Last week, I received one of those life-affirming compliments. Its impact on me is going to determine a lot. It was delivered by one of the Laughing Happy Fishheads, my new moniker for a superb cadre of guys with whom I share a profession and much alcohol. I'll get into them later and where I think we're situated in the Slice. I can remember three or four such compliments in my life. One of them that I specifically recall was given to me at a meetup of the Cult of Brainstorms, the electronic community founded by Howard Rheingold.
The woman told me that I should always keep writing because you never know how your writing is going to affect someone. For her part, she had been profoundly affected. I didn't know her, recognize her face or remember her name. And yet there was that moment - one that made me a writer.
The Fishhead told me that what annoys him is that he's never going to catch up to me as an intellectual and that pisses him off. I could always throw a book at him that he's never going to read. It might sound backhanded but it impressed me greatly.
It does in a couple ways. Firstly, like all people who reckon with (the following is how I see my own brainyness) chronic curiosity, phenomenal memory, need for moral certainty and rapid logical skills, I have a sense of my own weakness. We're all familiar with the metaphor of men who are led around by their gonads and women by their emotions, but I am a victim of my mind. It must be satiated or numbed. (Hmm, I could be playing Mass Effect right now). But I am also accustomed to staring the myth of moral meritocracy in the face and watching it cross its eyes and stick out its tongue at me. So by force of habit and prejudice I am lazy. Why try? It's not that I want to be a waste case, and I'm certainly not a cynic. But I'll be damned if I'm going to pretend that trust funders don't have a leg up that I can overcome by sheer force of character and talent. To hell with that. This is Extremistan.
Still, as cliche as it gets, I am flattered and honored by the all of the peasants around me who give the high honors that peasants give one another, even while I pretend to be not one of us. Drunk or sober it's a compliment. Yes that and three bucks will get you a tall decaf cappuccino, but on the other hand, that's all we deserve. Or potatoes and gin.
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