Urban Thought Collective

You know how they say that you grow up and you become your parents? I have suddenly been overcome by this feeling. I used to watch my dad falling asleep on the couch after work at 7pm, whether he was trying to watch Monday Night Football or the evening news, and wonder why he couldn’t stay awake. Is the workday that hard? I’ve since learned that it is, and I have become my dad, often falling asleep myself as soon as I hit that couch whether the sun is still out or not. Reading the responses, I’m also feeling like I’ve suddenly become one of my UCLA English professors or better yet, my often condescending (but in a playful, entertaining type of way if you’re not the object of his scorn) high school English teacher, Father Cobb. Father Cobb was at his sadistic best on a Monday morning when the class had been assigned some Shakespearean literature to not only be intimately familiar but perhaps even be called upon to recite some of it before the class. Unless you particularly enjoyed the spectacle of public humiliation in front of 30 of your peers, you might only let yourself get “caught out there” once.

It happened to all of us. The best was when he used props in your undoing. My favorite was when he would walk slowly over to somebody’s desk and hold their paper back book face down, holding each end of the book’s spine so that the pages hung toward the floor. Magically, this method would reveal exactly the page that you had read up to as there would be a significant amount of space between the dangling pages. It was kind of like Perry Mason or Matlock or good ol’ Atticus Finch (since we’re talking literature) proving his client’s innocence and simultaneously the real perpetrator’s guilt right there in the courtroom at the climax of the show (since we’re still talking about climaxes or the lack thereof). All of the rest of the class would almost fall out of our chairs laughing, but not too loudly because you didn’t want to be next. You know, like when your brother or sister is getting spanked and you are standing in the other room, peeking around the corner and giggling because they got caught and your Mama or Daddy asks you “Is something funny?!!”, suggesting that you better can it or you’ll get some of this too? Yeah, it’s like that.

So if you will indulge me for a few more suspense filled moments, I’ll try not to be too harsh on the UTC class here. Furthermore, if you’ll indulge me a bit more and allow me to be so pretentious as to speak in the third person about the author of the previous piece (me) I can perhaps be a bit more forensic in helping you to dissect it. In a perfect world, everyone would say what they mean in no uncertain terms. Everything would be right there in black and white and it would also be pretty boring, like watching the aforementioned evening news or reading a text book.

Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite never inspired me, so I doubt they will you either. Since this piece endeavors to not only tell the tale but to excite while telling the tale, we can assume that we’re going to have to dig a little deeper. What do we know about this brotha? Ashley, Philip Giddings, and Travis get points here for trying to draw upon the little that they know about our subject from what has been revealed in past editions. Well, maybe a single point. Father Cobb was no joke. Give Ashley, Sweetsis, and Ginger an additional point for their recognition of the obvious metaphor. In fact, Sweetsis and Ginger might even get some extra credit for having been moved in the way that it appears that the author has subliminally intended.

But let’s dig a little deeper. This Baron of the Business Trip, Pharoah of the Foodies opts to use words like lurid and longing and consuming, dire and weariness, as if he is deeply troubled and perhaps even crying out. Just2bee is looking over at Nicq in a knowing sort of way and his return glance suggest that they are on the same page, but neither wants to really end the suspense yet both still defer to the T’cha and his brand of cyber-edu-tainment-new-age-late-in-the-evenin-bloggin’-funk-labor-of-love lessons. He’s not only troubled, but life as he knows it is being interrupted.

Let’s go deeper still? How deep? Deeper than Atlantis. (If I may part parenthetically, how ironic it is that both T’cha and author are now simultaneously suffering from an attack of the vainglorious nature? Coincidentally ironic indeed, but it does provide a nice segue into the discussion of duality, which is overwhelming in the piece.)

The author juxtaposes the traditional and the exciting. He pits titillating of the senses against the tyranny of the conventional. He speaks of climax and antithesis. “Libertad! Libertad! Give us free!” cry out those senses. He wants to blow minds and yet he too has needs. He’s sharing, and yet concealing just enough so as to keep you yearning for more. It’s hard work for pleasers. But it’s a labor of love. It’s the ultimate in vulnerability, to bare all and to do so artfully.

So he asks again. Incited to chorus? Or wake you when I’m done? Was this literary downstroke all that you thought it might be? Or, in this episode, will the only one getting off on good writing be me?

Destah Owens is a single father of two from Northern California and proud UCLA Bruin who travels the world for his job as a computer engineer. His blog, “Soufflés in Saigon,” is exclusive to Urban Thought Collective.