Rant (school is not what it used to be)

School is not what it used to be and I am not the dutiful #1 son I was years ago...

Here online I encounter faceless students in the pursuit of knowledge, truth, and wisdom...

The following is a transcript and a rant...


Hi Cory,




You are the sanest guy in the class. I have dropped out and out of school. Actually I was forced out. I will explain in another email.



I will be glad to work with you on poetry and discuss the notions of mental illness. You are a true investigator.



First I want to copy this letter I sent to Professor Roxanne Kurtz, for it illustrates something about me and about my realities.



Hope you can understand. I will be glad to help with whatever I can at no charge. Just email me whenever. My phone is 206-329-5566 in Seattle.



Best wishes,

Koon



Dear Professor Roxanne Kurtz,



It is a very long story how UIS has treated me. But if you are interested I could write a tome and publish it somewhere and send you a copy. Do you want me to do that or should I just die in peace?



If you are sincerely interested in justice with a small "j" then perhaps I could take the time from my precarious life to explain. Remember that while writing papers is a way to make a living for you, it is a way to decrease my chances of surviving at this point. This all sounds very cryptic. I suggest that you have a private chat with Professor Bill Kline and with the Disability advisor Suzy Woods, if you are so inclined, to understand where I am coming from. I come from everywhere - something that insulated academicians are not privy to know first hand.



Now as far as this jerk Kenshin is concerned, I merely used the Socratic method on him. Since he treated me like an idiot and behaved toward me belligerently (although in philosophic verbosity), I behaved similarly in return, but I was born a village boy, and I shall always behave like a village boy, when my integrity or livelihood is threatened.



I, as a matter of fact, if you review the posts carefully, make overtures of friendship toward him. He spurn my offer of comradship and friendship and colleagueship because he had some preconceived notion that he was the most superior. (The copious number of his postings indicated that he must have the last and final word on anything). I even used humor to defuse the tension he had with me and others but he interpreted it the wrong way, out of egotism. He obviously has a fragile ego. I, on the other hand, do not claim to be wiser or stronger in my self-esteem, but I know where I am coming from. I lay my hand out for all to see. I am who I claim to be. You can know more about me by Googling "Koon Woon poetry" or log onto http://clsseattle.blogspot.com or http://koonwoon.blogspot.com or get a copy of my published book of poems THE TRUTH IN RENTED ROOMS from Kaya, NY, NY, 1998, which had won the Pen Oakland Award and was a finalist in the Norma Farber First Book Prize from the Poetry Society of America. It has also been used as a text at several universities and colleges including UC Santa Cruz and Sarah Lawrence. It sits at over 70 universities in the US and Canada as well as in city libraries, including Yale, Columbia, Berkeley, Stanford, et al.



My posts about the world situation has been printed online in the People's Daily for the entire world to see. We are at a very critical time in history and this is no time for petty "arguments" in philosophy for an ivory tower position to refute the world, as what I presume Kenshin wants to be headed. Book learning is fine, but silly rules have retarded many otherwise bright school boys. Consider where I am coming from.



I was born in 1949 in a village in China without electricity or running water and I did not speak my first word of English until I was 12.



I have been homeless 3 times due to mental illness. I have been illegally evicted, jailed, and hospitalized and assaulted. This I take it to be my luck. But what I don't take lightly is my responsibility to the Overseas Chinese immigrants as I am the leader of the Locke clan (I am a cousin of Gary Locke, the Commerce Secretary under Obama). I am a member of the Triad (not the Mafia but the honor society). I have risked my life to protected the welfare and well being of the otherwise helpless immigrants. I have written for them. My second book should be out this year from Kaya called WATER CHASING WATER. It will be marketed in the world's most populous 25 countries, including China and even Russia.



So, who is Kenshin? He said that he treats everyone equally. He does not seem to have any empathy for anyone with a checkered history. And I did study with John Wisdom at the University of Oregon when I was 22, the time the CIA tried to recruit me.



But I just had come back from Wisconsin this past Sunday where an elderly lady friend of my wife and me may have been dying. I am human, and only human, as you so kindly pointed out to Kenshin in his "standards (read "intolerance") of others. I was in no mood for personal attacks no matter what language and what pretext it was in. I fight fire with fire and I fight water with water. That is something people should understand of "village boys." And remember, 70% of China's 1.3 people are village people and the Chinese Army is 2.5 million Village Boys, armed with nuclear bombs and missiles. This is what I am really talking about and about the "US-Sout Korean Naval Exercises" off China in the Yellow Sea.



If you want to know more I can tell you plenty. But for now, I really don't know much for certain. Only that in the interest of epistemology and metaphysics the US public media should be more forthright and open about our hegemony and drive for world domination. I can only say this to you. I am trained in the martial arts. We do not attack unless first attacked. And that includes verbally. But when we do respond, we go "overboard," as others describe us.



I have finished ranting. But please do consider that I am a disabled person. And in all sincerity, I am a "teddy bear." I dedicated my forthcoming book to my 87 year old friend Betty Irene Priebe and all the money to her brain-damaged granddaughter Ellie Priebe. I worked 13 years on this book. (the last one took 17 years, and so there was improvement). And Roxanne, I sincerely wish to be "kinder and gentler" if we weren't on the verge of extinction. No time to talk nicely when your house is on fire and some salesman is trying to sell you a cigarette lighter.



There, now you should know that I am mentally ill. The state has kept records of it for the past 34 years. I hope that you understand that I am a weak man and a fragile person. But because "of a little lack" as Henri Michaux the French poet wrote, "my hopes go way up, to infinity almost."



From what little I know of you, and I am a fairly good judge of people, you are fair minded and measured in your judgment and nice in your advice. I don't mind being the Idiot and the Nut, just so long as Kenshin will know that people like me exist in the world, and there might come a time on Skid Road, when all the academic philosophy and Sophist tongue, will not talk his way out of an addict bent on murdering him for an angry fix of dope...



Yours respectfully,

Koon Woon



This is not meant to be a threat to anyone. I done my defense. It is only verbal.





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Kurtz, Roxanne Marie

Sent: Tue 8/31/2010 7:36 PM

To: Woon, Koon

Subject: PHI472





Koon,

Although I see you have dropped PHI472, I would be remiss if I did not ask you to please keep in mind though that calling another student "idiot" in a public forum really is not OK. In future, the better path is to take concerns about other students directly to the professor privately.

All best,

Roxanne





Roxanne Marie Kurtz

Assistant Professor of Philosophy

University of Illinois at Springfield