More About Torsion Angles

Gauche:  (chemistry) describing a torsion angle of 60 degrees (Ed Note: Just kidding - the primary definition is awkward or lacking in social graces; bumbling.)  

So one of the reasons I like to scribble electronically is that it allows me to say things anonymously that I would never say in public.  For instance, I may or may not be impressed with the size of my genitals or the size of my bank account or the size of my car engine but I wouldn't bring that up as a suggested meeting topic or toss it into the mix when I'm eating lunch with friends.  It would be gauche.

I have reached a point in my social life - which unfortunately centers too much on my recovery life and this at a meeting that has migrated away from me, personality-wise - where I'm not being stimulated, being challenged.  I'm not finding the people with whom I'm interacting to be sufficiently interesting.  I have always considered myself sort of a fringe intellectual, in a low-grade fever kind of way.  I'm not reading Proust or studying fingering techniques on a 15th century lute but I do like art and music and literature and theater.  My interest in these things, my knowledge of them, my retention of their essence is partly due to my pursuit of them but also, I think, to a large degree, because I have a natural aptitude for them.  

I used to bask in the glow given off by these talents with some arrogance.  I used them to justify my belief that I was better than someone else but I don't believe I do this any more.  My paternal grandfather has always been a symbol of inclusion for me.  He had an eighth grade education - he was the oldest boy in his large family and he was expected to contribute to the family income when he was growing up in the Great Depression.  He didn't have time to read or listen to music and he didn't have the money to travel so we never had those experiences in common.  But I could bring a bicycle or radio or lawnmower to him and he'd fix it.  Mind you he never studied these things in a formal way but he would peer at the thing for a while, ponder it, mull it over, then get the right tool from his huge workbench, take it apart, put it back together, and it would work.  Sometimes he'd have to give it a go from a different angle if his first intuition wasn't correct but he usually got to the solution.  He didn't think he was better than me - he simply had a mind that could comprehend these devices and because he worked with them all the time he got better and better.  He acquired knowledge and experience which augmented his natural abilities.

I reflect back on the athletes I knew in school.  They had a certain swagger, a certain arrogance.  I am not an athlete.  I'm slow and uncoordinated, with a body that was never destined to be strong and flexible - this is not of my doing, it's not my preference, it's not a fault of mine.  I snorted in derision at the attitude of these guys, convinced that their pride in their athleticism was undeserved.  Sure, they practiced their sports and got better but they had an innate set of tools and skills that I was never going to possess.  From time to time I'd apply myself to a sport and I got slightly better, but not much.  It wasn't in my tool box to be an athlete, I didn't have the genes to thrive in that arena.  It was in my tool box to be an intellectual.  I don't know why I have a mind that retains facts and figures and absorbs what I read any more than an athlete knows why he has good fast-twitch muscle response or my grandfather could see inside the soul of a machine.

I had a long talk with a good friend of mine after the morning meeting yesterday.  This dude far outpaces me in the intellectual department but our interests merge.  A few years ago I had a handful of friends like this who attended the meeting regularly but circumstances have changed so I don't see them very often, leaving me with a different set of recoverees at a meeting that has gotten increasingly large and unmanageable.  This routine and a few others have lost their potency, their ability to please me on a deeper level.

It was a good talk and much appreciated.  He had, of course, no ready answers to these very complex  questions.  He pointed me to a few books, a solution that I loved: "Read this book by someone smarter than me" is always good advice when given to the bookishly inclined.  "Something similar happened to me in this set of circumstances and this is what I did" is always a good response, too.  Not: "Do this and you'll see the light!"  

That never works for me.