I met Blog of Stupid in America while I was out wandering around in the woods. I had a backpack on. Inside the backpack were bugs with thermodynamic politics on their minds. I liked them.
Blog of Stupid in America was standing on one leg on the bank of a small stream. I handed him a kitten. He said "thank you," and put the kitten down on a paper plate with capers and ice cream cones.
I could hear traffic in the distance. The cars were carrying people to Christmas parties. It was August.
"Do you come here often?" I asked Blog of Stupid in America.
"Did you know that crawdads appreciate Bach on a level we cannot even begin to understand?" he asked me back.
Of course, I had no idea. I had no children, either. That was why I had the kitten. The kitten was on the ground, watching the crawdads.
"My uncle was a flagpole," Blog of Stupid in America said. He tossed a lifetime's supply of Tic Tacs into the creek. "Doorknobs are actually intelligent beings from Chicago. Did you know that?"
Naturally, I had no idea. I had no pants, either. That was why I wore shorts. It was hot in the woods because it was August.
"I'm writing a parody of an author on my Blog," I told Blog of Stupid in America. "What should I write about?"
Blog of Stupid in America spun on one knee for ten minutes before answering.
"What was his stuff like?" He showed me that he was serious by handing the kitten a marble. The kitten seemed to like it. He was orange and stripey and had fuzzy little triangular ears.
"Strange," I said. "I think he was on drugs."
Blog of Stupid in America took some drugs. "Very tasty," he said. The kitten seemed to appreciate that. He rolled onto his back and hummed Tchaikovsky to the clouds.
"It was nice meeting you. I have to go now because there are things I must do back home. It's going to be Christmas soon," I said.
"Waffle pie," said Blog of Stupid in America. It was August, and the moon was out.
6 comments:
Richard Brautigan is a real author, and he writes stuff just like this. It's hard to decide whether or not I understand it. On one hand, he might just be sort of pumping out thoughts and ideas over a very unstable and interference-prone brain-hand connection. And on the other hand, he could be some sort of Zen genius writing the things that we all think and feel but cannot express adequately while using words the way the dictionary says we should be using them.
Or maybe he was just crazy. And that's interesting too.
He was all those things, of course, the operative word being "was". This blaag entry is a wonderful little homage to an influential but painfully disordered writer.
Even if someone reading this post knows nothing of Brautigan, it still works on the level of experimental art-film script, like Barney's film festival entry in that old Simpsons episode. Either that or it's a very interesting dream.
"F" is short for "FD's FD"
So I read a little of Brautigan's stuff. From what I could tell, FooD does a good job of recreating his style. I'm not sure I know how I feel about it. On the one hand, I've always admired people who look at the status quo and say, "Why?"
"Because that's how it's done," reply the "experts."
"Yeah, but...why?" asks the visionary.
On the other hand, the Brautigan style reminded me of a thought stream that someone wrote down and was too lazy to form into actual prose. Also, rebelling against "rules" isn't always good. Sometimes they exist for good reasons.
In other words, the rebels end up performing the same rituals they wanted to escape, only in reverse.
"Why?" asks the public.
"Because I'm not supposed to!"
"Yes, but...why?"
Indeed, TSB. Which is why when I read stuff like this (I've just come to the poetry part of the Brautigan book I'm reading), I do not consider it "deep" or "meaningful" or "life-affirming".
Those are adjectives applied to nonsense by people who consider their imaginations to be better than yours and their sense of wonder more attuned than yours.
For example, I say The Lord of the Rings is dull. The Good Imagination Person will tell me that it's because I'm not imaginative enough to be drawn into the story.
I reply that if the story was better, I wouldn't NEED to imagine it being better.
Back to Brautigan: I say it's nonsense. But it's interesting nonsense. It doesn't have to be any more than that to be entertaining. In fact, the more "meaning" you try to tag on it, the more cheated you feel when you can't actually find it.
Oh, and one piece of his I read last night actually had the word "crawdad" in it. I LOLd.
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