my truths. I feel justified and lucky because I am learning beyond what books say or what I understand in books—or maybe I am just learning what the books indeed say—I am living a life that goes beyond what can be taught.
Comments
Post a Comment