Epistemology for Old Academics

One day you are old. Accordingly your scholarship is stuck. The needle of your idea catches in the groove of history. (Young people won’t remember long playing records but imagine a compact disc that repeats itself, some Fleetwood Mac thing they’re playing at K-Mart to keep the shoppers motivated.)

You’re more than stuck, you’re pinched, flayed by books, ensourced, flat–what’s worse, you’re a little “wiggy” as they say in the vernacular. You want to be an administrator.

Alone in your study the books look squat and reproachful.

“Although strength should fail, the effort will deserve praise. In great enterprises the attempt is enough.”

“Damned Propertius!”

Picture him there, raising books over his head, trying to remain strong.

Drink sad preparations: choline with atropine. Buy yourself an abstract chair and read upside down.

“Sublimity is the echo of a great mind.”

Ah, the Longinus recliner!