User:Stefanabrams/Stefan abrams

Born: August 29 1988 Hackensack, New Jersey

Hometown: Paramus, New Jersey

Religion: Jewish

Currently Studying: Pre-health Major, Marketing Major, and Design Studies Minor

at Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona.

Completing Breakfast: a Hero’s Journey by Stefan Abrams

Ordinary Life Sizzle. Crackle. Hiss. Breakfast is being prepared. I won’t finish it. I can’t. There is only ten minutes to get out onto the highway if I’m going to make it to Wil’s lecture on Designing my Life, an ironic name for a course that makes me remember I was suppose to suck the marrow out of life and make all the difference by choosing the road less traveled. In 20 years I haven’t diverted unless diversion was forced upon me. Existing, surviving, but never living. Wake, sit in a classroom for seven hours, learn the math and the English and the science, never go out and play because recess is a waste, gym/P.E. classes have been cut, imagination is stagnated with no music or theatre either. I was no such a victim. There was extraordinary emphasis on broad-mindedness, whether that meant answering in the form of a question, the many categories on Jeopardy, or the Wednesdays I spent every summer on Broadway. The delightful yee-haw flamboyance of “Annie Get Your Gun” and the slinking, retrospective, jazz and skat-laced “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” were my favorites. As young man of suburban reformed Jewish upbringing, there has always been the constant value of education. The Holocaust taught me that social standing, material wealth, and human rights may be stripped from anyone at any moment. What can never be taken though, is the knowledge we keep secured in our own brain. The highest education, University, was never a question of if, but rather when? I was side-tracked though. When some people finish high school they have a call to adventure, they take a year off. Backpack through a land that’s been tickling and agitating their brain as a picture of mysterious intrigue where they can be happy and somewhat free. In Europe this is the natural way of things, or so I’ve been told. I haven’t had the chance to find out for myself. It is a reward for surviving the aforementioned American academic assembly line (pardon the alliteration). Mine, is a generation of test-takers and repressed free thinkers, and thankfully I stand in the corner wearing a dunce cap with the latter. Sprinkled in the monotony of my 12 and accumulating years I’ve had the pleasure of learning from a few modern-day Mark Twains. They may be idolized in my mind simply because of their kindness. They all made their nest in the English Department, a few in the History department. Ms. Grewe, Ms. Oliveri, Ms. Nudd, Ms. Fore, Mr. Case, Mr. Foster… and at the last minute when my diploma and future were at stake, Mr. Thieken, the sole representation of kindness and foresight to ever emerge from the Math Department encouraged me to success. Graduating had been no small feat. With that foul residue still weighing on my tongue, I was divided, though not deeply divided, should I go to college? In my head it never sounded so concretely absurd. I was going through the motions. Work at Blockbuster and Fleming’s Steakhouse and Wine Bar. Pay the rent, make the car payment and insurance to drive to said jobs which provide the money for aforementioned payments, credit card for multiple lines of revolving credit, which in the future aides a number known by every mature American as their credit score aka your self-worth (though Wil would enlighten me to being alive equaling self-worth), buy the groceries that give my physical shell the fuel to perform the jobs that had become a loathsome hamster wheel of existence. Where was the happiness and recharge time? I think the only honest reply could be: I masturbated a good deal. Working in a wine bar for a few years really doesn’t have an upside when your under 21. Was alcohol and marijuana accessible? Yes, quite. I was suffered the tragedy of morality at that age, and still do. I refer to the value of self-respect, which in a microcosm prevented me from indulging my wealth of vices. If I was going to accept life lived running on a perpetually depressing hamster wheel, I should see that wheel clearly, and without the fog of bong smoke nor turbulently walk the Breathalyzer line, vision obscured, my chance to get off at the right station when the almighty conductor blew his whistle jeopardized. Having a an objective sense of my external environment was the trigger. My coworkers were also on a hamster wheel, a stream-lined one through repetition though it was, a hamster wheel nonetheless. Wake, feel hung-over, drink some coffee and orange juice, run on the treadmill to sweat out the toxins and funk from the night before and maintain the body tone that rewards you with more tips and encourages friends to drink and smoke with you because you’re hot, go to restaurant #1 in the a.m., find any break you can to smoke and drink more coffee, put a smile on again for those tips, catch a quick bite of lunch, or maybe just a Redbull, drive (or have a friend drive you, DUI from the week before put an end that self-sufficient activity) to work; restaurant #2, at this point restaurants are the only salvation for adults with no college education, find any break you can to smoke and drink more coffee, put a smile on again for those tips, look forward to the party after work where you’ll work out the days anxieties, drink more than you should, smoke some weed to make it seem manageable. It’s 3 a.m. now and works at 10, so better get some sleep to recover in time for tomorrow’s run. The wheel is waiting. When I said that routine aloud to my dear friend Paul Wykoff, there was a recognition: This was a life being lived outside of my core values, specifically, social-recognition. I have no right to wonder where my statue is, when there is no achievement among humanity celebrating me at the center, which is what I truly wanted. I was accepted automatically at Arizona State University (Not hard to accomplish in its own right. With a major in Graphic Design in mind. I had one of those rare self-assertive moments in high school where I sat my self down and had a conversation like this, 	“Stefan, you’ve got a winning record. Every design competition we’ve had so far, you’ve won it. It wasn’t even challenging. If you win this last one that makes 5. College is a place where you don’t mess around, it costs money, lots of money. If you get there and start doing that whole change your major thing, it will be even more money. So if your going, know now, don’t change.” Call of Adventure	I won that last competition. It was time then to specifically pursue a talent, a habit sorely underdeveloped as I grew older, stronger, but never wiser. I had been complemented early on my writing, so I never wrote. I was a natural actor, standing ovation at 12 years old, I didn’t step foot on a stage afterward. I was fast, but ran only one year competitively. I was a prodigy in Karate. Under my Sensei’s wing I competed for two years, but quit soon after. My last class I was awarded my last belt, so why not go out on top. The trend would seem to show that I peaked too early. It was all downhill from 15. I was not so gifted at tennis though, an astigmatism in my right eye limited my depth perception, and since I started there hasn’t been a day that my hand hasn’t gripped a racquet I love it so. My ineptitude is challenge that I relish conquering, failing, and mastering anew. ASU had no men’s Tennis team starting my freshman year. Probably for the best though, I would never have given my studio assignments the attention that Mookesh Patel thought they rightly deserved. Life’s events had brought me so far from my value of the highest education. Proportionately I had drifted geographically from my Grandmother in New Jersey, the foundation of my morality and core values, who supplied me with tools and anecdotes to find personal success. Apparently college and stepping closer to my center and purpose, was my first call to adventure, and I would respond dutifully.

Refusal of the Call

Doubt, it does cripple. I would passively engage the rigors of that competitive Major. All the while without the respect of a mother, something Freud would call an issue. I should have reconsidered medicine, or at the least, physical therapy. She believed I had inherited the geriatric gene, tolerating the existence of the elderly. “There’s good money in it, and you’ve got healing hands. I don’t understand why you won’t give it a chance. I know you Stefan. Don’t pretend you wouldn’t get a real kick out of hearing your name paged: Dr. Abrams your needed in the O.R. stat!” I smiled of course when she had the ability to strike a nerve so efficiently. That would work. Being a doctor at the most or a massage therapist at the least would fulfill my narcissistic affinity for social recognition and accomplishing it with my own bare hands (or gloved hands in the case of a surgeon). The thing that kept me from indulging that destiny was a failed semester in Anatomy and Physiology class my senior year of high school. Could I cleanly peel adipose tissue off a dead cat with a scalpel? Yes. Do I have a natural curiosity about the body and all it’s disgusting innards? Absolutely, but I never did my homework or studied vocabulary words. I goofed around and used my absurdly capable photographic memory. I don’t believe I had the focus becoming of a brilliant surgeon. If I was going to slack off at that basic level, how could I hope to pass MCAT’s? I could envision myself then with paramedic’s wheeling in a gunshot victim, losing blood and seizing in cardiac arrest, split seconds determining life and death. When those clingy nurses are pushing paddles into my hands am I going to be present enough to change to 200cc’s or am I going to stare through a wall as I suddenly realize that I was back on that damn hamster wheel, the only difference this time is the pay is better and occasionally people actually die in front of me. I have enough death issues on my own with out having my external habitat sprinkled with them. I have to question though, would that environment actually bring me to confront and surpass my fear, would I fight harder to preserve the life before me and use it to focus my power? Door number 1 or door number 2. Hope that you still have your wits about you to crawl back through the threshold and can strain to reach and turn the doorknob on the other when the first passage falls in on you. Until then, Graphic Design would be my major, all the vigor that churned in my gut could rip the face off the glaring mannequin that stood as design dogma.

Meeting a Mentor who Acknowledges

“Doctor Wil Heywood! Not Mr. Heywood, Not William, only my father called me William. He was a fighter pilot. He was a kind man, but very strict (left hand makes a broad, open palm gesture and forehead creases with past emotional damage that’s well concealed but visible enough to anyone paying attention). Just call me Wil-that’s with one L.”

Day one of college had me sending off an email to my high school Graphic Design teacher, Ms. Boettcher. It was just a note to say I had actually arrived and would be pursuing a career that she directly lead me toward. It represented more though, It was written to be concretely visible and recordable that I was doing this college thing. Maybe I was taking a step toward that adult and independent world I kept hearing such grandiose details of. As I sat on the cold stone stump that would become a fixture of my morning routines, I thought maybe it was too easy. I don’t think I did anything special to get there. I just paid for it... well, the government and their Pell Grant paid for it, but before the adventure is over I’m sure I’ll foot the bill in some way (emotional, spiritual, mental, etc.). I had no idea that in the 20 minutes I was anticipating stepping foot in my first, real college lecture, I had scanned the nearby faces searching for familiarity, and by extension safety, and passed over a high school love of mine. She wasn’t the kind that makes you want to duck your head in embarrassed nostalgia, just the kind that makes you stand straighter speak more confidently around. In other words, try painstakingly not to reveal the unposed neanderthal that speaks in uncensored stream of consciousness that no one could possibly accept, understand, or even breathe in close proximity to. In more concise words, the real me. I remember writing in our yearbook something about hoping in the future that we ended up somehow in each other’s lives. I keep those kind of heartstrings in knots because I’m sure that she just casually skimmed over it and probably didn’t invest as much as I did in those written words. There was a palpable anxiety surrounding me that day, and it was through those eyes and ears I gained my first, distanced, impression of Wil. My first journal entry made the assessment that he was, audibly, a hippie. He put stock in sunsets, coffee, and people watching. I think that refines him to a classier sect of hippie, a more desirable example to follow. Then again, he doesn’t wear socks so he can “feel the Earth.” That rings of granola; tree-hugger hippie... not that there’s anything wrong with that. RateMyProfessors.com student feedback said his classes are great and all we do is meditate! I waited for that first chakra-aligning, buddha-enlightening lesson in class. When it came, There was a great resonance within. I should have known better, Wil, like any decent mentor, even one that doesn’t know he has that title and honor amidst a sea of students, pushed me over the cliff till I was free-falling, squinting up at the sun-smothered terra firma that was my comfort zone. The first time he asked the class to envision their head hanging by a string, jaw relaxed, spine elevated above the pelvis, becoming aware of how and where we sense our breath as it enters and leaves us, I would be overcome. The first time I meditated... I cried.

Since then I started to laugh. I didn’t meditate on my own. I attribute that to it being a physical act of introverted intuition, my inferior function. Eventually I would accommodate something so beautiful and simple into my routine of habitual successes. Until then there were too many adjustments to account for and master in my external world before I could think about the integrity of my spirit and all the other mumbo jumbo. As I saw it, for 20 years I had gone without it and hadn’t died, so it must not be that essential to sustaining life. In a passive, but direct way he gave me tools to know thyself with. I knew that I was the Earth sign Virgo of Western, and kind-hearted Yang Dragon of Eastern Zodiac and that had been enough. My very language would change with the introduction of Meyers-Briggs. I’m an ESTP [E(2)S(3)T(11)P(1)]. Suddenly I had a list of strengths and weaknesses; careers that would lead to happiness and which were the path to the dark side. A problem surfaced. Apparently the most interesting fields to me were aligning to those where least happiness is achieved. I was all at once transformed into Barbara Streisand from The Prince of Tides. Maybe I wasn’t in love with those futures, I was in love with the idea of them. Luckily Wil came to the rescue with one expression, “Atypical Success.” In my mind it meant, “Break the mold.” or be a rebel. There is no shame in being an inside-the-box thinker at the center of a hurricane made up of outside-the box-feelers. His words lead me to the conclusion that I have a bigger box with ever-shifting wallpaper. The same kind of attitude would lead me through the surface-less mental vacuum with only a pinhole of light to beacon hope that was my first encounter with Mookesh Patel. I’ve constructed a story in my head to help deal with this, the second-most uncomfortable and harrowing experience of my life. Imagining the Dean of Visual Communication, highly esteemed though he is, coming to you as the Grim Reaper that can sever your future before you hear his scythe whistling through the air on it’s way to your heart, is not an experience I wish on my worst enemy, and by enemy I mean any of the other 247 fortunate applicants to the major. He came in a very even stride to my studio on a Thursday night to kick me out of the running after only two weeks. My rebellious attitude has, in the past, been easily mistaken for criminal tendencies. In the way fate tends to surprise you by showing compassion when you expect it to screw you and leave you on the side of the road to work out how you got there, Mookesh had a somewhat larger design. Talk. Engage. Assess whether this young man actually possesses qualities, both present and hidden, that could enhance the program he’s come this far pursuing, perhaps even innovate in if nurtured and guided appropriately, or if he represents an anomaly that, though seemingly unique, poses an escalating threat, that left unchecked, could threaten the fabric of the existence of everyone and everything he has ever touched. Mr. Patel, as I called him that night, gently but threateningly chose to be a mentor at a distance. We discussed materials, knowing them on a molecular level. Communication, the kind that didn’t need words, but was always present in the air. Was he talking about radio waves or E.S.P.? I never felt I had a sure foothold in our conversation, but I did rack my brain and churned out correct answers to his expansive questions. It was like glimpsing genius and recognizing it as my own the answers seemed to have been put into my head to draw out. Is Mookesh Patel psychic? Regardless, I did pass the test. My torch would remain ignited, and I would not be forced to leave the island. I survived. I only needed to prove that he made the appropriate choice, and to recognize that being a rebel and a rule breaker was a virtue as long as they were exercised with a discipline that could recognize when it was time to turn them off and tread in the safer waters of conformity, at least till the coast was clear.

Crossing the First Threshold

Strange how such emblazoned triumphs can be received in the most subdued form of a letter, and then a polite acceptance within. Strange that evidence of one persons life of toiling is recorded on one page and with the liberal use of white-space. Splendid moreover, that it says in humanist, highly-legible font, that I won. I would be admitted to the next stage of the quest I had trained for. The walls that hung the works of elite designers I once looked longingly upon would now be joined by works of my own hand. The next year of students would follow tradition, and yet I felt sorry for them to try and improve upon perfection, or as they will learn, its pseudonym: excellence. I played the game though, and mine was a reward I had to wait to collect: freedom. Now is when I start to challenge the standards. Now I get to take the formulas and turn them on their head. Upper Division, I was sure, would have a new set of rules, but I put great stock in belonging and impacting my living space. There is always a bit of electromagnetism that lingers longer when I’ve idled somewhere, and the College of Design was becoming tainted with my glow. No longer wide eyed and intimidated by people that were superior simply for outlasting others, content to paint the same metaphorical portraits with the same hues, differing only in shade and tint. This is where my fun began.

Road of Trials

Mysterious though it was, electricity surged through my fingertips as I worked towards my Magnum Opus. I had started these many years with a knack for turn-a-phrase and cerebral process, not unlike Mozart. Was I going to create a new font, or design the layout of the next Google, perhaps even branch out to publishing? The university curriculum had allowed me to loosen the reigns and come to terms with a unique and appealing writing style I possessed. My focus should be pure and unobstructed. I should visualize it and then identify every means I had to achieve it. Easier said than done. Discouraging to admit, I still suffered the tragedy of perfection, the three headed Hydra that would whisper the future in my right ear, insidiously hiss the least noble path in my left, and knock me from atop my winged Pegasus as I soared higher towards a light believed I deserved. “Olympus is where the immortal gods reside.” they taunt, “and a mortal is not meant to feast upon their fruits so freely. Your trials were not of those who proved their bloodline before you.” Every waking day I wrestled my self destruction. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. Flesh and all its various imperfections must be a plague beset upon us by the selfish immortals. No other vice invented by man has ever incited so much aggression and misguidance. To look upon it is surely a divine act of recreation, a grand distraction to maintain their dimming glory. From those classics I gained a new fire. Burning blue against the hall of orange a new door appeared and slowly ducking through the dark portal I drifted without a body in weightless Black. As my eyes adjusted the slits of light took shape and wind grazed my skin. Once again the burning in my lungs was quenched by saturated air, fluid and lively it tasted my hollow form before escaping, leaving me to mobilize my limbs again. I was in a white room and adjacent to my resting place two vertical rectangles of light revealed I was home. Familiar, though it was I couldn’t place it and something had changed. A clock blinking in blue symbols indicated it was midday and I felt compelled to drink coffee. As I emerged into a hallway I had the bearings that a right turn would lead me to a bathroom and with a bit of urination behind me I pushed a few buttons to get the dark rich fluid that made every morning right suddenly flow and steam. The whistle it produced caused a scurrying and I was greeted to smooth and optimistic Labrador, his coat as rich and dark as the espresso brewing that signaled his day was meant to start as well. A nearby wall was all but smothered by a calender, clearly detailed, indicating there would be two more hours before the grind of work. “At least now I know I’m not dreaming. Right, Rog?” Surely normal people didn’t dream about working. That seemed like no fun at all. “Let’s get those legs of yours working (yawn)...ahh, yeah mine too. It’s no fun sitting in that big comfy chair of mine for eight hours a day. I’m sure I’ll get one of those clots that circulates to my heart and then BAM! I drop dead and then there’s no one to feed you. Chew on that today while your lounging around enjoying everything I work hard for and never get to enjoy. Huh boy, whaddya think about that? It’s just no good to be the boss, remember that okay.” Roger had acknowledged me with a raised paw that signaled his version of, “Scout’s Honor Sir!”

Supreme Ordeal

Just when things seem to have settled and peace can be glimpsed just past the finish line, something has to come along and knock you in the chin to make sure you’re never too happy to forget you’re mortal. One more star entered the sky. My Grandmother has gone totally from my life now. I’m upset. I’m lonely. No, actually I am rattled with hate. Hate. Hate. Hate. Hatred. After that is guilt that my reaction is a negative one, when any emotional association I should share a thought about should be one of love, of happiness, and serenity. I know in my heart, though I’ve ignored that organ for a long time that she would say something encouraging like, “Now there’s no amount of land...or time or... other crap that can separate us. You know I’m always on your shoulder baby and now you don’t have a choice. I’m there, so deal with it.” She taught me how to read. She took the training wheels off my bicycle and said once they’re off they can’t go back on. I found out later on that wasn’t true, but because she said it I believed her. She said it, and I learned how to ride a bike without them. She taught me to love learning, love art, how to be quiet and win a gold medal, entertain myself with a good book, and that it’s okay to cry. She was a crier. At the drop of a hat she’d drown in tears. So much so, that someone always had tissues on hand for every and any occasion. I couldn’t cry when I heard it though. I thought that I would. It’s okay though because she’d rather I make use of her most important gift: laughter. She held laughter above all else. She always said she crying does no good, it makes everyone feel miserable. Laughter could lift the mood of room. I’ve had that moral drilled in so completely that it seemed like the only reasonable reaction. I’m sad that she’s gone. I miss her so much. Sadness that she won’t dance with me one last time to Rod Stewart’s “Have I told you lately?” Sad, that I can’t feel smart doing a crossword puzzle with her, just the two of us. Sad, that I can’t call her every day no matter what time because life is just crummy and I need someone to tell me that everything will be alright and that, “If anyone can do it, my money’s on you baby.” I only made it this far because her words made me believe that I was doing everything right and I’ll get wherever I’m going, get there at my own pace, and that’s okay. The point is that I’m doing it on my own and because I want to, not for anyone else. I think I’ll be able to fight the sadness though, because she kept ¾ of her heart reserved for me, and everyone else has to squeeze into that last piece. I’ve known that since I was little. There’s no question of how much she loved me, and a Grandmother’s love isn’t like regular love, It’s stronger, strong enough that you can feel it when she’s just a couple of states away, and even stronger when she’s in heaven and all the angels can reach down and sit her right next to you when only her loving embrace can make you feel whole enough to keep living, because every victory brings you closer to the top of the mountain. If the clouds should come close enough, she can kiss your head one more time, and that’s reward enough.

Ultimate Boon.

The office was an interesting excuse for architecture. It definitely wasn’t the work of anyone I graduated with. Some kind of corrugated steel that contrasted with purplish-burgundy/merlot illuminated slides that made every wall look like a Jetson’s-age billboard that someone had pinned up and tried to call Pop Art. The kids got a kick out of it though and that was the purpose. I never found displeasure in anything that had a purpose. Fake bamboo though? Honestly! I was relieved to confine my time between my office where I had control of all the interior down to voltage consumption. There probably isn’t a more peaceful place in all this faux-tranquil city. The floor was a fiber-optic screen that reflected the center court of the whichever Tennis tournament was currently in progress. This month I was greeted with bright orange as the tour closed in on the French Open where Rafael Nadal would appear for the last time before retiring after four years at #1 in the world with an eighth consecutive French Open not out of the question, he still had some fight left in him and few courts had been as good to him as Court Philipe Chatrier de Stade Rolland Garros. I would have liked very much to add his Championship racquet to my collection. Only his rival’s was more prized. The last racquet used in competition as Roger Federer won his sixth and final Wimbledon, upsetting Nadal, reclaiming his crown as the King of the All England Club, and surpassing Pete Sampras with 15 Grand Slam titles. Retiring at the top of the world the year before had coincided in many ways with my own ascension to the top of the design world. Roger’s racquet was supposed to have gone to the Pope, but alas a few bonuses for jobs well done let me put just enough zero’s on that infamous check I handed over. The dividends were paying off though, it came to be known fondly as the deal maker. It had it’s place, securely displayed on my wall, and everyone knew the drill: client’s come in and “ooh” and “ahh” at it, I casually acknowledge it, they ask if they can see it, “Of course!” I say, “Do we have a deal?” They always agree, I let them have a few seconds to live their fantasy, and then I indicate the dotted line to them. That’s the secret to my success. First, be good at what you do...really good. Then, let them see the memorabilia – it lets them, by extension, feel like they’re working with a Champion. That is how the freelance endeavor Abrams Concept+Design merged with Triangle Square Circle Numedia Visions captivated the human population beyond cultural divides, beyond oceans. “One Language: Beauty. One Mind: Peace”