Of the gift of knowledge, I have some, gained through study: a programme of unstructured self-administered learning which I make no attempts to pass on. For I lack that skill too: I cannot teach. I can only absorb. Though what I absorb (and later remember) could also be called into question. It's there, I make notes on, I write articles about, it's gone. The brain, or my brain, can only soak so much up, and the room it makes never expands. What remains is fragmentary: thousands of words float with picture memories.
I cannot quote. I cannot recite. From memory. Though if I see the front cover of a book I can tell you if I've read it but only if it's that very edition. If it has a different cover it might only seem familiar, so that my memory of it will only kick in upon reading. My memory, you see, needs prompting. And some book covers are so attractive they beg for the text, even if the text's already been read, to be read again. My memory, then, is tactile, too, which as it turns out is not conducive to a Covid environment or the digital age.
As a person, a whole person, I don't think I'm compatible either. I like the antiquated. Tales of romance and chivalry. Old French, of the twelfth century, translated into English. Philosophical wanderings with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Michel de Montaigne. And Voltaire. I start somewhere, then more accumulates. I don't quite know what trail I'm on, but it seems I'm following one, which stops as suddenly as it began. I have studied all I needed to know at this present time. A new opening then appears which leads god knows where...and a new quest to know sets itself in motion.
There is more country ahead, more words that I may enjoy but might not later remember, nor even the page I found them on, yet I will know that they are there, still there, waiting at some other junction to be thought of again, and maybe rediscovered. I am shaped by what I learn. I may not borrow in words, but I borrow in essence; and these borrowings will in time become mine and not the author's. Montaigne, if memory serves (and it may not), believed something similar. Knowledge, I think he said, has no other aim.
Knowing by heart was not Montaigne's idea of knowledge, for being able to retain is not necessarily to understand; some knowledge, too, needs to be applied. Theory in some things is all very well, but it doesn't make you an expert, your understanding also has to be set to work. Through 'play' you might find a better way suits, as there is never just one way of doing something. You should never be told there is, particularly if the outcome, the end goal, is the same. What then does it matter how you get there?
When it comes to learning of the self, Man's in general, I, however, mostly lean on a bookish foundation rather than demonstration or verbal instruction, for it seems to me you can learn a lot about the self (and indeed your own) from other authors scribblings. They can, in fact, corroborate what you yourself may have felt at one time or another. The period they lived in matters little, though often the insights they provide are just as fascinating. Through them we learn: we have not come such a long way as we thought. For example, the power of the mind - commonly known today as the 'placebo effect' - was known of in the 1500s and made much use of. The imagination has been seen for a long time as both a gift and a scourge.
And so it is. There are no words truer than this. Or perhaps there are...? for I've said this for effect, which some might say is eloquence making itself felt, because such words are only spoken, or in this case written, to draw attention to themselves. But effect was not my only reason, since I think I also believe this is so although I couldn't tell you neatly why, which suggests I am not yet ready to deliver it outwardly.
In the pursuit of knowledge there is always more country ahead.
Picture credit: Country lane with two figures, 1851, Vincent van Gogh.
Written August 2020.
