This is Illyria, lady.

[substitute]

Gertrude Stein said about Ezra Pound that "He is a village explainer. Which is fine, if you're a village."

I, too, am a Village Explainer. I got it from my father. I rediscovered this last night when I found myself giving the 15 minute history of 19th Century American Religious Movements to someone and thought "Why am I doing this? How do I know this?"

My uncle Richard told me once that it's a miracle that I escaped the academic world. He should know; he spent a career in a love/hate relationship with being an art professor.

But it's true. If I could spend an entire life learning things in detail and then explaining them to other people, I'd be happy. I just hated academia because it was too much learning about things I didn't care about and then explaining them to people who had no interest, which is a lifeless task. If my spiritual life wasn't such a minefield, I might have become a pastor. If it paid at all, I might have become a computer trainer.

So by default I've found my true calling. I'm a dilettante, amateur, flâneur, habitué de café, freelance village explainer. Maybe this is a decent way to grow old.

Comments

[eyeteeth.livejournal.com]

I think I might be one of those too, though possibly on a more basic level. I just learn stuff that's really cool and I want to share the really cool with others. Occasionally this makes me a nuisance, as when I'm in a room full of people who just don't care about the thylacine, but on other occasions it makes me useful to have around, as when my roommate was confused about the gift of precisely one hundred and eight dollars a Jewish friend gave her and her husband for their wedding. In the realms of the intellect I'm like a rat or a kitten running from place to place and going, "Ooh, ooh, things! Look at the things!"