Self-Awareness

Before getting to the point of this entry, I have to talk about the shock of something I discovered. It was very disconcerting.

A lone, gray chest hair.

Chest hair?!? And just a week and a half after the 30th birthday. Ok, so I have noticed flecks of gray appearing on the sides of my head, concealed to some extent by the fact that my hair is real short. But, chest hair? This is getting out of control. I am turning into a poor man's Anderson Cooper. With the same flat wit, but without the Vanderbilt as a parent.

Moving on to the point of this post, tomorrow, I hit the road for work (a two day West Coast swing). During which, when I am ignoring the files I am carrying, I do some of my intense pleasure reading. Up this trip: Martin Page's "how i became stupid." My ex-girlfriend gave it to me for my birthday, remarking that she read the back cover and said she thought it was the perfect book for me.

The cover starts, "Tortured by the depth of his own intellect, plagued by his over-whelming self-awareness...Antoine, an Aramaic scholar, is at the end of his rope, with only one viable solution in sight: he must denounce his intelligence..."

Yes, ex-girlfriend noted, she was being ironic. "Your abdication of intelligence is not a choice, really."