By the Book

A lot of tension in my life has come from social pressure to become an academically learned person despite having no intrinsic desire to do so.

It’s like the institutionalists smell the writer’s musk on a kid and set upon him as though he must be trained from the cradle to defend the king’s life.

So they started me reading beautiful books and then gradually made them uglier and uglier.

Fortunately, at least on some level, there was still a path through to solvency for someone like me, since I was able to withstand this tension long enough to eke out a bachelor’s degree.

First I was a journalist, so I could write about things no one knew yet, and then once I had learned something about the human condition, I was able to move into communicative writing.

But it’s not over at all. Now the social pressure to demonstrate that kind of intelligence just comes from my communities, which are comprised of people from the same strata, since I dragged my ass along with them.

Only now it’s too late to grow up differently.