Summer Sanctuary

Such simple things of beauty are so cheap. Blackberry jam on lemon poppyseed muffins. Reading a Nancy Drew novel. Reading and writing. And so much thinking. I haven't had a summer like this, ever.

So much thought, and so little said here. Sometimes I forget how to write, and sometimes I remember all too well.

I feel quiet.

I want you to come over. I want to bake something for you. Your favorite. I want to sit with you and read. I'm not likely to say much, but I want to somehow share.

Things have been stormy. The weather. The moneys. Our desire to not let things change even when they have to.

I have stayed calm. Comforting. Strong. And for the most part, I like being so.

However, I also want to be calmed and comforted.

Like I did when I was a child, I turn to books. Paradoxically they excite me and bring me on adventures, but they also make sure things turn out all right. And even if they don't, they let me forget what's really wrong for a little while.

Escapism. Muffins and teas and ghost stories and poems and words that I don't have to say. Words that I don't have to visibly or actually respond to. Words that ask nothing of me other than to bring them in and play with them for a while.

Sanctuary.

Manchego

A post in which I try to explain more self-doubt, and also start to doubt my ability to post about self-doubt. I suspect this will be a raw post. Maybe some salt if we are lucky. For those of you who like it so rare it's still a cow, this is your day.

Manchego cheese. A literary cheese. Nobody knew this at my recent get-together. Nobody knew anything about this cheese, or even why I was being so persnickety about the urgency of its place on our sandwich. Mozzarella was used instead, a fine cheese.

It hurt my pride something great. I think that is sometimes part of why I drink, to get rid of part of my excess pride. I was several gin&tonics in, and had a wide variety of other drinks of that persuasion, when I did something I rarely do and felt some ways I rarely feel any more.

First I felt like I couldn't explain anything to anyone, not even why a certain cheese should be on a sandwich. Second, I was filled with a surety that even if I could it wouldn't matter. And being as my companions were probably also belligerent with drink, and the cheese was in fact not all that important, they confirmed my suspicions.

I did something I rarely do. I lost my temper. Over cheese.

In my defense, no there is no defense. But it may interest you to know that Manchego cheese is quite tasty. I could have bought provolone, it would have been cheaper. I flirted with buying fresh mozzarella, because it was of the same price and tried/true. But there was something so romantic about Manchego. I put my own romantic ideals about cheese over the serious concerns of my guest. Besides, I had researched in Fro's Flavor Bible and discovered that ham goes splendidly with manchego with little adornment therefore needed. Really, though, I wasn't trying to impress my friends (as I would say in this case I should have been) I was enraptured with the cheese quite selfishly.

Manchego comes from sheep's milk. Sheep raised only in La Mancha, in the particular climates known to the area. Manchego is most famous, therefore, for being featured in Don Quixote. A book I most certainly need to read probably in both its spanish and english editions. An idea however that is strung throughout other literature and our culture. An idea that I have always loved in the way that one loves ideas. A man I have always imagined myself as.

So in true form, I fought something that wasn't there. A group of people who I thought did not understand me and didn't even want to. It occurred to me at intervals that I was the one who did not understand my friends and cared more about some stupid cheese than trying to do so. Or more exactly, that I had stopped trying to understand other people through some sense of hopelessness of ever relating.

I woke up in the morning above all else humbled. I am trying, with new hope and vigor, to understand my friends better. I am finding it is not so hard as I thought. There is much I may never know, because they are all complex (complexity being a quality I am drawn to) but I now know enough to realize we are made of similar fabric.

My good friend, Fro, has encouraged me toward reading. Now I am reading like the nerd I am, and it always surprises me when I really start reading how completely it satisfies me.

I don't believe that books necessarily help me understand people. I think they more get me into the swing of understanding characters, who are significantly different than people. But I do believe that books make me more awake and more aware. I do believe that books give me a common language to draw upon. I do believe that books refuel whatever magic there is in me.

So in the end I can admit that it was not the cheese that was stupid, nor the cheese that caused problems. It wasn't even the gin. It was me. Something had gone to sleep inside of me. I had gone to sleep inside of me.

I'll try my darndest not to let that happen again. And I'd like to make it up to you in any way I can.

Intelligence

I was raised with a healthy dose of self-doubt. Are you really being honest/good/hardworking/fair/generous/intelligent, even when you are trying to be? Does the very act of trying to be something indicate that you are by definition not whatever it is?

Inevitably and unshakably I can tell you I am a person who has always been called intelligent. By my parents, by my peers, by my counselors, by my teachers/professors/advisers.

I'll tell you who I have not been called intelligent by, namely IQ tests. But there was even a justification for that, because we all know that IQ tests fall so short of any actual evaluation of intelligence as a whole.

My friends beat me in every game imaginable and consistently, even the game of conversation I would add. But this too gets explained away, clearly I just don't want to beat my friends.

In fact the one area I seem to excel in is language. Even then I lack the punctuation or grammar to be taken seriously in many circles. And just like anyone else there is a vast plethora of subjects of which I can intelligibly say little about. The fact that I can eloquently put a few things into words says no more to my intelligence, in my eyes, than a stranger stumbling over foreign words says about his.

The problem is I have become obsessed with this invisible demon. Is it really there at all, in anyone? But I can see it in others. I see it in the width and depth of their creativity and interests. In comparison I find I come up short and narrow.

Yet, inevitably, the people I meet deem me intelligent. Some have intelligence forced upon them? I have often concluded that while I am not intelligent I am just intelligent enough to approximate intelligence.

I am not trying to put myself down here. I mean this in purely investigative terms. I think too much of the world thinks it is intelligent. If the stupider half were to drop off of the planet tomorrow, somebody'd have to go. I wouldn't trust any human test to determine who they should be, but I have to believe that there is such a thing as intelligence and it does occur in degrees and therefore some people would have to fall off if some superior alien race decided to settle here and judge us. I have often concluded that I would be in this lower half. Right now I am between conclusions, as it were.

All I know is that, so far, I am no giant in the world of intelligence. Even if I were blessed with a bit more smarts, I don't think I have used it toward any true greatness, as of yet. And really, if intelligence is just this thing we are born with or without, then when we praise intelligence we are really only praising luck (as is so often the case in so many arenas).

I have often noticed that I learn faster initially than my peers, but then experience a drop-off, a wall of sorts, that I can't get past. While my peers are busy catching up and then excelling. They perceive me as intelligent because I can understand things more quickly than them, but I think initial quickness in learning is only beneficial if it helps one get further in the end.

Depth, I think I am saying, is where I think the real intelligence lies. And if it isn't intelligence, then it is perseverance I lack, and were better to be persistent than intelligent. Because in the end it won't be the fastest learner who makes his mark on this world, we have enough of those. In the end it will be those who are intelligent enough to apply their intelligence toward some purpose.

So intelligence or no, I lack direction. I lack long term mobility and memory. I lack even confidence or nobility. I lack all the makings of immortality, I deem myself mortal, and yet I long so hard to live forever in some small way. The road to hell may not be paved with good intentions, in fact I have some serious doubts about that, because I don't think good intentions make very good roads anywhere.