Trusting in the absurd
and shag carpeting
Dear Reader,
We’re not going to make meaning here.
This is a missive from the land of the absurd, the ludicrous, the incongruous.
Sometimes you just have to bang on the trash cans with spoons, wear plaid knickers with a polka-dot fez, and toss a gewgaw on a thingamajigger and create a doohickey. You have to tap the wah-wah pedal of your brain, drive the interstate of your story without a windshield, and relish in the zigzag joy and jubilant excess of it all. You have to trust in the usefulness of supposedly useless curiosity.
Don’t think of words as having any correspondence with reality.
Words are objects, equivalent to a mousetrap or an elastic band or a Jew’s harp.
The semiotics of bafflement shall be your guide, just as light bends into a black hole, just as a compass twitches on a carousel.
Turn yourself into a laboratory for the irrational. Alchemy started with the “rational” belief that lead could be made into gold. And why not?
It’s time to be silly and contradictory and irascible. It’s time to embrace rascality and treat it like a religion (at least until the wash is done). Just because you don’t have a purpose doesn’t mean you won’t find meaning.
Fill your hat with orange juice, put a frog in it, and sip it with a straw by the pool.
Let lightning bugs shine on the crop rotation of your mind and plant rows of confetti.
Spelunk your way to the top of Mount Everest.
It’s time to search out bananas to slip on, shake up the snow globe of your dreams, and make a cat’s meow the ringtone for your phone. Throw out the designer cheese and free the lab rats because all the toilets in your neighborhood just flushed at once and your rubber doggie squeak toy is a demonic force.
Purposelessness is not meaninglessness because purposelessness is an adventure, and an adventure requires the proper camping gear (so, yes, balloons and kazoos).
So much of life is a training ground for knowing what you’re doing. We need to get better at not knowing what we’re doing. Monkey around. Monkey upside down. Monkey to and fro.
Listen to the beatings of your lopsided heart and look into your nocturnal eyes. Last night’s dream is attached to your forehead with a piece of duct tape. When you press a doorbell, it rings you. When you open your mouth to speak, you tweet like a bird.
Do the fish swim in the river, or does the river swim in the fish?
The court stenographer is distilling everything into haiku.
The court jester is now in charge of your to-do list.
Your accountant won’t do your taxes until you paint your face, per recent federal regulations.
This is your challenge. To write with a mercurial, erratic sensibility. To have a squirt gun fight in a desert. To row your boat with a banjo. The tectonics of your mind have been transformed into a bouncy house. The police department has abandoned its duties to jump on a trapeze.
Has there ever been a novel that takes place in shag carpeting? If not, it deserves to be written.
Your brain is a hand grenade going off in a honeycomb as you wait for the rain of sweetness to drop down on a humdrum day.
Can you surprise yourself with a single sentence?
Chase the fleeting. Cry into the silence. Dive into the pitch and thrall of it all. Doo-wop the wingding of the clamor of your imbroglio.
A ghost is making macaroni and cheese in the kitchen. Richard Nixon is mowing the lawn. Please whisper because you don’t want to ruin the squirrels’ tea party.
I recently spoke to the California Writers Club, and one writer told me that the essay, “Trust in the Absurd,” was her favorite essay from my book Pep Talks for Writers, so I thought it was worth revisiting.
Because a quote
“Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.”
~ Salvador Dali
Because one more
“I don't do drugs. I am drugs.”
~ Salvador Dali
Because this week’s word: Whangdoodle
One of the joys of embracing absurdity is its lawlessness: you have permission to create a new universe. You make new rules. And … you make a new language.
I enjoyed Willy Wonka as a kid because it gave me a playful sense of language. Roald Dahl was a master at creating nonsensical words. Whangdoodle is one of my favorites, and it means an imaginary creature or unnamed thing—so we all have plenty of whangdoodle whanging around in our lives.
It turns out Dahl didn’t make this one up. It originated in 1858. But he did make up snozzwanger and knid (later to become the name of an indie rock band). For more on Dahl’s dalliances, here’s an article dedicated to Willy Wonka’s wonderful, whimsical words.
Because a photo prompt
If I’m back in my home state of Iowa on July 4, I always make sure to go to Bussey, a small-town near my home town that puts on a big parade. It’s a photographer’s wonderland.
The sign that greets you when you drive into Bussey says, “Welcome to Bussey, Iowa. Home to 49 happy people and two cranky ones.” You’ve got to love a town that jokes about itself.
I’ve never been to a parade in Iowa that didn’t include loveable elderly Shriners driving around miniature fire engines. I love that these guys embrace absurdity in such a way, even in small-town Iowa.
I’m sure those guys would love stories about them. Use this photo as a prompt, as a random catalyst, as an igniter for any writing project you’re working on. Or … simply write a story about this photo in less than 300 words and share it in the comments below.
For more, see my library of photo prompts.
Because a dare
If you’re projecting a negative story upon a person, an upcoming meeting, an encounter, an annoying Facebook post, anything, pause and see if you can project a positive story. Or a neutral story. Or an absurd story. Just any kind of story that isn’t negative.
Bonus points: tap dance.
Because shag carpeting
Childhood memory: when guests were coming over to our house and we kids had to help my mom clean up ahead of time, I always volunteered to rake the carpet.
Yes, we had a special rake just for the shag carpeting. I’d go through the house raking the carpet from room to room to make sure it looked like an untrodden field of grass.
Because I miss the 70s
It was certainly the most absurd decade.
I’m so glad I got to experience it because there will never be another 70s.
But more on that another time.
I miss the 1970s too.... so I've written/am writing poems and stories set then and there ~ two are on submission with folks reading them who may not know those days but should. Because I am awash in your abundant nostalgia and infectious silliness, Grant, I may install a Sand Shadows square of shag carpeting and buy myself a rake!