guff

Bright Neon Meat

I’ve been rereading Kurt Vonnegut’s 1987 novel Bluebeard. I have a small collection of Vonnegut’s writings; a couple signed works includes a limited edition of Bluebeard. I own some of his non-fiction as well, though I prefer his earlier stuff here. It gets a bit gammy reading nostalia, even entertaining nostalgia. By the way, has any writing about Vonnegut ever note his signature includes a rendering of his anus? In Breakfast of Champions (page 5, Dell paperback edition, published 1975), there is an illustration by the author which he claims represents his asshole. In his signed name, at least the ones I have, he’s scribbled what appears to be a cruder version of said image under his name. So you might say — in essence — anyone who gets Kurt Vonnegut’s autograph also gets a piece of his ass. Funny old Kurt…

As I started to say, I’ve been rereading Kurt Vonnegut’s Bluebeard. The main character, Rabo Karabekian, is a one-eyed failed abstract expressionist and multi-millionaire known for works which dropped off their canvas due to a decision to use an acrylic wall paint: Sateen Dura-Luxe, the paint that would “… outlive the smile on the ‘Mona Lisa’.” Karabekian’s paintings, before they chemically self-destructed, were nothing more than fields of Sateen Dura-Luxe with strips of colored neon tape across them. It’s called Abstraction.

Some way into the novel, Karabekian mentions he’s come to see people as little more than this; that is glowing, flexible neon tubes. He’s found that seeing someone this way, in a non-religious, non-theological manner, makes it easy to forgive them for transgressions against him and whatnot. It’s hard to be angry at a glowing purple tube, I guess. He also states that the tube (us) and the meat (our bodies, so presumably also us) are not one and the same thing at all, with each acting according to its own demands, rarely involving itself in the interests of the other, nor holding any power to control or influence its actions. Or such is how I’ve taken Karabekian’s words.

I’ve tried seeing people this way, but it’s hard, and more than a little humorous. I fail not due to a lack of imagination on my part; I just tend to see people as the meat they inhabit, with that other intangible something-or-other that you might call a soul, or spirit, or tube, an add-on but tied to our earthly matter by a knot so strong only death can snap it loose. I believe those ties hold us down more than physically, and make us part and parcel in the body’s doings during life’s run through.

So I think what I’m saying is: the tube can’t claim ignorance and that it’s just along for the ride, waiting to be set free when the canvas self-destructs (chemically or otherwise). It’s as responsible for where its going as the meat is. Oh, happy meat.