Re: What exactly is désinvolture?

[John M Stroup <stroup@ruf.rice.edu>]

At first they put him in the local hospital to treat him for exposure, but
he had never heard a television before, so the rooming house was thought
to be an adequate compromise.  As I said, though, there is was the vacuum
cleaner.

On Wed, 14 Jan 1998, Gary Kern wrote:

> John M Stroup wrote:
> > 
> > My great-uncle Henry sold all he had, constructed with his own hands--in
> > a clearing in a remote wooded area of southern Missouri--a
> > cabin made from old lumber and flattened oil cans and with an earthen
> > floor, and lived in it for thirty years until it burned down.
> > He raised most of his food himself, or caught it; he never admitted to
> > having any money from the sale of the farm, and certainly did not put it
> > into a bank account.  After the fire, treated for exposure, he died on
> > account of the noise from a vacuum cleaner in the rooming house the
> > relatives put him into.  Earlier, to requests that he give up and move
> > into a house trailer [?Wohnwagen?]  with relatives, having been told that
> > he couldn't live
> > this way and that nobody could, he replied:  "Well, Bert, I guess I can.
> > The Indians did."
> > 
> *******************
> That's désinvolture all right, but not to be recommended.  It requires
> this addition:  Sample some of the poison from time to time so as not to
> be too vulnerable to it.  So watch a little TV, then courageously turn
> it off.  Listen to enough rap so as to be able to identify it, then
> close the door or cover your ears and curse as loudly as you can.
> 
> Schopenhauer wrote the best essay on noise, but it needs to be updated.
> The morons cracking whips in the street in his day are nothing compared
> to the boneheads with boom boxes in our own, nor even to the genital
> music you are forced to hear while having your teeth drilled.  I told my
> dentist I preferred the root canal to the torture of listening to "you
> gimme such good luvin' all through da night."  Noise is the very essence
> of mass man, he can't live without it, else he would hear the void. 
> Your great uncle Henry was a man after my own heart.
> 
> GK
>