How Wisdom Gave Wit & Whim Indigestion.
I think that college has come very close to teaching me a very bad lesson. In academic writing everything must be significant, analytical, and structured. The only topics worthy of attention are "serious" topics; the kind one spends countless hours researching, and agonizes about how best to present them. In short, you begin to confuse yourself into thinking that writing can only be worthwhile if it is well thought and pertinent to the plights of mankind. Poison.
I have written some excellent papers, thank you very much, but I like best the silly things that I have written for the sake of writing; for the love of a good phrase, and the simple joy that comes from using words well.
This is such an easy thing to lose sight of, and it is coming back into focus, and has been these last couple weeks. The difference is that I have been reading again, not purely for knowledge, or for an assignment, but for a story. I have a book full of clever little sayings about books, taken from men who wrote books. There is one in particular I enjoyed which was to the effect that reading a book is like making a friend, and that rereading a favourite is like meeting an old friend after a long absence.
I was feeling more than a little somber toward the end of last semester; heavy doses of philosophy and history--wholly undiluted--makes poor medicine for one such as me. The outlook is not good people but I digress. Let us not go down that road.
It is from this darkness that my friends are rescuing me, and I am afraid to say that there is something in me my paper friends can heal, where my flesh and blood friends cannot touch. Things (objectified people) like Evan and the Shewoof are also helpful, but the other cure is specific to the ill. I feel more myself, and work does not seem the same interminable chore that it really is--no joke. To this end, I actually have been in relative good humor at work--smiley, etc--despite needing to fold 800,000 dress shirts a shift.
I am definitely going to need to keep pleasure reading in my schedule for next semester. I think this last semester, with its piles of very important reading nearly made me, prematurely, into an old man. But no, I am too young--and beautiful--to be old, so I will read novels.
Yes, I know you are all terribly bereft, but I like me better when I'm not trying to be profound.
I have written some excellent papers, thank you very much, but I like best the silly things that I have written for the sake of writing; for the love of a good phrase, and the simple joy that comes from using words well.
This is such an easy thing to lose sight of, and it is coming back into focus, and has been these last couple weeks. The difference is that I have been reading again, not purely for knowledge, or for an assignment, but for a story. I have a book full of clever little sayings about books, taken from men who wrote books. There is one in particular I enjoyed which was to the effect that reading a book is like making a friend, and that rereading a favourite is like meeting an old friend after a long absence.
I was feeling more than a little somber toward the end of last semester; heavy doses of philosophy and history--wholly undiluted--makes poor medicine for one such as me. The outlook is not good people but I digress. Let us not go down that road.
It is from this darkness that my friends are rescuing me, and I am afraid to say that there is something in me my paper friends can heal, where my flesh and blood friends cannot touch. Things (objectified people) like Evan and the Shewoof are also helpful, but the other cure is specific to the ill. I feel more myself, and work does not seem the same interminable chore that it really is--no joke. To this end, I actually have been in relative good humor at work--smiley, etc--despite needing to fold 800,000 dress shirts a shift.
I am definitely going to need to keep pleasure reading in my schedule for next semester. I think this last semester, with its piles of very important reading nearly made me, prematurely, into an old man. But no, I am too young--and beautiful--to be old, so I will read novels.
Yes, I know you are all terribly bereft, but I like me better when I'm not trying to be profound.
Write a novel, man. If all we have in "significant writing" is academia, then that's a world I don't want to inhabit.
ReplyDeleteBrsides, you're too good for them.
What he ^ said. Oftentimes I need to clear my head of Important Things so that I can write and think about the things that are closer to the core of who I actually am. College (or other obligatory reading, in my own case) clutters the mind, even if the reading one does for college is Important Reading.
ReplyDelete