siftingsorting (3)

Here is a quotation from an instant-messaging conversation that took place on 01 January 2002 (I think we talked all night until 06h). It is a response to the question, "what is white culture?" something we were encouraged to think about in a first-year course called, Reading in the Contemporary World. I enjoyed the course, I truly did. It was a good transition course from secondary to post-secondary English classes. Yum, I like. My professor was pretty cool, too, what with all his Simpsons references, quotations and t-shirts.

The line --

"(it's) the heritage that is lost on the verge of self realization with their
strict belief on what they're not, but no definite concensus on what they are.. "

I saved that in my email Inbox in April 2003 with plans to "decipher" it some other time. In the last 2 1/2 years I have looked at it a few times but to-night, I finally read it and thought it was not too deep nor abstract so I figured I could delete the email and immortalize the quotation here. I'm a strange person and I know it.

The question was posed to us as a "think about this outside of class" kind of assignment, not a "do this for grades" kind. I liked the question and did have a reasonable amount of free time on my hands. I called my OAC English teacher - at work - one day to ask him the question because I thought he could afford me a good answer or at least another good place to look. He did not have much of an answer (to my recollection, though I could look for it) but he did do something funny. While talking to one of my friends who was in his class that year, I discovered that the teacher had actually posed the question to the class because he thought it was a good something to think about. It was a "Writer's Craft" course so, I think he's allowed to get away with stuff like that. Man, did I ever like that course. It expanded my definition of poetry (and prose, I guess) and writing in general. Man, I owe that teacher a debt of gratitude. It was such a challenging and fulfilling course. Ah.. oh ahh... it yea. Hm, I'll stop there.

There's nothing like a post written stream-of-conscious style, eh?