All through my childhood I enjoyed prowling around my parents’ tall bookcase where the encyclopedias were kept, along with a wide variety of books old and new. I was fascinated by the old books particularly, which my mom had inherited from her favorite aunt after whom she was named. Aunt Carolyn had lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her husband for many years and had collected Indian pottery and rugs, which we also had. The dusty old books were typical of the 1930s, with philosophy, poetry, mythology, fiction and non-fiction titles. I couldn’t actually read these books, but I would flip through them looking at pictures, savoring the old bindings and the musty smell. I was infatuated. One day when I was twelve I picked out one with an intriguing title: The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant. I opened it to the first page and began reading. I’ve mentioned that I was dyslexic. Reading was a real chore for me, and I had never actually read any book all the way through except Hardy Boys mysteries. I had read every one of them in my elementary school library, beginning in third grade. But I had never been able to tough it out through any adult books. Until now. I was strangely able not only to follow the stories about the old philosophers, but was somehow able to comprehend the ideas they grappled with. My mind lit up like a Christmas tree and I was hooked. I just kept reading and reading as a sense of euphoria came over me. My mind was unlocked. In fact, I was puzzled why they seemed to think these philosophical ideas were so difficult. It seemed to me there was a lot of unnecessary struggle over rather easy problems. I had already contemplated the nature of reality and “truth”, the limitations of logic, the importance of symbols and semantics — I just hadn’t realized there was a discipline that had given names to these things and grappled with them. I had found my people.

Book in hand I marched into the kitchen to see my mom. “Mom! I finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up. I’m going to be a philosopher!” Her smile faded and her face took on a look of chagrined pity. “Oh, Honey, there aren’t any philosophers anymore.” I guess I knew what she meant: nobody is walking around in a toga with a laurel wreath on their head, whiling away the hours engaging in Socratic dialogue about the meaning of the word “Justice”. Now we only have career choices like Physicist, Doctor, Lawyer, Engineer. I was crestfallen. The wind had come completely out of my sails, and I made one of the biggest mistakes of my entire life.

I believed her.

I still haven’t forgiven myself for this blunder, even though I know I should. I was only twelve. My mom had a degree from Berkeley. I took what she said on authority. I didn’t know then that taking things on authority was what kept Europe in the Dark Ages for centuries. If only I had asked one of my teachers about it. They would surely have told me that every university offers courses in philosophy, often as a requirement for graduation. Who do you suppose teaches those courses? You can major in it. The world is full of philosophers, some who embrace the label, some who avoid it. At that time I surrendered to the impossibility of doing the one thing that really inspired me, but resolved that whatever I found myself doing after that, I would do it philosophically. I would be a philosopher in secret.

When I turned thirteen my step-mother gave me a book I had never heard of. No one else I knew had ever heard of it either, perhaps because it had only been published nine years earlier. Everyone knows it now: Dune, by Frank Herbert. As I held it and looked at the intriguing cover graphics I felt the weight of it in my hand. I flipped through it: no pictures, only small print. And it was thick. What on earth? She couldn’t possibly think I could read such a tome. She said, “I think you might like it: the main character is your age.” So I began the slog–dictionary at my side. It was slow going, but she was right. I very much saw myself in the character Paul Atreides. I quickly became obsessed with the story, which dealt with topics like arid land ecology, power politics, and deep philosophies regarding artificial intelligence and selective breeding (of humans!). It became my new bible. I had, I just now remember, already managed to read The Bible cover to cover: perhaps in another thread I will explain how and why, and what I really thought of it. This was so much better though, because it was intellectually stimulating and coherent. On the cover of the book were quotes from book reviews, one of which compared it to The Lord of the Rings. That sounded intriguing, so after I finished Dune (it took the better part of a year), I began reading Tolkein. Oh my. By the time I got through high school I had managed to read both trilogies about eight times. I could only read a dozen or two pages at a time, mostly at bed time, with classical music playing on my cassette recorder. Then I would fall asleep.

In my earlier thread (Boom to Bust) I talked about discovering that I could easily get top grades just by showing up to class and paying attention. I wasn’t good at finishing homework, but I would do enough of it to convince myself that I understood the subject. In high school all the cool kids were taking college prep courses, so I followed suit. I was a top student in just about every class. So when my schedule became completely full of music, including before and after school and during lunch as well, I found myself making a cup of instant coffee at ten-thirty or eleven at night to begin working on my chemistry or physics homework. I would finish at midnight or one AM, set the alarm for five-thirty, and do it all again. During my senior year I got sick with walking pneumonia, as one might expect, but it wasn’t diagnosed until after I graduated. But I had no trouble with motivation because my brain was on fire. Even with the grueling schedule, I continued reading on my own in philosophy, mathematics, linguistics, and history. I always had a book with me, which I would pull out whenever there was a pause in a rehearsal or before the start of class. In algebra and geometry there was usually time in class for working on the homework assignment. I would would finish it very quickly, then pull out my book! I remember at a musical theater rehearsal (I was the pianist) whenever we stopped for the director to re-block a scene, I pulled out a book on calculus. Calculus was not offered at our high school, but some of the more advanced kids commuted to the university to take it. Someone saw what I was reading and asked what it was for. I said, “It’s interesting, I want to learn it.” They gave me a weird look and said, “Okay.” Looking back, I think I might have been compensating for a sense of inferiority because I had gotten a late start in taking academics seriously. I wasn’t able to actually take a calculus class until my first year of college, but I did well because I had already familiarized myself with the subject during rehearsals for “Gypsy.”

This all left little time for philosophical reading, but I found time during breaks from school. I liked Descartes, Spinoza, Plato, and Emerson. But I was particularly enamored of two books that I found on the bookshelf at home. One was Out of My Later Years, a collection of essays by Albert Einstein, and the other was Pragmatism by William James. Both sat well with me, raised very few objections. I had finally found a way to harness the madness inside of me and make peace with my weirdness.