And please note I said educated not intelligent. It’s a different strata. Because even if you do decide then to autodidact yourself, there’s this strange anxiety among the Ivy League whatever, or at least there is sometimes with me. When I’m writing about a new topic, I dread making an ass of myself, and I can blame my decision to leave college after one year for that. (Not to mention, the fact that what preceded that education-wise was a rural education, one focused on turning its students into farmers, because that is what they were going to be, and not poets.) I read a lot of books on the subject before I dare to write about it, but what if they are the wrong books? What if someone in college told everyone else what the right books are, and everyone knows I read the wrong ones? It’s a strange dynamic, to work in an intellectual field without the intellectual background.
Secret handshakes and code words, yep. Luckily, I don’t work in an intellectual field. I might as well stand in front of the gates of academia with a straw hat and overalls, long grass shoot hanging off my lip, befuddled look on my face, watching the turnip truck upon which I had only moments earlier been a passenger disappearing over the horizon in a rooster tail of dust. Per the Peter Principle, the blog format is pretty much my highest level of competence.
February 19, 2013 @ 5:53 pm
Awww, Damian. We thank the fates for your humble roots. If you were in the highfalutin halls of power, you might be turning you pen to lengthy editorials in the better newspapers or record as to why IRAN (a/k/a the Pernicious Persian Menace) must be contained at all costs!