An Inability to Think

 Today the world belongs only to the stupid, the insensitive and the agitated. Today the right to live and triumph is awarded on virtually the same basis as admission into an insane asylum; an inability to think, amorality, and nervous excitability.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, ch. 175

On my trip to Portugal last week I visited and revisited a number of museums, I think I averaged around two a day (and my legs let me know their displeasure in complete clarity). On the museum visits I felt that I was trying to "see" the museums through the eyes of a nineteen year old, as compared to the eyes of a sixty-four year old professor. Teachers always do this, I guess, although it can be a big of a challenge; why wouldn't the students find this _______ fascinating, I do? Maybe a better question is to ask whether or not they will actually "get" Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet? I hope so, because the entire class is based on it. In my imagination - or my delusional dreaming - I think that I would have appreciated Pessoa when I was nineteen. Students, oddly, tend to feed off of my unabashed enthusiasm for works, I think mainly because I'm both sincere and make it clear that they should think it's cool but that I'm not going to try and make them care and if they don't care it, naturally, reflects badly upon them. Strangely, this almost universally works. I want them to understand Pessoa not simply in a kneejerk goth way, but instead as a clarion call for beauty in an increasingly ugly world.