CwHD4
[I post once a week, on Mondays. This is the fourth in a
series. The three previous postings might provide context for the
essay, but are not absolutely necessary. If
you wish to be notified by email when new postings are made, add a
note in a comment or send me an email.]
For
Post #4 I offer an essay that was in my book Conversations
With A Hypoxic Dog: essays, stories, and poems.
Le
Bon Mot Aint Worth A Plug Nickel
A
Mexican walks through a desert landscape. He approaches a gnarled
fence post. The post seems as some weathered sentinel standing alone
against the immensity of space and time. Short strands of rusted
barbed wire are wrapped about its base. A sign sprouts from its top:
a shiny, incongruous, aluminum triangle. The Mexican stops to regard
this important landmark. He looks left. He looks right. The desert
stretches infinitely to the curved, purplish haze on the horizon. The
sign reads:
NO
SMOKING
A dog appears. “¿Comprende?”
asks the dog.
After a judicial pause, the
Mexican replies: “Si. Yo comprendo; pero, no entiendo.”
A slippery slope that. Welcome.
Eso es la vida. One understands; but one does not understand.
The dog continues: “If one’s
thoughts, one’s beliefs, indeed, one’s values are built of words
(and how can it be otherwise: The world we see is the words we use,
says Wittgenstein.
(Say the magic woid and ...
Thanks for the input, Groucho. Take a walk).
The dog is smoking a large Cuban
cigar. Wearing a mustache. He takes the cigar from his mouth. His
eyebrows bounce up and down. He winks lasciviously. He says: “If
one’s values are built of words, can they be absolute?” Dog
absently scratches at flea, hind leg thumping. “Wittgenstein
considered the possibility that, for some people, words meant
nothing. (Dog added the italics. To give this notion the
weight it deserves). He asked his students to consider the word
‘board'.
board
To some, the meaning, explicated
here by context, is: He is a member of the school board. To others,
this word means a length and thickness of wood, a plank. To yet
others, Mr. W suggested that the word has no meaning at all.
Decoding---the mechanics, the nuts and bolts, of what we call
‘language’---might take place; but no meaning ensues. The
assumption is, of course, that we automatically (autonomically? like
our heartbeat, or is it more like playing the piano? Or ???) arrive
at Meaning. (HA!) But what if, after the decoding, no words follow,
no denotation, no connotation, nothing. Nada.
No entiendo indeed.
The feeling of being
meaning-blind might well be like reading a difficult passage
(anything written, by that obstinate Irishman James Joyce) only to
realize that your ‘mind’ has ‘wandered’ and though your eyes
have passed over the words and recognized them (most of them) you did
not have the least notion what it all meant.
“Could you turn that damned
radio down? I’m trying to calculate here!” Cap’n Van in a
beastly fog and funk. The Northwest Passage has eluded him. The
Spaniards have been there before him. His young misters despise him.
Navigation is hellish in the rush and swirl of the waters on the
Northwest Coast. Fog eats his spars. He feels bereft. A desperate
ennui. He has only his lunars. He is, frankly:
bored
Dog explicates: “Call it a
blank on the mind’s map. Ideas often rush and swirl. Meaning is
elusive. Biology is simpler. It is Science. Like the pudgy
Vancouver’s lunacy. Observable data, measurable objects, the
scientific method in a nut case. Note well that this method relies
heavily (exclusively?) on facts, knowledge, the lowest rung of
Bloom’s Taxonomy. Higher levels of thinking need not apply. (My my.
Is this a case of the philosopher potshotting the physician? What
would Dr. Johnson say? Pedantic dweebs to a man, the damnable
sophists.)
“Or woman,” barks Dog,
grinning. (The beast, it’s genetics you know. He’s not
responsible. The dog can’t help it.)
Again, Dog: “And so we come to
sex. That phallic pole in the first paragraph wasn’t just for
decoration, laddie boy. Copulation in all its many guises affords
much grist for the mill. And often a millstone about the neck.
Consider the Casual Fling. Brought many a philanderer to grief.”
Now that bit got Cap’n Van’s
attention. The poor repressed soul. Had the men confined to the ship
in Otaheite. For a piece of metal they might have had their pick. Can
we say “mu-tin-y”.
Our Mexican friend has been left
at the post. He seems to have obsessed over the symbol. He is first
puzzled. Then angry. He considers the dog. He scratches his rump.
“Senor Perro,” he says at last, deciding. “No fumar por favor.”
And points to the sign.
Dog rolls smoke from between his
canines and offers this: “What exactly does this 'casual' business
mean? 'Fling' of course provides some context. But. I will abstain
from copulating casually (not my problemo, he leers in an
aside to the audience; all the same, sometimes my cigar is
just a cigar).
A
synonym if you will: occasional, careless, incidental, nonessential,
indiscriminate. The antonym, please: regular, considerate, essential,
formal. A sense of commitment to the latter. Little of that in the
former. Good. Let us think in terms of commitment. The level of
commitment in a relationship then will determine copulation rights.”
Anyone out there in a
meaning-bind?
The Mexican glares at the dog;
then shakes his head. He sighs. “No entiendo,” says the Mexican.
The billboard just down the road
features the reclining figure of a lascivious redhead. She is selling
bottled water. There comes the distant sound of a ship’s bell.
“Tell me about commitment,”
says Dog. “How much is enough? How do you know?”
The man on the horse trots out
from behind the billboard. “I spent a lot of time worrin’ ‘bout
thangs that dont exist,” he says anxiously. “Ya stick yor brand
on some little doggie and she’s yors. Take on a boo-gob of misery
thata way. Yes siree.”
Thanks, Dude.
Who said that? The author
suggests that this is not an interactive piece and would you
kindly mind your own business.
He squints off into the distance.
(Not the author. Pay attention would you? The cowboy. The
referent is quite clear.) “Damn, gonna rain pitchforks. Gotta get
them critters out of them arroyas. Just look at them thunderheads
over yonder. Why, a man I heard of got kilt dead by one of them bolts
out of the blue. It’s a hard life anyways ya slice her.”
He takes off his hat and mops his
brow with a forearm. He exits stage right, a slow trot. The horse
lifts its tail and relieves its bowels.
The stagehands do not think this
is funny. Pain is relative, one says. The misery you feel is the
words you use. Perception is reality.
Who groaned? I don’t care if he
did write the book, if he doesn’t like it he can lump it.
Philosophers. Dweebs to a ...
Yes, well. I apologize for the
redundancy.
Perception is ... (Redundancy!
We've already done that? Damn it all. Enough with the foreplay. Off
with the pantalones.) ... reality. As Madison Avenue knows all too
well; one must sell the sizzle, not the steak. Then you can fob off
some rotten hunk of horsemeat for tenderloin.
Dog winks. “Now there’s an
innuendo waiting to happen.”
No bottom, cries the leadsman.
Cap’n Van groans. Rain falls. The tide runs backwards.
The horse snorts and
stutter-steps sideways to plant a hind hoof in the abdomen of the one
who suggested that pain was relative. This fellow crumples to the
ground. In extremis. The horse had no issue with relativism.
‘Horsemeat’ it found offensive. Geldings can be like that.
Dog laughs, eats smoke,
triggering a coughing jag. “The infectious innuendo,” he manages.
The Mexican ambles off. “Eso es
la vida,” he says cryptically. “Words like watermelon seeds.”
He has grown a mustache. He is smoking the dog’s cigar.
Night falls. Cap’n Van walks on
stage and scans the heavens. In vain. He sighs. He will wait. Until
Hell freezes over. He is committed to getting his lunars. These
overcast skies cannot last forever.
No bottom, cries the leadsman.
The casual observer suggests that
Cap’n Van is nothing if not anal. Navigation is a lost art, notes
the casual observer. If you are not lost, you do not need to be
found. Grinding poverty precludes consideration of one’s angst.
Starvation mutes dislocation. The rest of us can rely on global
positioning systems. The despair we feel is the words we abuse. The
good captain waits for the clammy gray fog to subside. His commitment
is total. The spars of his ship thrust into the void.
Dog howls.
The mustachioed Mexican walks
through some desert landscape. He approaches a cedar post carved with
the abstract figures of whale of raven of wolf. The post seems as
some sentinel standing alone against the immensity of space and time.
A midden mound occupies the foreground. Sensuous wave lap. A shiny
aluminum triangle decorates the foreshore. The Mexican stops to
regard this incongruity. Delicately, he removes the cigar from his
mouth. He looks left. He looks right. The sea stretches infinitely to
the curved, purplish haze on the horizon. The sign reads:
NO
THINKING
The cigar explodes. The Mexican
howls. Dog tosses the bathwater (as well as the baby) at the Mexican.
The lascivious redhead slinks off the billboard and unscrews (dog has
something to say about this turn of events, but he feels he has
pushed innuendo far enough)
her bottled water only to discover empty promise.
The leadsman tosses his lead. He
notes the gurgling water, the ship’s acceleration, the yaw and
sudden pitch, the malevolent rumble of turbulent flows. Distracted,
this fellow's foot misses the cat’s head. He utters a cry of
despair and follows the lead and its line to the dark depths of
Seymour Narrows (50°08’ N., 125°21’W., the narrowest portion of
Discovery Passage, commences about 1 mile NW of Race Point; it is
nearly 2 miles long and not less than .4 mile wide. The shores on
either side are high, rugged and steep-to. Expect considerable
turbulence when tidal streams are running at strength. Mariners are
advised to navigate the Narrows only at or near slack water.)
Let that be a lesson to one and
all: When in doubt, cut some slack.
The loss of lead and line will be
charged against this man’s slops. The twerp. Committed to the deep.
The ship plunges on. Cap’n Van waits. The fog swirls and thickens.
On and on. Waiting. Lured by the flood, she pokes her stem over the
edge of the known universe, totters, timbers creaking, and falls,
silently, into the abyss.
Mein Gott im Himmel. Or wherever.
And so we come to this: dog
scratching fleas, fruitless pursuits, acrid cigars, flights of fancy.
A boogob of misery, indeed. And I'll tell ya what I thank we all be
needin', tell ya without yer askin'. Yup. We kin all be usin' a whole
lot more of this:
