Blog Post 3.3: Capstone Essay: “Buddha Meets Bed-Stuy”
For my capstone essay, I want to capture the idea of coming into myself in my post-college mid-twenties. I have recently been spending time in an old brownstone in Bed Stuy, prolonging my carefree days before starting my first full time job. I left my parent’s house after Easter dinner this year and haven’t been back since. I haven’t lived at home in years and being home for the past few months had driven me to a breaking point where I could no longer be at their house. Their house, no longer my house. I went out on a ledge and moved in with a girl who I had known for a week in a neighborhood that I didn’t know. I was now a minority. I didn’t get the alternate side of the street parking rules. I didn’t know the guys at the deli, the landlord, her husband or my neighbors. I couldn’t point at myself on a map. But by escaping the comforts of my white bread suburban upbringing, I was able to start to discover who I had become.
Here is an except from the thoughts that I have written down over the past few weeks:
“I sat in the back of my car for hours that day. My beaten Nikes hung inches above the greyed out pavement on Macdonaugh Street, my untied laces swaying softly in the spring wind. I leafed through the book in my right hand, maneuvering my way through the words as I exhaled the smoke of yet another Parliament.
Just as the capacity to feel is present throughout the body,
Ignorance dwells in all affliction emotions,
Therefore all affliction emotions are overcome,
Through overcoming ignorance.
Tough the screw in my tire was keeping me immobile, I couldn’t imagine a better place to be spending the day. The sun shone through the windows in my car…”
The quote in the middle is from a book on the best Buddhist writings, which I had been reading the day I was getting my tire fixed. I’m hoping to incorporate quotes from this book as well as a few songs and poems in the essay, making it more lyrical than a normal essay. I am also hoping to make this a video essay, taking my own video or incorporating photographs in a slideshow-like manner in conjunction with a reading of my essay.
I want to get down to the raw emotion that comes from having time to sit down and truly reflect on yourself. The good, the bad, the ugly. I want to touch on subjects that are applicable to people my age as well as relate my recent thoughts and experiences to feelings that are relatable to everyone.
Sorry it’s late, I haven’t been able to make a final decision on the topic… But this is where my head is at.
3 responses so far
Hey Hutch,
I like your proposal. As someone who still lives at home with his parents I’m really curious to read your essay and watch the video (if you choose to do that) because it’s a topic that’s interesting to me personally. I also like the idea to incorporate quotes from the Buddhist text, songs and other places, but then again I love quotes so anything related to quotes I’m on board with.
Making a video to accompany the essay is a great idea. If you choose to take a video of your neighborhood it can mirror the essay in a sense that you’re exploring the neighborhood and learning more about it as you learn about yourself. Either way I like your idea and look forward to reading the paper and watching the video.
Sincerely,
Iordan
You are Buddha!
Dear Hutch,
I like this idea of showing raw emotion. I think this journey to discovering the “good, the bad, the ugly” is something that everyone goes through alone, so I think it would be interesting to see how you portray that in your video if that is what you decide to do. Also, what you wrote in your journal (i think?) is very vivid and descriptive on its own. I think the subject you have chosen to write about is very relatable in the sense that our twenties are for discovering who we are and who we want to be. Its an internal process as well as an external. So here I think, your internal would be the reflection of who you have become and the external is the physical movement out of your parent’s house to your own place. And these transitions are a part of growing up, and a part of the reality. So I like this idea a lot, and can’t wait to see how you go about writing your paper/ making a video!
Sincerely,
Sofia