One typo ruins it for me. I can spot it right away, however inconspicuous it is.

Such is my curse.

But luckily I’ve been spared the other curse, the curse of having one’s brain colonised by memes and ideas – other people’s ideas, that is – and being unable to appreciate a moment of beauty without recalling a poem or what was said by a person of note.

I’ve never considered myself an ‘intellectual’ simply because when I’m in the face of the exquisite, I’m stunned and my mind goes blank. I’m as illiterate as one can be. Being captivated means just that: you are in thrall to that which captivates you, body and soul. You LIVE that experience when you are in that moment. Words are irrelevant and if they pop up in your head, they spoil that moment. In that sense and to that extent, KNOWLEDGE STANDS IN THE WAY OF TRUE KNOWING. (Yes, I’ve just stopped short of saying that the more knowledgeable you are, the more reactionary you become.)

When luxuriating in that moment, you do not DESCRIBE that experience by cross-referencing and reciting what other people have said about a presumably similar experience. You can do that afterwards, but not whilst the magic is unfolding before your eyes and all around you.

Flaunting knowledge is not unlike flaunting wealth. We all know what’s missing in someone whose worst fear is that people don’t know they are rich and don’t worship them for it.

Like wealth, knowledge is a means to an end.

This is glaringly obvious in the age of Wikipedia and ChatGPT, is it not?