Anyone who has ever met my grandfather knows that he was a storyteller. For the last few years of his life, he lived at home with me and my family and spent most of his time near the entrance of the house in his recliner chair. His days consisted of meals, watching soccer matches, swallowing several dozen capsules, and walking the short distance between his cabin and the main house. It was a simple life, but it was a life he didn’t mind living.
Whenever someone would make their way into the ‘library’–the name my family had allocated to the room in which we stored our books, photo albums, and grandfather–one could expect to be treated to a tale of Brooklyn or Venezuela (writing this now, the irony is not lost on me that the place we kept our stories, both personal and fictional, was the place we kept our storyteller). Though the narratives had a tendency to repeat, they were told with such vigor and enthusiasm that one could not help but be just as intrigued the fifteenth time as the first.
There was a time a story from the mouth of Norman Sheinfeld was as coveted as it was relatable. But with old age, the tales began to recede; not lost, but rather locked inside a mind that could still play through the events, but lacked the capacity to communicate them. It seemed as though for the last few months, no stories were told and if I were being honest, this is when I began to mourn my grandfather. Still breathing, he sat in his chair unable to explain how he used to play stickball in the streets of Brooklyn or how he had an old friend who joked about jumping out of the first-floor window. He was still there, but my grandfather was certainly not. When my grandfather finally did come to pass, it felt as though nothing much had changed. It still doesn’t really. The house was as quiet as it had been for months. But his vacancy did illuminate an opening. My family needed a new storyteller.
Ever since the fourth grade, I’ve wanted to be an astronaut. After my name, it’s probably the first thing people find out about me. Every decision has been meticulously made to lead me out of this atmosphere, but now, I think I find my calling down here on earth. Perhaps it’s not quite as adventurous or glamorous, but I find writing quite inspiring. It's helped me tap into an introspective consciousness I wasn’t aware of. I’ve found there’s something so cathartic about capturing these abstract, webbed thoughts and arranging them in a way that people can consume and relate to. I think I’m going to be a writer. I’m not sure where this path will take me, but if I ever find myself missing space, I’ll just take myself there through words on a page.
Happiness. I guess to me that word’s been so veiled in success and approval that it's lost its purity these past few years. I’ve been so goal-focused I haven’t had the time to just enjoy things. Not anymore. This summer there was such acute sadness in my life that I couldn’t allow myself to refuse happiness in any of its forms. So, instead of pursuing a career that could potentially result in some momentary respites of success and fulfillment, I decided to do what makes me happy now. I don’t know if it will always make me happy, but I am going to write until the day comes when I have nothing left to say, and I honestly don’t see that day coming anytime soon.
Not every reason has a noble or introspective backing. For instance, I just don’t want to be stressed all the time. Math stresses me out, so why would I want to deal with linear algebra and Fourier series when I could be writing about some guy who becomes the sky. Next.
I can’t exactly pinpoint the date, but recently I’ve had a pretty monumental shift in perspective when it comes to what interests me. Not exactly the content (I’m just as enamored with science as I was in 4th grade), but the aspects of that content. I used to be obsessed with how things worked. The subtle intricacies of how the gears of any process fit in with each other fascinated me. I would seek out every piece of objective knowledge possible in order to expand my familiarity with the universe, and in some way, I can see how this could have been motivated by a sort of elitist desire to know more than my peers. But sometime in the recent past, I have lost some of that purely academic drive and have gained a thirst for the subjective. My interests have shifted from how the universe works to how the universe affects the thoughts, desires, dreams, aspirations, and perspectives of different people. Again, some may label this pursuit as a close-minded, anthropocentric view of everything, and may even claim that I am taking an easier route by somewhat abandoning the scientific fields, but as difficult as it may be to acquire the objective facts of the universe through what is basically mathematical magic, it is perhaps just as challenging to accurately capture how the universe manifests within our consciousnesses. So, by adding to the collective human effort of writing and thinking about what the hell is going on around us in a purely subjective and personal way, I hope to be able to expand that human consciousness and narrative (and yes, I realize how pompous that may sound).
I think about my grandfather every day. About the little things like the way he used to laugh or his use of Spanish in his recognizable Brooklyn accent. I used to share some of my stories with him. They were fantastical, usually about some alien world with alien beings, and even though that wasn’t quite his wheelhouse, he would always ask me for more stories. He told me that I should try to get some published someday. I never got to publish any while he was here, but when I do, I’ll go show him what I’ve done. I don’t want to take his place, he’ll always be the best storyteller, but if I can continue his legacy and eventually make my own, maybe one day my children and their children will learn to love stories the same way I did.
