I dabble in twaddle?

Dang it all, as if this week didn’t offer enough fretting and worrying to last me a lifetime, here’s a fragment of a message I just got from a prof I know:

Unless they're put in front of me, I do not read blogs as I tend to view them as self-indulgent twaddle.

Self-indulgent. Okay, I guess I just am. Throw me down the tunnel to hell’s doors, I indulge the self in my desire for a creative outlet, for a stab at good, honest writing, for friendship, for community, for all of that – I am guilty!!

But do I really twaddle?

Some are born smart, some achieve smartness and some have smartness thrust upon them

The thing about bloggers is that they have such wonderful “take me back to the old days” impulses. Here I am, posting about ancient dusty trunks and days when mail was gold (see earlier post), and fellow bloggers (here and here) are speculating about what can-should-could-might be used as measures of presidential candidates’ smartness.

Why is this a throw back to the old years? Why I remember this discussion! In my first year in law school, and my extended years putzin’ around graduate school, EVERYONE talked about who is and who is not smart. [Now there’s MY marker of smartness: anyone else ready to boast that they ‘wasted’ 6 years on graduate school, to walk away with an MA and an ABD – which, to my knowledge, is an unrecognized by the accreditation chiefs (who does decide these matters anyway?), useless credential – meaning something I can line my bookshelf with, if indeed I had a bookshelf since I may not be smart enough to READ books given my lackluster grad school credential-procurement record*. But I can post all this and remain unfazed because I KNOW I am brilliant. Basis for this? My parents told me! I don’t place much weight on a lot of their claims, but on this one assertion, I’m going to go out on a limb and stick with you, Mom and Dad!]

And let me throw out some more tailored-to-my-own needs markers of slam-dunk geniusness: I got into every law school I ever applied to (all of one)! And, hold on now, I’m on a roll --I was ranked in the 101 percentile for my TOEFL (the test for non-native speakers of English) scores! I swear! I have the paper to prove it! No, I do not understand what that means either unless perhaps, having passed 100 you are to retreat to the beginning, so it’s like back to square zero and one point into the game. But I got into all kinds of cool grad schools with it so it can’t be that dismal. Okay, I must qualify: I did NOT get into one grad school (it shall remain unmentioned – I hate the place! At least twelve students were preferred over ME! It pains me even now to recognize my inferiority) and at least one school on this short list of a mere five was NOT ranked high on the scale of intellectual coolness (has anyone ever even heard of Carleton University in Canada? I thought it might be fun to live up in Ottawa for a while. I had such interesting criteria of selection, ‘elite’ being conspicuously absent I guess.)

I’m digressing. Back to smartness. I love this! I feel young again! Carter was soooo smart, and Kerry – let’s tally up his smartness assets: hmm, there’s ‘Skull and Bones’ (Skull and Bones? My God, the man should be running for president!), BUT IS HE SMART??

Anyway, I wanted to join the discussion and be part of the blogger gang, so here I am with my very own post on whether or not Kerry is smart. My conclusion: YES HE IS! Basis? I don’t know, he just seems smart.

* Immediately after posting this I received the following email:

Client#: 266Email ID: nlcamic@wisc(dot)edu
Dear Sir/Maddam;From our records we understand that you are qualified in your profession andwe are going to offer you a 1 time offer. Our Univsersity can offer you a Pre-Qualified degree.To obtain your degree with valid transcripts follow this link:http://1highereducation.com Sincerly;Pearlie IngramAdministration Office

I am not about degrees, guys! I'm like Kerry! I have a proven record already!

These days the mail carrier brings only junk mail and bills

This most definitely is a “how times have changed” type of a post. I feel I ought to be writing it from a rocking chair, positioned next to my steamer trunk of faded memories.

Because, in fact, I do have a large steamer trunk (see photo below) filled with letters from my young adult years --letters sent to me when I returned to live in the States to finish my studies here. Apparently, instead of attending to my studies, I attended to my correspondence because there are literally hundreds, possibly thousands of letters there, dated from the years 1973 – 1977 (end of college, beginning grad school – up until the point when I got married; the cessation of correspondence at that moment is in itself a sad statement about how we treat our friends at moments of transition.)

What should I do with them? I am typically not a keeper of paper. It overwhelms me – there is always too much of it and I can’t remember where and what most of it is. These days I throw out as much as I can. I think I can safely say that I do not regret having discarded 99% of all that is now decomposing in a landfill or being recycled into grocery bags.

But the trunk of letters is another matter. It holds all sorts of personalities in one heap of faded paper. There is a small stack from a good university friend who committed suicide shortly after writing me his last letter. I feel I ought not throw that stack away. And the rest?

It’s the entirety that has me stumped: I pick up any single letter (most are from friends in Poland and other distant places) and it is mildly amusing but not much more than that. Quite a number of my friends were, let’s face it, terrible letter writers. I always longed for the personal statements, the ones that contained some small inkling to what was on their minds, an idea, a revelation, a display of weakness, an uncertainty maybe. I know I asked probing questions that sought to elicit these kinds of musings.

But more often than not there would be chronological accounts of who did what and when, gossipy stories and, especially from men, lengthy descriptions of academic work.

Yet the entirety seems to me to be some kind of testament to the transition that I went through as I slowly relinquished my links to my Polish world and connected more and more to people on this side of the ocean.

And so I can’t get myself to simply put this all in ten garbage bags and lay it out with the trash come Wednesday. Still, all that faded paper, locked in a musty trunk…

[n.b.: Though almost all the letters are addressed to me, occasionally there will be an unsent letter written by me. I’m sure I was waiting a decent amount of time to send the next one and the next one. I had firm ideas about how one ought not respond immediately and with five letters to every one that came in. I have no doubt that I violated my own rule then, just like I violate it all the time now in email.]

It sailed with me during my first entry into the NY harbor. Really. Kind of a classic way to begin life in the U.S.