Imagine that what we (the generic we, meaning all of humanity) consider to be the “human mind” is not unlike a simple rubber balloon. A poor analogy at best, of course, but one that is instructive in what I’m hoping to convey about my recent state of existence.
So the mind is a balloon. Just go with me on this.
Consider then, that as water is to a balloon, so to is “knowledge” to the mind. There are, it must be said, different types of knowledge. The ability to know when someone is attempting to sell to you a “diamond” that is, actually, a piece of glass is one type of knowledge, but not the one I’m speaking of here. What I’m referring to is, possibly, the most useless of all types of knowledge, that of the theoretical kind.
Of the six texts that were required reading for my master’s exam only one could be called, definitively, “theoretical.” As a side note, when I mentioned said text today to Tengu’s wife (she with a PhD) her response was, literally, a grunt. Generally, we might consider things like Middlemarch and Omeros “art.” Even John Donne’s 100 page long theological discourse has, at its core, a decidedly artistic mode and structure. But when forced to read such things, not for enjoyment or any aesthetic reason, but rather purely for an analytical reason, that is, because you know you will be asked specific analytical questions regarding the texts, then you are doing nothing more than filling your balloon of a mind up with the tap water of theoretical knowledge.
Sometime about 2 hours after I had finished the test my balloon burst and I slept for several hours.
Unfortunately for me, the semester, she has just begun. I finished two novels this weekend; one I could appreciate on some level even though I felt it was flawed, and one that may haunt me for eternity because I did not write it and, more than likely, will never write anything even remotely like it.
And that’s it for the waxing philosophic. I’ll get back to my normal self, full of spite and irony, in short order no doubt.
Blah, i hate it when good reading be ruined by school or some other force making you read it so that you can answer questions. It generally makes me despise whatever it is that i am reading,
That was part of my problem in school. I generally liked the books we were given to read, but after taking them apart to a molecular level, I was fully ready to never see them again.
It was also why, when I was… 14 or 15, I think, I realized that school could suck the fun out of any book, so I dragged my dad to Walden and bought Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer so I could read them myself. I didn’t really care for them, but was glad I read them on my own terms.