I struggle with issues of intellect constantly. It becomes quite bare each time I get involved with someone, as unless I truly believe them to be idiots, I feel they believe my smarts to be lacking. It gets worse the more I respect my lover's brain, though I have been with a person I considered my equal despite also believing them to be the most brilliant mind I'd yet come across. This neurosis is complex, of course, and the tic again came to the fore after a dinner party last night when conversation veered enormously toward a decidedly academic ken. I sat, mostly quietly, feeling envious of knowledge I will never have, listening to a way of speaking that will never be mine. These are good friends Andy and I broke bread with, people I love and trust, and whom I knew would immediately find much common ground with him. But it is this common ground that separates me from them. I barely catalogue where I learned something, only that I learned it. Philosophers are of little interest in name and I find myself withering a bit to know or have to listen to people name-drop when what's important to me are the philosophies themselves. I almost never describe a situation in terms of a writer's work; for instance, I've read a lot of work on the history of Christianity--not once, nor likely ever, have I said something like, "Elaine Pagels says of the Gnostic Gospels...." because it's just not in my brain that way. It's filed under Gnostic Gospels and includes texts and postulates by many writers whose names have long been forgotten. The facts remain. Life and its situations are generally judged, described and catalogued of their own merit, in an increasingly complex file that mostly draws off of experience vs. academia.
Which leaves me feeling wanting. Experiential discussions inherently seem less intellectual than academic ones. Which does also make me feel a bit indignant. It should not be so. Each person has a different brand of smarts, but we all know how we are subtly and not so subtly told to feel about "street smarts" or "he's really good with his hands". INFERIORITY. Except I don't feel that way. Not at all. The aforementioned intellectual equal excelled in physical intellect (an oxymoron?), in the most carnal, base knowledge of survival (trust no one, lash out 'til they're all bleeding and you stand, alone, unscathed), in how-to handiness, in mathematical/money and understanding/manipulation of others skill unlike anyone I've ever seen. In Twin Peaks, Agent Cooper says of Windom Earle, "his mind is like a diamond; hard, cold, and brilliant." This was/is David. (Quoting/referencing pop culture, on the other hand, I do constantly--another strike against me.) And I'm not saying he couldn't hold his own in an academic discussion, but that's just not where his excellence was couched. No, he floored me daily with these other things, these other things I don't possess, but which I didn't envy, did not feel inferior by, just took in and relished, admired, and above all, respected. He is a survivor of some of the most horrifying life-experiences I've ever been privvy to hear first hand, and because of this, or to spite it, he makes it through every single day a warrior. All of this said, by necessity, he is a genuinely terrible person. As a survivor, he fails at human connection on every level. Damaged beyond repair, he seems hard wired to fuck over or fuck up any healthy, beneficial human situation he comes into contact with. Which, of course, is why he is no longer a part of my life. I will always love him unconditionally and weep for his circumstance, but he is responsible for how he's responded to what's happened to him, and that response, despite being smart on a survival level, is sheer idiocy in a dozen other ways which would leave him vulnerable but would save him otherwise. Sooo, in a discussion of his brilliance, I've also demonstrated that he's a fucking retard.
The pendulum swings both ways.
I had felt intellectually vindicated over the weekend, when Andy pointed to a word in his book, unsure of the meaning. Certainly, I thought, he'd not ask me this if he felt I was not his equal. Oneiric was the word. The closest like-term I could come up with was onerous, which fit into the context of his book, so we were both satisfied. Turns out I was wrong; oneiric means dreamlike, onerous refers to something heavy and taxing. Not the same, but I did my best.
I wish I consistently did not feel as if my best was secretly derided in some quiet closet of the more academic minds around me. My skills are with language, street smarts, emotional fortitude in the presence of the sorts of threats which are made to emotional fortitude, lovemaking, and general skill understanding why people do what they do.
I might already know the philosophical stance of Kierkegaard, but I'd never know that that belief system was Kierkegaardian (now there's a band name, kids). I've been told my way of thinking is "very James Joyce", but fuck-all if I know what that means. If I name-drop any writers, it's Daniel Quinn and Leonard Cohen and that's pretty much it.
Sigh. Should I be sighing? I don't know. I can't tell if this neurosis is confidence or culture. Or straight up bullshit.
4 years ago
