sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment

I always liked that Rumi saying, especially since it reminds me of a friend who I'm terrible about keeping in touch with, but would count her as one of the loveliest people I know.

Today's Thoreau blog uses botany as an example, but it seems that it would certainly be relevant to art, culture, everything. I think familiarity and observation have to precede theory. Would it be a disaster to reinvent the wheel for every generation? You end up having to anyway.

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. I do not get nearer by a hair’s breadth to any natural object so long as I presume that I have an introduction to it from some learned man. To conceive of it with a total apprehension I must for the thousandth time approach it as something totally strange. If you would make acquaintance with the ferns you must forget your botany.

I remember taking a class on poetry at Harvard and another friend of mine, who wasn't a literature person at all, asked about explication and theory, "Isn't this kind of killing the poems?"

Theory can be very rewarding and provide interesting entryways into a text, but I still haven't decided.