the inner fake

I don't know what my best side is, honest, but from here, all that 'inwardness' does look awfully fake.

'I’m having trouble deciding whether I understand the world better now that I’m in my seventies than I did when I was younger, or whether I’m becoming more and more clueless every day. The truth is somewhere in between, I suspect, but that doesn’t make me rest any easier at night. Like others growing old, I had expected that after everything I had lived through and learned in my life, I would attain a state of Olympian calm and would regard the news of the day with amusement, like a clip from a bad old movie I had seen far too many times. It hasn’t happened to me yet.'
---Charles Simic, NYRB.

What have you learnt over the years? Nothing. But all those books ? Even less than nothing.Well, at least they helped kill some time. The Ph.D. , for Pete's sake? What a joke that was...and how easily you complied!The oddest thing is how people without an 'education' think that people with an 'education' are clever.

Cleverness was never what it was about. Would you give up your books, then, for a different life? Yes (except for the books with pictures. I like those).

But what else could you do ? (don't worry, this is just me talking to myself). I mean, you're even more useless in 'real' life than you are in the fake, academic one! Touché, old friend (er..remind me not to talk to you again!).

Would it have mattered if you'd been a good academic, though? Probably not. Then I'd be even more brain dead.And your use of the past tense is very sly, if you don't mind me saying. What if you'd actually read a book, you know, like from start to finish? If it ain't good enough for Samuel Johnson, it ain't...(note to former self: a fragment to shore up the ruins).

Can you be serious for a moment?

Yes, okay, for a moment.

Do you have to be East European to realize the absurdity of life? No, only to realize the absurdity of words like 'East European'.

Is there a streak of madness in your family? Well, now you mention it, old dougal...but no, it's what's saved us all these years. How do you work that out? Everyone has to work it out for themselves.