Every now and then, I am capriciously stimulated to write a little profile piece on one of my Facebook friends. I can't explain it. It just happens. Perhaps owing to a stray association or to some eccentric angle of thought that opens in my head.
Andrea likes philosophy and Kafka. She likes Glenn Gould and Gustav Mahler. I'm fairly certain she likes a lot of other stuff, too. She lives in Vienna. Vienna is that cool place with all the marble statuary. And with streets radiating out like spokes to connect with other streets running in sort of concentric circles. I think every third man scampers around that city at night and then rides a Ferris wheel. Vienna is also where Baron Munchhausen rode a cannonball over to the besieging Turk army. It's where Franz Schubert wrote his miracles. I like to imagine Vienna through that song by Leonard Cohen – “Take This Waltz.”
So...what can I say about Andrea Lente? I barely know her. What the heck am I doing, typing this stuff?!
Okay. She is uncanny. I'll begin with that. When I was her age, I was a confused person, with hot air blowing through my brain. I didn't know hardly anything. It took me decades to discover stuff that Andrea already knows. She thinks about stuff that I had no inkling of way back then. It took a gradual long time for me to become the nearly all-knowing swami that I am today (Ha!). But Andrea is already on her way to becoming a disarmingly enlightened being.
(An aside: I think she and I both think language is a prerequisite for thought and even imagination.)
She seems idealistic to me. Many young people are like that. But with her, it's an idealism cushioned and supported by a precocious wisdom. An expansive sensibility. And a delightful sense of odd humor. I think she likes to smile at funny things. I think she looks askance at a lot of what goes on in the USA. A special kind of nutty fuel seems to drive the engines of this country. A fourth of the population here is in thrall to the irritating and ignorant Sarah Palin. Mass craziness. Oh, my.
Well...Andrea is a perfect example of a flowering of consciousness and a blooming of ironic perspective. As opposed to the analytical insect mind. Or to un-reflective earnestness.
I suppose it's about time to stop typing. But it was fun trying to gain some purchase on a distant mind.
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