When I say I love to fritter, I get approving nods.
But they’re so misguided.
Yes. “To be great is to be misunderstood,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in 1841, in his essay on “Self-Reliance.”
He cited Moses, Plato, Milton – original geniuses.
He knew my pain, the tears of a lofty soul trapped in a mundane, materialistic world.
When I say I love to fritter, my neighbors think I love to deep-fry.
Not that I oppose the spicy sizzling of a good batch of French fries, a basket of okra, a plethora of plantains. Not to mention tempura, samosas, croquettes and pakoras.
But how can they compare with my major frittering – my pursuing Beautiful Thoughts?
Whenever I have a to-do list of things like scrubbing the sink, I find myself drawn to frittering. I sit at my computer, looking up notorious classmates on Google, tracking celebrities who’ve lost their looks, compiling lists of scoundrels.
I check out their characteristics. I wonder if I could emulate them. I ponder the recipe for greatness.
My frittering is my research, and it is sublime.
