Why There Are Any Bluebirds Left I Don't Know

I have been called a Luddite.

I welcome it.

Do you know what a Luddite is?  A person who hates newfangled contraptions.  Ned Ludd was a textile worker in England at around the start of the nineteenth century who busted up a lot of new contraptions -- mechanical looms that were going to put him out of work, that were going to make it impossible for him with his particular skills to feed, clothe, and shelter his family.  In 1813 the British government executed by hanging seventeen men for "machine breaking," as it was called, a capital crime.

Today we have contraptions like nuclear submarines armed with Poseidon missiles that have H-bombs in their warheads.  And we have contraptions like computers that cheat you out of becoming.  Bill Gates says, "Wait till you can see what your computer can become."  But it's you who should be doing the becoming, not the damn fool computer.  What you can become is the miracle you were born to be through the work that you do.

Progress has beat the heck out of me.  It took away from me what a loom must have been to Ned Ludd two hundred years ago.  I mean a typewriter.  There is no longer such a thing anywhere.  Huckleberry Finn, incidentally, was the first novel ever to be typewritten.

In the old days, not long ago, I used to type.  And, after I had about twenty pages, I would mark them up with a pencil, making corrections.  Then I would call Carol Atkins, who was a typist.  Can you imagine?  She lived out in Woodstock.  New York, which you know was where the famous sex and drugs event in the '60s got its name from (it actually took place in the nearby town of Bethel and anybody who says they remember being there wasn't there.)  So, I would call up Carol and say, "Hey Carol.  How are you doing?  How is your back?  Got any bluebirds?"  We would chit-chat back and forth -- I love to talk to people.

She and her husband had been trying to attract bluebirds, and as you know, if you have tried to attract bluebirds, you put the bluebird house only three feet off the ground, usually on a fence along a property line.  Why there are any bluebirds left I don't know.  They didn't have any luck, and neither did I, out at my place in the country.  Anyway, we chat away, and finally I say, "Hey, you know I got some pages.  Are you still typing?"  And she sure is.  And I know it will be so neat, it will look like it was done by a computer.  And I say, "I hope it doesn't get lost in the mail."  And she says, "Nothing ever gets lost in the mail."  And that in fact has been my experience.  I never have lost anything.  And so, she is Ned Ludd now.  Her typing is worthless.

Anyway, I take my pages and I have this thing made out of steel, it's called a paper clip, and I put my pages together, being careful to number them, too, of course.  So I go downstairs, to take off, and I pass my wife, the photo journalist Jill Krementz, who was bloody high tech then, and is higher tech now.  She calls out, "Where are you going?"  Her favorite reading when she was a girl was Nancy Drew mysteries, you know, the girl detective.  So she can't help but ask, "Where are you going?"  And I say, "I am going out to get an envelope."  And she says, "Well, you're not a poor man.  Why don't you buy a thousand envelopes?  They'll deliver them, and you can put them in a closet."  And I say, "Hush."

So I go down the steps, and this is on 48th Street in New York City between Second Avenue and Third, and I go out to this newsstand across the street where they sell magazines and lottery tickets and stationery.  And I know their stock very well, and so I get an envelope, a manila envelope.  It is as though whoever made that envelope knew what size of paper I'm using.  I get in line because there are people buying lottery tickets, candy, and that sort of thing, and I chat with them.  I say, "Do you know anybody who ever won anything in the lottery?"  And, "What happened to your foot?"

Finally I get up to the head of the line.  The people who own this store are Hindus.  The woman behind the counter has a jewel between her eyes.  Now isn't that worth the trip?  I ask her, "Have there been any big lottery winners lately?"  Then I pay for the envelope.  I take my manuscript and I put it inside.  The envelope has two little metal prongs for going through a hole in the flap.  For those of you who have never seen one, there are two ways of closing a manila envelope.  I use both of them.  First I lick the mucilage -- it's kind of sexy.  I put the little thin metal diddle through the hole -- I never did know what they call them.  Then I glue the flap down.

I go next to the postal convenience center down the block at the corner of 47th Street and Second Avenue.  This is very close to the United Nations, so there are all these funny-looking people there from all over the world.  I go in there and we are lined up again.  I'm secretly in love with the woman behind the counter.  She doesn't know it.  My wife knows it.  I am not about to do anything about it.  She is so nice.  All I have ever seen of her is from the waist up because she is always behind the counter.  But every day she will do something with herself above her waist to cheer us up.  Sometimes her hair will be all frizzy.  Sometimes she will have ironed it flat.  One day she was wearing black lipstick.  This is all so exciting and so generous of her, just to cheer us all up, people from all over the world.

So I wait in line, and I say, "Hey what was that language you were talking?  Was it Urdu?"  I have nice chats.  Sometimes not.  There is also, "If you don't like it here, why don't you go back to your little tinhorn dictatorship where you came from?"  One time I had my pocket picked in there and got to meet a cop and tell him about it.  Anyway, finally I get up to the head of the line.  I don't reveal to her that I love her.  I keep poker-faced.  She might as well be looking at a cantaloupe, there is so little information in my face, but my heart is beating.  And I give her the envelope, and she weighs it, because I want to put the right number of stamps on it, and have her okay it.  If she says that's the right number of stamps and cancels it, that's it.  They can't send it back to me.  I get the right stamps and I address the envelope to Carol in Woodstock.

Then I go outside and there is a mailbox.  And I feed the pages to the giant blue bullfrog.  And it says, "Ribbit."

And I go home.  And I had one hell of a good time.

Electronic communities build nothing.  You wind up with nothing.  We are dancing animals.  How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something.  We are here on Earth to fart around.  Don't let anybody tell you any different.

I woke up this morning, staggered into the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee.  Went upstairs all sleepy faced and turned on the computer.  I got a message from a friend that Kurt Vonnegut had died.

Oh no!

I sat there drinking my coffee, staring at the computer screen for a few minutes and went into the bedroom.  The Skimmer was in the shower.  I opened the door.

"Skimmer?"

"Yeah?"

"Kurt Vonnegut died."

"I know.  I was going to tell you.  I'm sorry."

"Hmmm."

I went in Blue Kid's room to try to wake him up.  He's going to Columbus for the weekend with his Youth In Government group from school.  I wasn't allowed to pack his things last night because he says he's old enough to pack his own things and it was an hour before I had to drop him off at the bus this morning and he still wasn't packed.  I grabbed the two dress shirts he had put on the banister last night and went back in my bedroom to iron them.

I was ironing his white button-down when The Skimmer came into the room.

"I feel melancholy."

"I know.  I sort of felt like you knew Kurt Vonnegut."

"Me too.  I don't know why.  He was one of those people that I always thought I'd meet one day for some reason.  Sounds strange.  I don't know why I felt that way."

But I do kind of know why I felt that way.  Because of how he described the girl behind the counter at the postal convenience center at the corner of 47th Street and Second Avenue.  When I think of Kurt Vonnegut, I always think of him standing there looking at the girl from the waist up with the black lipstick and her looking back at a cantaloupe.  I've always felt like I was right there.

I had fun typing that chapter above from Vonnegut's book, "A Man Without A Country."  It didn't make me sad, it made me happy.

And it looks so neat, like it had been done by a computer.

Comments

[Claire]

Thank you for the snippet.

[Brando]

That's a great excerpt from him, BG, and a very nice post.

[Chuckles]

Nice.

[billy pilgrim]

It reminds me of the first time I read a post by this one blogger, a (something color) girl in a (something color) state. As I recall, she also had a hell of a good time, and coined this phraseo:

If you don't love the song that's playing, life's not worth living."

Abacab is playing now. I love this song.

I often listen to Genesis when I'm feeling melancholy.

I think Kurt would be an easy guy to talk to. I also got the feeling I might meet him someday; He was almost the only celebrity I wanted to meet. I tried to write something at the home bloggo, but it didn't work out. Writing something for KV is kind of like painting something for Picasso, if you see what I mean.

But I like contraptions. I'd guess we could have a good discussion about the value of contraptions, and which ones are worthwhile, and which ones we could do without. This week, I could do without the telephone.

This has been a melancholy week:

http://empireofthesenseless.blogspot.com/2007/04/how-do-you-say-goodbye.html

Home by the Sea is playing now. I love this song.

Sometimes, you need to blog.

[blue girl]

Hey bp, I can't believe you remember that old post. I didn't even remember it! Until I had read Vonnegut's chapter a few times yesterday. Thanks for remembering.

[Lill]

Through a fluke of synchronicity, I guess, I read this interview a day before KV died. http://www.alternet.org/story/15098/
I found it while searching for antiwar links. I guess the only thing to do is re-read his books and hope that enough of us can carry on whether it's with our writing or with our whole lives.
Peace,
Lill in Maine