What is wit?

It seems that the blank page for me invites essays, with a bit of scholarship and an ounce of wit. I was thinking this morning, between picking up a lachrymose printer and pinworm testing kit at Group Health, about the nature of wit. Is wit something we are endowed with, or is it a distillation of experience and observation on pattern that leads to the omnipresent quip, but makes it memorable in the minds of beholders. For behold is certainly what is done with wit. Never, in a million years do we imagine ourselves as bearers of such encapsulation of drollery, such epiphytic balderdashery, such arcane wisdom. Wit, when struggled for, never works. It comes out something between a sick cow and a mad dog. Champing at the bit for release but bemoaning its fate aloud. This is an easy place for me to reach, or overreach, as I revel in my own folly. For certainly I am the most foolish of men. I fancy myself at times a wit, yet have no clue how to find the words in their hidden places to evoke the mastery I espouse to.

For wit is certainly partially a way with words, but also, as alluded to before, is words acquired along the way, and put to new uses, like trying to harness the workhorses to power an automobile factory. Witless in Seattle. It is a mélange of sensate ganglia striving for some sense of completion, as if making sense out of nonsense, or nonsense out of sense, gives it an explanation, the illusion of understanding. Rather than putting it all together, we validate our skill at putting something, actually anything, together.

George Bush has been the object of much of my derision and wit, mostly kept to myself. This ranges from the maiming of the man to scatological references to the tight ass he maintains, or does not maintain, or the blind eye of many of his supporters to the man’s peccadilloes. I was thinking that the liars bane is catching up with him. He is using lies to cover lies and the skein of packaging put to the lies is unraveling and stand to be all over the floor by the time of the election. Incredibly, its not the Democrats, but the news media that are doing it to him. I can just imagine the frustration on the part of thinking reporters. It is sort of like Freudian slips, accidentally on purpose, letting the cat out of the bag just before election time. They are paid to hush up but in hush the tuning increases to the slightest sound. People sitting around talking to themselves convincing themselves of the rectitude of their approaches. I guess we all do this. How else would the idea of PC come to the fore? There are so many ways we can fool ourselves. We can psych ourselves into sickness, or humor ourselves into wellness. We can see better by believing. We can fantasize just about anything? We can heighten our importance, or dig ourselves into a major hole. We can remake the past in our memory or create a new one. But, all in all, our scope is limited within ourselves and there we must take our stand. We can hear god talking to us and believe so strongly that are whole ethos is colored by the belief. We gaze at pictures by masters like Titian and Reubens and we see belief shining through the paint, infused with a glow of glory days and high times, and utter, utter certitude of the veracity of the events predicted. A pregnant past foreseeing an eternal future. Belief, like new clothes, is great to try on. I am attracted by belief in the power of love, yet I see the contrary in so many’s action. Nietzche says the weak have invented belief to control the strong – the great equalizer. He is harsh in his judgement. The strong must not associate with the weak or the sick; they must not buy into the control package offered up by them. Let the ministers of the weak minister to the weak (he says). I am not that far out. Or at least I am not willing to forget the weak (probably being one). But then maybe I’m not sure what he means by weak and strong. And maybe it has been interpreted for a long time. We think as humanity as compassion. Showing humanity. But is it? Being civil – is that showing compassion. I am sure George Bush is civil (but Cheney is not). But maybe civil is something to hide behind, so that others will not see the real person. But what is the real person. We are so tied up in images that we believe it much of the time. I think of the poem “If you see fame coming, Run!”. I think it is important to distinguish fame from importance. Now Noam Chomsky is an important thinker. He tirelessly researches information to provide perspective. He is probably also famous, but his fame is diminished by his role as a critic. It prevents him from the widest limelight. His is cult fame. Yet here is a man who made his mark in science; whose theories have engendered entire lines of research. And he is off breaking new ground in a wider arena. What impels such a man? This is the best of humankind. Their reward is What? Is he running from fame? Or does he use his name to provide a venue for his analysis? How do I figure out someone like him? Or Gandhi? A man who sacrificed his family and closeness for an ideal. Or Churchill, a man who took risks, who understood major power ‘fronts’. Who turned a phrase to his advantage whenever the chance presented itself. Who dominated conversations with his own self adulation and his imponderable wit. Or Odgen Nash? A man whose middle name was quip and nonsense. Who could finagle with words. Or Mencken, or Studs Terkel, or Molly Ivins, or even Michael Moore (a man whose middle finger is for pushing buttons). What of Voltaire, who dashed off Candide and Pangloss in who knows what fit of drollery? Then there are the jesters Shakespeare throws into his tragedies to provide balance to the sense of importance displayed by his too large characters. This is institutionalized wit of the most rabid sort. Like a madman on the run looking for victims, they spear their foils with a wit honed by familiarity. Me, if I’m a wit, am all over the place. My wit is mostly one offs and free association. I find it hard to string together witticisms into sentences, let alone chapters. Yet I am a walking testimony to wit. Like marriage vows it is for better and for worse. In sickness and in health. until wit do depart..