I fear that I'm losing my ability to socialize. I've never been a very good socializer, but now in my 50s I've become more impatient in social situations, and as the conversation wanders here and there superficially, my mind disappears into its burrow and I even resent others for pulling me away from my thoughts.
There are a few causes of this. I'm naturally an introvert. I didn't know this for most of my life and tried to fake being the life of the party. (I often made people uncomfortable.) In recent years I've come to accept this. I'm not a recluse, but I find resonance in Thoreau's statement, in Solitude, that friends force the "musty cheese" of their personalities on one another at too short an interval, not having allowed the friend to acquire "new value."
More importantly, I've become a little bit serious in the last few years. I have urgent thoughts that I've had to break off to get into the car and go out, lately thoughts about the Middle East and Obama and Lincoln. At a dinner party I don't have the ability to express those ideas. Or I do, and someone says something ill-informed or tedious in response. I don't want to lecture friends about anything (my wife has explained that that's rude); so I tend to shut up and go off into my head and then resent my dinner companion for insisting on talking to me and preventing me from talking to myself. I get into a foul mood.
The other night I was at a party where someone spoke about being fluent in Italian. For the next few minutes I tried to figure out all the words of 4 letters or more that you could make from fluent. tune, felt, left, lute, fuel, flute, etc.
I admit that there are class and religious issues here, too. A lot of the people I know are much wealthier than I am, or are even a little entitled. My household is in income freefall, due to the collapse of the media business; and I feel that every spare minute should be going into building my new brand, this website. Also a lot of my friends are Jewish and inculcated in Zionism to one degree or another. They think I'm crazy, or monomaniacal; we can't talk about what I care about, except using tongs.
My wife has long worked with me on these issues. She is more social than I am, and better-bred. She believes in the art of conversation and the principle that you have to sing for your supper; and she's right. A dinner party is just a couple of hours long. Company is a nice thing: you give one another support and you also learn about reality, the world. She is afraid that I am becoming withdrawn, and abstracted from the real world, inside my own head. You're the man from the Planet Mambo, another friend of mine once pronounced. My wife wants me to keep one foot on planet earth.
I try. I met my parents the other night at a Chinese restaurant. My father is involved in malaria research and he went on about his work, what he's discovered. He quoted Einstein on the idea that scientists are creatures of fashion, that when a new modality of research comes along–say, molecular biology–the old approaches, like his own work in cell morphology, all go out the window, even if they still have things to teach us.
Well when my father said Einstein, my mind wandered. I thought of a forthcoming book that Adam Horowitz had told me about, that reveals the depth of Einstein's opposition to political Zionism. He even testified to Congress against it.
So my mind left the conversation right there, and went somewhere else.
We weren't at the restaurant long. We went on to my parents' house. My mother served tea and schnecken, a Jewish sweet, and my father talked to me about a grant proposal he's writing. I haven't seen my parents for a couple months. I offered my father advice about writing, but as he went on in his way, my mind strayed. I wanted to ramble the house looking through my mother's million books for Lincoln books, and get a half hour with one in bed. Then I heard my father say, "But you know what Einstein said–"
I broke in.
"Yes. He said that there should not be a Jewish state in Palestine."
My father sat up straight and looked at me coolly. My father knows how to think. "Yes, I can understand why he would have said that."
For once my inner world and outer world converged in clarity and sympathy. I love company.
