Why Observant People All Look A Bit Crazy
Every once in a while, I find myself having an academic moment like many people who fall prey to an occasional senior moment. Sometimes I’ll misplace a pan on the wrong stove and other times I’ll walk into a room and forget why I was there. In retrospect, I’ve never met an academic/professor who’s not a little strange. All of them have that thing about them that gives the impression that they don’t live on planet Earth. During my third year of undergrad studies, I remember saying to my friend that I would always try not to give in to that thing, only to be met with: “We’ll see about that.”
After I started graduate studies, the first symptoms of that thing started to set in. It started with missing a stop on the train and gradually morphed into using my face cleanser as shampoo. One time I even caught myself looking for my sunglasses while wearing them. One night when I was having dinner with my friends and girlfriend, she asked the table: if your life were a movie, who would be the director? And not even five seconds passed before someone said: “Woody Allen directs Robin’s life.” I quickly validated this comment with what had happened on the following day.
I had a doctor’s appointment at 11.00 am with a full research day planned. But when I got into the city, I spotted an auction sign on the top of one of my favourite bookstores: The Hill of Content. A brief Google search revealed that the bookshop in the building, after being there since 1922, was for sale with an uncertain fate. I had about half an hour before boarding a train to the clinic, but I convinced myself that a quick look wouldn’t hurt if the bookshop shut down soon. I entered the store and darted to the second floor via the creaky stairs while memories flooded my senses.
For context, the second floor housed the classics and the philosophy sections. As many bookshop lovers are aware, what seems to infrequent browsers as just another floor of books is a feeling of belonging for the regular. I remembered the floor not just as yet another opportunity to empty my wallet, but also the excitement of picking up my first complete collection of Proust, the annoyance I felt when beads of sweat gathered on my glasses on warmer days and the despair of realizing that an entire lifetime would not be enough to read through all the great classics. Buying a book at the Hill of Content mingles many sensations: the guilt of picking up another unread book, the hope of one day understanding Kant’s three critiques and the giddiness of peeling the price sticker off before enjoying a new book on the train ride home. And on that day, a new sensation crossed with the rest: a transient melancholy from knowing that these memories might soon be just that, a passing story without a physical location.
I got lost in browsing the shelves and was delighted to discover that titles that were impenetrable felt like old pals, inviting me to re-read them. Each visit felt like a litmus test and this time around, what used to be reverence for the heavy classics turned into hearty caresses. In the corner was Truman Capote’s Other Voices, Other Rooms, a novel I read when I was going through a breakup. A few shelves up, there was Joyce’s mammoth: Ulysses, a book I’ve read four times without really knowing what it’s about. Across the room, there was Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, a book I still couldn’t get through even after I graduated with a degree.
Time slipped through the gaps of the window sill as the morning air cooled me down. I picked up Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin and went downstairs to pay. I explained to the cashier, who looked like she was in her 60s, that The Hill of Content was one of the first bookstores I visited since I moved to Melbourne 11 years ago. She smiled and added: “Some of our patrons have been regulars since the 50s.” Just as I was about to leave, I caught her eyes again and we exchanged that same sad glance like it was a secret code for those who live among the pages: the bookshop might soon become yet another story that only exists in print. After a little nod and a little fold, I ended up with a paper bag and felt like I was fourteen all over again: isolated by the discomfort of youth yet giddy to escape into a story. But the reality of adulthood quickly kicked in: my phone buzzed with my doctor’s name plastered over the caller ID.
When I stormed into the doctor’s office with beads of sweat on the lens of my glasses, I realized that the thing happened to me again. It’s another moment when metaphysics overruled the mechanics of the every day, giving way to wonders instead of daily concerns. When I sat in the waiting room with my new book in that brown paper bag, a poem by Baudelaire came to mind:
“Just now, as I raced across the street, stomping in the mud to get through that chaos in motion where death gallops at you from all sides at once, my halo slipped off my head and onto the filthy ground… And then I said to myself, look for the silver lining. I can now walk around incognito, doing whatever nasty things I like, indulging my vices just as lesser mortals do. And here I am, just like you, as you see!”
How many times do we find ourselves bearing the halo of punctuality? How many sights have we missed by living in constant motion with a pre-determined schema? Perhaps, this is the reason why students of life and academics look a little mad to the passer-by. Perhaps they’re not caught up in their minds but have found a way to strip away any familiar ideas about the world through their learning, to the point where lingering at a bookshop, gazing into a snow globe at an antique store and daydreaming amidst the steam of a coffee machine become the norm.
All this to the untrained eye looks a touch bit odd, but for the eternal student of life, it’s merely an exercise of curiosity. All these expressions of that thing might delay a doctor’s appointment or two, but if we ever lose the ability to “walk around incognito” after losing the stern halo of being cold against the world, if we ever lose the love for an old bookshop established in 1922 and if we ever lose the giddiness when we notice something new, can we still call what we’re living life?
