Wittgenstein Wants to Have Fun

That isn't what I meant, said Wittgenstein. The poem is by William Blake. It's about a little lamb, not a little gull.

I know that, said Saint Nicholas. I was playing one of your language-games. Two of them in fact.

What were they? asked Wittgenstein.

In the first one I substituted gull for lamb in a poem, and the second was a deliberate misunderstanding, where I pretended I thought you were talking about the sandwich filling rather than the poem.

Very crass, said Wittgenstein. Please don't do it any more. I'm trying to forget work for a while. Let's go for a walk.

They walked inland, hoping to avoid the wind. They reached a river bank and crossed over a bouncing bridge. Then they followed a little-used trail up the side of a hill. The trail was lined with leg-scratching weeds.

Ouch! said Saint Nicholas. I knew I shouldn't have worn my shorts. Where are we anyway ?

I don't know, said Wittgenstein. But here's a sign.

What does it say? asked Saint Nicholas.

Caution, read Wittgenstein, in a ranger-like voice. This area is subject to seasonal change and trail collapse. In some places there is no trail or the trail has collapsed.

I don't much like the sound of that, said Saint Nicholas.

I do, said Wittgenstein. Come on. Are you with me?

They proceeded along the narrow prickly trail for a short distance, until they were forced to stop, the trail having collapsed.

A number of excited ants began to crawl over their shoes and up their legs. Wittgenstein and Saint Nicholas stamped their feet and jumped up and down. Then they turned and hurried back towards the river.

That was no fun, said Saint Nicholas.

Yes it was, said Wittgenstein. That was fun. Now, what shall we do next?

Insect Adventures

Last night I was watching Tess of the D'Urbervilles on the television. My daughter was sitting on the floor at my feet and I was plaiting her hair. It was supposed to look like Tess's hair but I had done it wrong. I know what's wrong, I said. Tess has two plaits, one on each side of her head. Oh, said my daughter, so she does.

Just then a large ant emerged from under a table and meandered over the carpet towards us. It became disoriented by a cable but recovered its sense of direction and continued to approach. It probably would have passed us by without incident, but Tess of the D'Urbervilles builds up a certain amount of resentment in a person. Why does she have such rotten luck when she's so pretty? Why are all the men so horrid to her when she's so good? I therefore reached down and with the forefinger of my left hand crushed the ant to death. O mother! said my daughter. It was heading towards my bedroom, I said lamely.

This morning I was in the city with my daughter, helping her shop for clothes for her new job. We went into a ritzy-looking shop in Rundle Street called Lisa Ho. Look at this, said my daughter, pointing to an interesting decorative feature on a dress in one of the racks. How unusual it was, a little grey-brown moth embroidered on the left shoulder. Then we realised that it looked too much like a real moth. No, said my daughter, it couldn't be. But when I poked it, it fluttered to the floor and landed near the open doorway of the shop. Where is it? I asked, because I couldn't see it then. I hoped I hadn't killed by mistake. It's there by the door, said my daughter. I was glad. I bent down and shooed it into the street.

The Posse of Ants

When they had finally squashed all the ants the two editors sat back and looked at one another in dismay. Le Bon David picked up the envelope gingerly and peered inside.

Oh look, he said, here's a letter. Let's see what the old genius has to say for himself.

He pulled it out, unfolded it and began to read:


GENTLEMEN! Are you sweating? Are you alarmed? Surprised? Yes, the Divine Dali has more to say than can be conveyed by a posse of ANTS!

So! You let that old reprobate Freud loose on me in your magazine! Do you think I care? No! A Genius does not care what a spiteful old ex-dream interpreter has to say of him. I lie ? Dali does not lie! Dali is ABOVE LYING! And below-lying.

However, a SLUR has been cast upon me, and I shall use it.

I have a passion for bicycles. That much of what the old bumbler said is true. Therefore I demand that you give me equal space in your magazine to write my own column. It will illuminate the BICYCLE, the sweaty drippings, the impotent strivings and the flowing salivations that result when an ARTIST EXTRAORDINAIRE contemplates the bicycle.
If you will not, you may look forward to more Surrealistic outpourings from Daliesque envelopes containing less interpretable and squashable organisms than ANTS!

Now Gentlemen, I know you are going to LOVE,

the scribblings of

The Divine Dali xxx


Le Bon David looked up. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? he said to the VeloDrone.

We have opened up a can of worms, said the VeloDrone, nodding gravely. Goodbye order, goodbye reason, goodbye philosophy, unless we can come up with a plan.

Feedback

The VeloDrone: What's the feedback from the Freud story ? Did they like it?

Le Bon David: They loved it! We've got dozens of requests for Freud to analyse their dreams. I can't understand it. All that ridiculous symbolism. All those obvious interpretations.

The VeloDrone: I know! I laughed fit to pee myself when I read what he said to Dali. You are going on a journey indeed. No wonder Dali stormed out.

Le Bon David: Yes, very funny, but look at this.

The VeloDrone: What is it?

Le Bon David: It's an envelope, and it's addressed to us, see: To the Decomposing Editors of Velosophy. I suppose that means us.

The VeloDrone: Decomposing? What can it mean? Who is it from? Open it!

Le Bon David: Wait! Look at the back. It must be from Dali. See, he's drawn a little caricature of his face, the crazy moustache, the goggling eyes.

The VeloDrone: And he's written his name there as well. Dali, eh? I thought he'd gone on a journey.

Le Bon David: Well, he must have returned.

The VeloDrone: Open it.

Le Bon David: (opening it) Arghh! Eeeuw! Ants! Millions of ants coming out. Quick. Squash 'em!

The VeloDrone: Whack!Whack! Take that, you ants! Whack! Whack! Take that, and that! Whack! Whack!

Le Bon David: Do you get the feeling that the divine Dali is angry?

The VeloDrone: Yes. Oh cripes.

Freud on Dali's Bicycle

What a great pleasure it is for me to be invited by my good friends Le Bon David and the VeloDrone to write a series of articles for Velosophy! Today my subject is The Bicycle and Salvador Dali.

Now, the internet abounds in photographs of Dali's bicycles. These bicycles lean with buckled wheels against picturesque walls, as amusing references to Dali's famous melting clocks. Dali's melting clocks were intended by him to represent the irrelevance of time.

Dali came to see me often in the early days, although this fact is nowhere on the public record. Indeed, why should it be? The relationship between a man and his psychoanalyst is a private affair.

My work on dreams had influenced him profoundly. It was the basis for the movement known as Surrealism, of which he was a leading light. He told me he dreamed of ants, of lions' heads, of fish hooks and of half-opened drawers.

My friend, I told him, these things represent your fears. The ants represent death, the lion's head represents both sexual desire and your fear of the aggression of your father. The fish hook represents family ties, which you are unable to escape, while the half-opened drawer represents female sexuality, of which you are afraid.

Then I shall paint these things until I conquer all my fears, he said grandly.

That is all very well, my friend, but what you really need is a hobby, I told him. Have you ever thought about getting a bicycle?

From that moment Dali became obsessed with bicycles. He painted them incessantly. He painted men in bowler hats on bicycles, men with umbrellas on bicycles, lobsters on bicycles. He bought himself a bicycle. He kept it in his studio, although he never rode it.

He began to dream of bicycles. He asked me what these dreams might signify.

You are going on a journey, I told him.

We had a great debate about the matter. He thought my interpretation was banal. We argued for hours quite heatedly. Eventually I had to tell him that his time was up.

Time! he shouted. Time is irrelevant!

You will not think so when you receive my bill, I said.

He stormed out.

It was immediately after this I believe he dreamed up the story about seeing my bicycle, the red hotwater bottle and the snail, which has plagued me ever since.

Augmented Reality

So, first things first. I have to trim my nails. But they're already really short. I ask Pliny if toenails will do as well. He says the ants will probably like them better.

That's easy. Now I have a little handful of toenail parings, I need to find my ant hole. It's been raining a lot and the ants are underground. But later in the afternoon the sun comes out and I find a promising ant hole. I scatter my toenail parings near the hole and wait to see what happens.

An ant comes out and looks around. She goes back in. This is lucky really because I haven't made a proper plan to catch her yet. I run inside and find a glass. The ant emerges once again. This time she goes up to the biggest toenail clipping and starts to drag it towards the hole.

Quick as a flash, I drop the glass over the labouring ant, who is now my prisoner, along with a piece of toenail. Now all I have to do is extricate the toenail from the ant and the ant from the glass and then suspend the ant by some means or other around my neck.

A thought occurs to me. Does the ant have to be alive to effect a cure? I ask Pliny. He thinks it probably does. Otherwise, he says, the disease cannot be transferred to the ant.

What! I say. Does this poor ant have to take on my disease? Of coure it does, says Pliny, don't you know how sympathetic medicine works?

Well, I'm none too happy about it but I've gone too far to give up now. And my sore throat isn't really all that bad, I tell the ant. The ant looks at me as if to say, whatever, but you'll never take this toenail away from me.

So, to cut a long story short, I go out that evening to a lecture on Augmented Reality, of all things, wearing around my neck an angry little ant pendant that tickles and scratches and scrapes and nips, in a most distracting fashion, and I fail to learn anything useful.

Later Pliny tells me he's remembered that the ant cure is only good for malaria.

Pairings

Le Bon David writes well, says Pliny the Elder admiringly. I liked his first edition. He combines a skill in philosophical argument with a pleasing facility of description which you would do well to emulate.

Thanks, Pliny, I try, but I'll never be as good as him. I liked the way he drew our attention to the little white fingernail shells, and the crunching sounds they made when the bicycle went over them.

Yes, and the repetition of the image in the description of the foam, that was masterful.

It was. Do you know the sort of shells he was referring to, by the way?

I believe I do. The bivalved molluscs known as Pipi. They remind me of fingernails too. Which reminds me to ask, are you feeling poorly this morning? I see you have been wearing a big black scarf wound twice around your neck indoors. And sitting with a blue polar fleece decorated with dolphins folded double and tucked around your middle. That is not like you.

Well spotted, Pliny. Yes I have the beginnings of a sore throat and I'm trying to ward it off by keeping warm. But why did fingernails remind you to ask me that?

Because, says Pliny, I am reminded of a cure which magicians used to say would never fail.

What is it?

They recommend the parings of fingernails be thrown at the entrance of ant holes, and that the first ant to come out and try to draw one into the hole should be captured and attached to the neck of the patient. They say the patient will then experience a speedy cure.

Ant Stories

Speaking of ants, began Pliny the Elder, I recall a story I recorded in my Natural Histories about the ants of India.

Oh really? I said. Tell me the story.

These ants have giant horns. They are the colour of a cat and about the size of an Egyptian wolf.

Quite large then, I said.

Oh yes. These ants excavate gold from holes in the ground in northern India. The people there try to take the gold in the summer when the ants are underground escaping from the heat. But the ants, catching the scent of the Indians, sally forth and frequently tear them to pieces.

The Indians? I asked. They tear the Indians to pieces?

Yes, even though the Indians are provided with the swiftest of camels for the purpose of flight.

With camels! I echoed. Well, that is a most wonderful story. Ants certainly are the most interesting of creatures. That reminds me, I heard a story about ants only this morning, from my son.

Tell me the story, said Pliny.

Well, he arrived home yesterday in the late afternoon and went out into his back garden. He saw what he thought was a black mist in the central section of his back fence. On getting closer he realised that the black mist was actually thousands, if not millions, of ants, marching up and down the fence, having paid a visit to a certain pot that was lying on the ground nearby.

And what was in the pot? asked Pliny.

That was the strange thing, I answered. Nothing but dirt, according to my son. And the ants were not carrying any pieces of food, neither on their way up nor on their way down.

Most mysterious, agreed Pliny. What did your son do then?

He went inside and got some Ant Rid, I said. He sprinkled it around, and half an hour later there wasn't an ant in sight. He said he was sorry he hadn't taken a photograph of the black mist.

Indeed, said Pliny. It is always wise to collect evidence of unusual events. Or people might be disinclined to believe that they happened.

Was there any evidence for your giant Indian ants? I asked.

There was, said Pliny, a pair of horns of miraculous size, suspended in the Temple of Hercules, at Erythrae.

Hot Spot

Yesterday in 43 degree heat, our aircon and thermostat broke down as we were driving home from Mount Barker and we had to call the RAA.

We rolled down to a tiny bit of shade where the few straggly gum trees were closer to the the road. We got out and stood in the shade, on a dirt slope which was home to ants and stones and curled up crisps of bark. We had nothing to drink.

We sat down on the concrete edge of the road next to the car. It was hot enough to burn your bottom. Our clothes were damp with sweat, flapping them didn't help. Ants crawled over our feet. The heat was overwhelming. We felt regretful of all the things that had led us to this spot.

The RAA man arrived after half an hour of this. Can't see anything wrong with it, he said.

We got going again and the car overheated almost at once. We made it to Stirling and bought ourselves a drink of water. The best 78 cents we ever spent. It was nearly all down hill to home from there.

The Long Journey of the Prawns

Once there were 20 prawns caught in China. They were frozen and exported to Coles in Norwood where they were bought by Pliny and Nostradamus for their New Year's picnic the following day. So the prawns had to spend one more night in a fridge.

The prawns arrived at the picnic spot around half past one. Pliny and Nostradamus ate them one by one, first cracking off their heads and tails and peeling off their scales and squeezing out the yellow stuff whatever that is called. The prawns were consumed. But their heads and tails and scales and digestive tracts lay relaxing on a plate.

A seagull, several moorhens and a pointy headed pigeon were stalking nearby on the grass, which grows down to the Torrens pond near the railway bridge, a pleasant spot, with many trees. Nostradamus left the plate on the grass a few feet away. The seagull circled the plate 3 times and nipped at a prawn head. He took it away. He ate it. He returned. He ate several pieces of prawn, and was full. A large and elderly moorhen approached the plate and took a prawn tail. Ate it. The pointy headed pigeon walked up and down, looking at the trees.

Soon the plate was much depleted of prawn ends. Nostradamus tipped the rest onto the grass and poured another glass of wine for himself and one for Pliny. The river pond sparkled with a dull brown sparkle, a Chinese family fished under the willow tree on the other side, a giant fish leapt up, twisted and plopped back into the middle of the pond. Pliny and Nostradamus tried to remember the collective noun for ducks. They looked down at the pile of prawn bits. A thousand ants were ripping into it. It was disappearing, but there was an orange patina on the grass. Pliny thought about the long journey of the prawns.

The fish leapt again, joyfully.