intellect and cleverness

Being intellectual versus being clever. There’s a difference she apprehensively explores. Cleverness works in a tightly packed arrangement; she uses some very common form of it, which she finds in abundance in engineers and programmers, to make moves in her life (like a videogame with made-up rules). It’s a quickness she discovered and exhibited in school, where the brightest always answered first. It’s a sharpness she finds comforting, yet wants to grow out of. It hangs on to her—reminding her of the many occasions when it has propelled her from the contrails of competition.

Now is too late to escape. Her constitution has been altered. She doesn’t have a core that is worth an honest investigation. There’s nothing unknown in her, so there’s nothing unknown in her world. Convenience has turned out to be lastingly seductive; she cannot, is powerless, to leave her arms. What lies ahead?

Will she outwardly ridicule art and abstractness and intellect and the spirit of exploration to quell her inner dissatisfaction with herself? Will she marry self-mockingly? Will she deny her inner misery and dreams and undertake a normal existence? Will she never pursue the intellect and challenge the verdict of fate? Will her life be a series of limp undertakings and therefore protected from the depths and darkness of true exploration?