Literate part of the mind that dogs me, were I to engage in dualism--what the Buddha tells us not to do--I might be down on things myself.  A poor effort.  Laziness.  Foolish idle years.

A friend of a friend comes to the bar, wine tasting night.  A very quiet Mardi Gras;  we get to chat.  "You're an intellectual," she says.   "You get to watch people interact, watch people open up, start to talk."  She's put off by the cheekiness of the man who sat down next to her, an Englishman in a ribald mood who has just completed a big project.  But there are good conversations, that aspect aside, about people and their own intellectual history, a hint of their spiritual life.  People who hang out in bars are quite intelligent, Shane MacGowan says, from the talk, from spending time in their own heads, while other people go about professions and things like that.  "You're an observer," she tells me.

And later on, when she leaves, I think her for helping me feel okay with my job of serving people.  She's lived in different parts of the world, Russia, England, France, Alabama...  She strikes one as wise, and that helps too.

Is it 'real,' what I do, any more real than anything else?  Yes, and no, or neither.  But, in a comfortable place, I would say, people do open up.  They do share things.  They engage in conversation, talk a bit about their life and experiences, like Jake tells about taking his young daughter on a camping trip to Chincoteague.  Everyone else is cooking hamburgers and hotdogs;  he's grilling a rack of lamb.

I guess that's why I do it, to talk to people, to ask them where they have been or coming from, if they are relative strangers, alone with no one to talk to.  "Ted's the smartest guy here," Jake says, more than once on a Tuesday wine tasting night.  We usually have a chuckle over that, as I deny it, as if it were a secret to be kept to not be off-putting, too far out of place, else society would ground, grind to a halt, here in Washington, DC.

A few words help.  Empowered when I get home, I pick up my mom's book, about Literacy and Women in the Nineteenth Century and letter writing and book collecting, and awake to how excellent it is, and how beautifully written and thoroughly engaging, (even) with all its academic paper references that are necessary to establish its foundation and progress.  And for a time, that intellectual life appears as suddenly quite useful to a society, one dumbed down by constant checking of a ringing, beeping, buzzing, vibrating in the pants pocket.  That life of the mind and ideas, a salvation, light, an endeavor to bring out the full power of the human mind and soul, and to celebrate the beauty of books and correspondence and words.  And maybe that literary light, that spark, shines down even to where I am and spend my time, 'professionally,' beneath the blabber and the rot, the pleasantries, the postures and stances.

Drop me down a rope, mom.  If only as something to hang on to, as the grind of serving plates, clearing dirty ones, getting the glassware washed and put away, the wine served, goes on and on and on and on and on.

(This is part of the secret appeal of Casablanca, that Rick, played by Bogart, is not just a smart guy, but an intellectual.  And also the inspiring beauty of Dostoyevsky, the intellectual life of Karamazov brought to school children, of the same in the context of daily life in a Siberian prison camp.)

How brave she was to go off later in life and get her PhD, to bring out what was inside of her.  Every intellectual life is a journey, like Dante's, like Lord of the Rings, like Lincoln's...





I don't blame anyone for attempting a moment of serenity in this world.  Of course some ways are a lot better and long lasting and fruitful than other ways, like meditation, contemplation of Buddha's thoughts.  There is an intellectual quality to that, I should think.