Jitterbug Perfume

by Tom Robbins

There were critics who complained that at 23, rue Quelle Blague the beer tasted like lilac water and the perfumes smelled of hops. As to the quality of the beer we cannot testify—perhaps a taste of it today would leave us sadder Budweiser—but when it came to perfumery, the monks were not inexpert. They, in fact, laid the foundation for the French fragrance industry.

We have crossed the threshold of the house of divine knowledge, yet we linger in the anteroom admiring its wallpaper and shun the main chambers of the house. Why is it we resist exploring the mansion to which it has been our unique privilege to gain admission?” “Because,” answered Alobar, “Death is the master of that house. My ambition has been to free myself from Death, not to visit him in his parlor and share tea.” “Death is not a resident of the house. 'Death' is merely the name we give to certain rooms of the house, rooms that we, the so-called 'living,' fear for the simple reason that we have not passed through them.”

At some later point, it might be rewarding to examine Dannyboy's arguments. For the moment, let it suffice to say that he has connected air to breath, water to bath, earth to food, and fire to sex, supplying a mixture of empirical fact and medical theory to support his case for the life-extending properties of this quartet, when ritualistically and resolutely embraced. In addition, Dr. Dannyboy has suggested a fifth element: positive thought. Pointing out that their breathing, bathing, dining, and screwing brought Alobar and Kudra much physical pleasure, and that an organism steeped in pleasure is an organism disposed to continue, he has said that the will to live cannot be overestimated as a stimulant to longevity. Indeed, Dr. Dannyboy goes so far as to claim that ninety percent of all deaths are suicides. Persons, says Wiggs, who lack curiosity about life, who find minimal joy in existence, are all too willing, subconsciously, to cooperate with—and attract—disease, accident, and violence.

He was as nervous as a praying mantis at an atheists' picnic,

Twelve hours later, he awoke and set at once to mixing the beet pollen distillate with jasmine oil and citron essence, in varying proportions. After five days of experimenting, he hit upon what seemed the ideal mixture: one part beet to twenty parts jasmine to two parts citron, a ratio that inspired him to name the scent K23. The K was for Kudra.

“Death hath more than one way to defeat a man, it seems. Death bests thee even while thou liveth.”

“Pan is right,” he thought. “Death can ruin a man's life even though he go on breathing.” The sea hissed at him, but he didn't flinch. “If Kudra is dead, dead as all the others who have died, then I must refrain from driving myself mad by wishing her alive. I do not know why the dead do not come back to life. Perhaps death is so wonderful, in ways we cannot comprehend, that they prefer it over and above their friends and loved ones, although I am inclined to doubt that be the case. If Kudra is dead like all the others, then it does me well to curtail my grief, lest my life become a deathly imitation through depression and sorrow.” He wiped a piece of foam from his eye and, without malice, flicked it back into the waves.

Did a man's wives all blend into a single entity after their deaths? Would he blend with Navin the Ropemaker if and when he died? Was it wife soup and husband soup on the Other Side? Or was it simply soup?

Ah, women: the mystery of them sometimes seemed greater than the mystery of death.

Whatever else his long, unprecedented life might have been, it had been fun. Fun! If others should find that appraisal shallow, frivolous, so be it. To him, it seemed now to largely have been some form of play. And he vowed that in the future he would strive to keep that sense of play more in mind, for he'd grown convinced that play—more than piety, more than charity or vigilance—was what allowed human beings to transcend evil.

“Our individuality is all, all, that we have. There are those who barter it for security, those who repress it for what they believe is the betterment of the whole society, but blessed in the twinkle of the morning star is the one who nurtures it and rides it, in grace and love and wit, from peculiar station to peculiar station along life's bittersweet route.”

Effecto Partido.

Here and there were prints by M. C. Escher, a multiplication of stiff, metamorphic images that assured the viewer that the world is a puzzle and life a loop and that is that. (Escher is sneered at by critics, but he may be one of the few artists who didn't lie to us.)

When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. And you get to take yourself oh so very seriously. Your truly happy people, which is to say, your people who truly like themselves, they don't think about themselves very much. Your unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwellin' on himself and start payin' attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form o' self-indulgence.”

English was a language fit only for narrating animated cartoons and inciting crowds at sporting events, according to Luc.

Yet, ignore it though we might in our daily toss and tussle, the fact of our impending death is always there, just behind the draperies, or, more accurately, inside our sock, like a burr that we can never quite extract. If one has a religious life, one can rationalize one's slide into the abyss; if one has a sense of humor (and a sense of humor, properly developed, is superior to any religion so far devised), one can minimalize it through irony and wit. Ah, but the specter is there, night and day, day in and day out, coloring with its chalk of gray almost everything we do. And a lot of what we do is done, subconsciously, indirectly, to avoid the thought of death, or to make ourselves so unexpendable through our accomplishments that death will hesitate to take us, or, when the scimitar finally falls, to insure that we “live on” in the memory of the lucky ones still kicking.

“It was then and there, wallowin' on me cot in Concord Prison, that I decided to do somethin' about it,” Wiggs said. “Because every bloody thing else is secondary to the creepin' chill o' personal extinction. “Death is the fly in everybody's ointment. “Death has never been acceptable to humanity, and 'tis less so today. “To the religious chap, I say, if God loves ye, he wouldn't sicken ye and then murder ye. To the rational fellow, and to the hedonist, as well, I say, death makes a mockery of your logic and your pleasure, alike. “Folks can never be truly happy, or truly free, or even truly sane as long as they got to be expectin' the vigor to decline and the swatter to fall. “So, darlin', I pushed aside everything else, cleared me jail cell o' professional journals and scholarly books and, yes, girlie magazines, too, although Alobar was to teach me that was a mistake, and I vowed to dedicate me every erg o' energy to this modest pursuit: the eradication o' death.” Priscilla looked at him with respectful disbelief. “Well, frankly,” she said, “I've got to classify that under the label of beating the old head against the old brick wall.” “Indeed?” “Why, yes, Wiggs. Of course. Everything that's alive was born, and everything that was born has got to die. There's no getting around it. It's the law of the universe.” Nude though he was, Dr. Dannyboy drew himself up like a bank president. He tapped his patch portentously, like a master of ceremonies testing a microphone. Then, in ...

Me ex-wife said, 'Wiggs, you talk so much that when you die they'll have to beat your tongue to death with a stick.' I resent that remark. She should've said, 'if' you die.”

“Hello, this is Adolf Hitler. I'm out of the country right now, but I'll be happy to return your call as soon as I'm back in power. If Aryan, leave your name and number at the beep.”

“Love, little darlin', defies the laws o' physics. Or, rather, it breaks the habits.”

“Did you hear what you just said? 'Mortified. I could die.' Pris, ye must never use such expressions. They are unconscious manifestations o' the death wish. You're signalin' the universe that death is not only acceptable but deserved.”

“After you die, your hair and your nails continue to grow.” “I've heard that.” “Yes. But your phone calls taper off.”

“Sure and I couldn't be happier was I to learn that God and the Devil had settled out o' court, endin' once and for all the ridiculous notion of a struggle between good and evil that has provided the religious o' the world with a pious excuse to kill and plunder and has spoiled the plot o' many a novel.

“To be or not to be isn't the question. The question is how to prolong being."

Sure, a lot o' rich people are assholes, but believe me, a lot o' poor people are assholes, too, and an asshole with money can at least pay for his own drinks.”

At birth, we emerge from dream soup. At death, we sink back into dream soup. In between soups, there is a crossing of dry land. Life is a portage.

"Sacre merde!"

“Live by the heart if you would live forever,” said Alobar.

Our political leaders are unenlightened and corrupt, but with rare exception, political leaders have always been unenlightened and corrupt. I stopped taking politics seriously a long, long time ago, therefore it's had practically no effect on the way I've lived my life. In the end, politics is always a depressant, and I've preferred to be stimulated. “No, my friends, what bothers me today is the lack of, well, I guess you'd call it authentic experience. So much is a sham. So much is artificial, synthetic, watered-down, and standardized. You know, less than half a century ago there were sixty-three varieties of lettuce in California alone. Today, there are four. And they are not the four best lettuces, either; not the most tasty or nutritious. They are the hybrid lettuces with built-in shelf life, the ones that have a safe, clean, consistent look in the supermarket. It's that way with so many things. We're even standardizing people, their goals, their ideas. The sham is everywhere.

A dream is the mind having fun when there is no processing to keep it busy.

“It is so amusing the way that mortals misunderstand the shape, or shapes, of time." "I am not sure I understand." "And I cannot help you understand. In the realm of the ultimate, each person must figure out things for themselves. Remember that, when you return to Your Side. Teachers who offer you the ultimate answers do not possess the ultimate answers, for if they did, they would know that the ultimate answers cannot be given, they can only be received."