Kurt in Dinner Conversation

D.B. went to dinner. The noise was excruciating, boring guests, nevertheless he overheard these snippets:

Graham Greene: 'One of the best living American writers.'

Michael Crichton: 'He writes about the most excruciatingly painful things. His novels have attacked our deepest fears of automation and the bomb, our deepest political guilts, our fiercest hatreds and loves. Nobody else writes books on these subjects; they are inaccessible to normal novelistic approaches.'

John Irving: 'He is our strongest writer, the most stubbornly imaginative. He is not anybody else, or even a version of anybody else, and he is a writer with a cause.'

Tom Wolfe: 'As a writer, I guess he's the closest thing we had to a Voltaire. He could be extremely funny, but there was a vein of iron always underneath it, which made him quite remarkable.'

Jay McInerney: 'He is a satirist with a heart, a moralist with a whoopee cushion.'

Gore Vidal: 'He was imaginative; our generation of writers didn't go in for imagination very much. Literary realism was the general style. Those of us who came out of the war in the 1940s made it sort of the official American prose, and it was often a bit on the dull side. Kurt was never dull.'

Never dull, K.V. The moon has no light of its own.

Vonnegut

Back home. All of this overcome by Kurt's death. Bear with me a while. The world shifted on its axis. I am lop-sided.

A Pretentiousness in Nature

Okay, I should be asleep by now - big trip tomorrow - but no, Dead Beat is still awake and worried about your writing.

Thing is, he still thinks that you most probably think he is distracted by science. Truth is he is distracted by nature.

Listen up to my pal David Quammen: "Let's broaden our thoughts by construing "nature" more carefully and inclusively. A volcanic eruption on Mars is nature. A black hole is nature. The atomic reactions occurring within the stars Mizar and Alkaid are nature. Dark matter is nature...By seeing nature big, seeing it as the realm within in which human enterprises such as science,m religion, and historiography occur, we may free ourselves from most of the old expectations and biases, positive and negative associated with what has commonly been understood by the term "nature writing."...Although nature writing in the traditional sense does include some clarion acts of literature (by Thoreau, Muir, and Leopold, for instance) and many other fine, steady, attentive works of observation and reflection, there has also been quite a lot of ethereal tripe. There have been too many purple effusions by one writer or another standing out in a forest or a meadow, misted by rain or spring pollen or pheromones and transfixed by the spectacle of his or her own sensitivity..."

SHARON BUTULA ARE YOU LISTENING?

Sorry folks but this is where this blog site came in, is it not?

She claims to dislike psychobabble and then engages in it ... much of her 'spiritual' intuition is a well understood cognitive process which she clearly does not understand. Don't get me wrong, she can write well, but there is no room for 'ethereal tripe'. As Quammen warns us "For the good of all concerned, we need the urban and trenchantly disposed to remain receptive to the subject of nature, in both its broad physical sense and its narrow biological senses, and we need the self-identified lovers of nature to maintain an edge of critical intelligence."

Otherwise the subtitle "An Apprenticeship in Nature" translates directly into "A Pretentiousness in Nature."

Quammen has his finger on the pulse. Too much tripe out there. Our job is to go deeper than that. I use Sharon Butula as a metaphor, but if even she cannot hack it (and she can't - she brings hysteria instead and contributes to our misunderstanding of 'nature'), then we have all a long way to go.

Tentin Quarantino - Horace's Od(e)ious Gossip Column

Horace tears out of the tools shed.

"Did someone mention Quarantino?"

"Go back to your semi-comatose state, Horace. Quarantine. Quarantine."

Hudson Beefs up On Quarantine Law

So Hudson does a little research on this whole quarantine thing.

"I knew you were lying," he growls biting hard on his cigar glaring at the world wide web..

"What?"

"Those quarantine laws went out years ago."

"I didn't know Hudson. I swear. We've been away a long time. That's what this trip is all about."

"Look here, Dad Beat."

He shows me the site - The Department of Agriculture and Food.

"Okay, okay."

"All I have to do is answer yes to all of the following questions, and they'll let me in."

"Sounds easy. Let's have a look:

To be able to travel into Ireland with your pet you must be in a position to answer 'yes' to all of the following questions:

1. Are you travelling directly from an eligible country?
Click here for a list of the qualifying countries
If you are travelling from a country, which is not eligible for the passport system your pet must undergo six months quarantine in Ireland. You should contact this Department to arrange an import licence.

2. Are you travelling with an approved carrier?
Click here for a list of approved carriers
Click here for information about un-approved carriers

3. Is your pet over three months old?
The system does not apply to pets under the age of three months.

4. Will your pet be accompanied?
The system does not apply to pets travelling unaccompanied. Pets travelling under this system must be accompanied either by the owner or by a person responsible for the pet on behalf of the owner.

5. Has your pet been micro-chipped?
All pets must be identified by means of a micro-chip. No other form of identification is acceptable. The micro-chip should comply with ISO standard 11784 or Annex A to ISO standard 11785 - if this is not the case you must carry your own scanner.

6. Has your pet, following micro-chipping, been vaccinated against rabies?
Subsequent to micro-chipping, your pet must have been vaccinated against rabies with an inactivated vaccine of at least one antigenic unit per dose (WHO standard) in a manner in accordance with the manufacturer's recommendations. This vaccination must have been carried out in an eligible country.

7. Has your pet been successfully blood-tested?
Subsequent to the first rabies vaccination (usually about a month later but your veterinarian will advise) your pet must be blood tested to confirm a neutralising antibody titration at least equal to 0.5 IU/ml. The test must be carried out in a laboratory approved for this purpose - Click here for a list of approved laboratories. If you keep your rabies vaccinations up to date you will only have to do this blood-test once. However if there is any break in vaccination the test must be repeated. Blood sampling must have been carried out in an eligible country.

8. Have you a passport/certificate completed by a veterinarian certifying to identification (section III), vaccination (section IV) and blood-test (section V)?
If you are travelling from a European Union country, you must have an EU passport for your pet, fully completed, signed and stamped by a registered veterinarian. If you are travelling from an eligible country outside of the European Union you must have the 'Veterinary Certificate for Domestic Dogs, Cats and Ferrets entering the European Community'. This Veterinary Certificate is available from your own Competent Authority or from the European Union website. However if you are travelling from a Non-EU European country/territory it may be possible to use the EU passport instead of the certificate. For details please phone the help-line, details below.

9. Has at least six months expired since a successful blood-test?

10. Has your pet been only in an eligible country during this six months?
Your pet may enter Ireland only when at least six months has expired since a successful blood-test. This provision is to ensure that your pet is not incubating rabies.

If your pet has had a break in its vaccinations and has had to repeat the blood-test, six months must pass from the date of the most recent test before your pet can enter Ireland.

If your pet has spent any time in a country that is ineligible for this system, please consult us (contact details below) about the conditions that will apply.
11. Has your pet been treated for tick and tapeworm between 24 and 48 hours before check-in at ferry terminal or airport?

Between 24 and 48 hours before you check-in for travel you must bring your pet to a registered veterinarian to be treated against tick and tapeworm. This is to prevent a risk of potentially serious disease entering Ireland. The tick treatment must be other than by a collar impregnated with acaricide. The tapeworm (echinococcus multilocularis) treatment must contain praziquantal as an active ingredient.

The veterinarian must complete the relevant sections of the passport/certificate, i.e section VI (tick) and section VII (echinococcus), noting down the time of treatment as well as the date.

If you are able to answer 'yes' to all eleven questions above, your pet may enter Ireland without undergoing quarantine."

"Pour me another port," Hudson growls. "I got lost back there somewhere around eligible country."

"You see Hudson. I was only thinking of you."

"You didn't want to fill out the forms, did you Dad?"

"Hudson!"

"You didn't."

"I already had the taxes Hudson. It's a lot of paperwork. I'm not good at this sort of thing."

"You don't deserve me. You truly don't."

Hudson's In A Huff

Hudson is peeved.

"What do you mean I am not going to Ireland with you?" He puts his port glass down harshly on the study.

"Well, Hud, you see old pal, it's this quarantine thing."

"Go on..."

"Dogs... well pets in general..."

"Yes..."

"They have to... you know....cages and all that."

"Gitmo!"

"Well not exactly."

"What do you mean, not exactly? Do I get access to a lawyer? Is water boarding outlawed?"

"Hudson it's this whole infection thing."

"Oh no, Dad, not more virus nonsense."

"No, Hudson. I'm talking rabies that sort of thing."

"They infect you with rabies...?"

"No Hudson, they are afraid you might infect them!"

"You Irish are weird, right? I've had my rabies shots, I've had every possible vaccination known to dog kind, I've even had my testic....."

"No, no, no, no. Don't go there Hudson. Don't go there."

"The wee Irish collie-eens are safe is what I'm saying."

"I don't make the rules, Hudson."

"You're afraid I'll upstage you."

"Hudson!"

"Yes, you are. Dead Beat arrives at Dublin airport with no one to meet him and the whole Irish Chapter of the Hudson International Fan Club are there to cheer me on."

"That's not it, Hudson."

"You're lying , Dad. I always know when you are lying."

Dead Beat Goes Home

Dead Beat as you well know has more than a little Irish blood in him (90% proof). So it should probably come as no surprise that with St Patrick's Day out of the way that he would find himself winging his way back home. But Dead Beat considers it quite the surprise.

In fact the Mrs Dead Beat and all the little Dead Beats are going with him - or is it that he is going with them?

So lest I get distracted and begin to neglect my blog - take it as an opportunity to explore the archieves. There is a wealth of learnings in there - plunder it as you would an Iraqi museum after an American liberation.

The Dump - Thom Gunn

He died, and I admired
the crisp vehemence
of a lifetime reduced to
half a foot of shelf space.
But others came to me saying,
we too loved him, let us take you
to the place of our love.
So they showed me
everything, everything
-- a cliff of notebooks
with every draft and erasure
of every poem he
published or rejected,
thatched already
with webs of annotation.
I went in further and saw
a hill of matchcovers
from every bar or restaurant
he'd ever entered. Trucks
backed up constantly,
piled with papers, and awaited
by archivists with shovels;
forklifts bumped through
trough and valley
to adjust the spillage.
Here odors of rubbery sweat
intruded on the pervasive
smell of stale paper,
no doubt from the mound
of his collected sneakers.
I clambered up the highest
pile and found myself
looking across not history
but the vistas of a steaming
range of garbage
reaching to the coast itself. Then
I lost my footing! and was c
arried down on a soft
avalanche of letters, paid bills,
sexual polaroids, and notes
refusing invitations, thanking
fans, resisting scholars.
In nightmare I slid,
no ground to stop me,

until I woke at last
where I had napped beside
the precious half foot. Beyond that,
nothing, nothing at all.

The Butcher's Son - Thom Gunn

THE BUTCHER'S SON by Thom Gunn

Mr Pierce the butcher

Got news his son was missing

About a month before

The closing of the war.

A bald man, tall and careful,

He stood in his shop and found

No bottom to his sadness,

Nowhere for it to stop.

When my aunt came through the door

Delivering the milk,

He spoke, with his quiet air

Of a considerate teacher,

But words weren't up to it,

He turned back to the meat.

The message was in error.

Later that humid summer

At a local high school fete,

I saw, returned, the son

Still in his uniform.

Mr Pierce was not there

But was as if implied

In the son who looked like him

Except he had red hair.

For I recall him well

Encircled by his friends,

Beaming a life charged now

Doubly because restored,

And recall also how

Within his hearty smile

His lips contained his father's

Like a light within the light

That he turned everywhere.

What Is Art - Leo Tolstoy

So Leo old chum, what is art?

"Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man's emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity."

Metaphysicians, aesthetical physiologists... more Leo... more...

"Art begins when one person, with the object of joining another or others to himself in one and the same feeling, expresses that feeling by certain external indications. To take the simplest example: a boy, having experienced, let us say, fear on encountering a wolf, relates that encounter; and, in order to evoke in others the feeling he has experienced, describes himself, his condition before the encounter, the surroundings, the woods, his own lightheartedness, and then the wolf's appearance, its movements, the distance between himself and the wolf, etc. All this, if only the boy, when telling the story, again experiences the feelings he had lived through and infects the hearers and compels them to feel what the narrator had experienced is art. If even the boy had not seen a wolf but had frequently been afraid of one, and if, wishing to evoke in others the fear he had felt, he invented an encounter with a wolf and recounted it so as to make his hearers share the feelings he experienced when he feared the world, that also would be art. And just in the same way it is art if a man, having experienced either the fear of suffering or the attraction of enjoyment (whether in reality or in imagination) expresses these feelings on canvas or in marble so that others are infected by them. And it is also art if a man feels or imagines to himself feelings of delight, gladness, sorrow, despair, courage, or despondency and the transition from one to another of these feelings, and expresses these feelings by sounds so that the hearers are infected by them and experience them as they were experienced by the composer."

So...? What is art?

"We are accustomed to understand art to be only what we hear and see in theaters, concerts, and exhibitions, together with buildings, statues, poems, novels. . . . But all this is but the smallest part of the art by which we communicate with each other in life. All human life is filled with works of art of every kind - from cradlesong, jest, mimicry, the ornamentation of houses, dress, and utensils, up to church services, buildings, monuments, and triumphal processions. It is all artistic activity. So that by art, in the limited sense of the word, we do not mean all human activity transmitting feelings, but only that part which we for some reason select from it and to which we attach special importance. "

Dead Beaters, if you are going to create art, the least you can do is figure out what it really is.