Real Prepared

Chicago, IL

I take Cherry out for a spin to do some grocery shopping and run errands. I need to put insurance on her. Why do I put these kinds of things off? I still need a travel guide and a trip plan and a list of cheap motels…oh, yeah, “administrivia.” That’s why I put it off: I’m so way totally radically not interested in planning this kind of shit out all gnarly to the max. In this context anyway it feels like working this trip out in detail would be “efficient” and completely suck the juice from the fruit. Remember the detailed trip plan: Drive old Route 66. Investigate whatever catches my interest. Write what I notice (or gnaw on it at least, pulp and all). Then come home.

Of course there’s a difference between being legal and safe and being anal retentive (though for kicks I like to mockingly reduce people who prefer the former as being the latter). I painted the new safer brake master cylinder and power assist assembly to gloss black to match the engine compartment. My experience has been that perfectly painted pieces invariably get scratched to hell so I’ll detail it all up when the shop is done with it. Paint has an amazing ability to mask and blend and hide all species of flaws. I’m noticing it all over again as I paint and sheetrock my new place, it reminds me of my Saint Paul house and the work I did on dad’s lake home in northern Minnesota where securing a contractor’s permit amount to giving a buddy a smash pack and a few walleye filet; the building inspection amounts to consuming said beer and fish. The other night I met a girl who told me she doesn’t wear much makeup but wouldn’t be caught dead without foundation—same principle I guess.

Surface has the ability to mask depth. True of coats of paint masking body repairs, coats of sheetrock masking shoddy wall stud work, coats of makeup masking an inconsistent complexion. This is perfectly reasonable; after all, we interact with surfaces all the time. The surface, the “interface” of an object. Think of a car: who nowadays pops the hood to get all gritty and piss around with fluids, wires, and tuning. Car maintenance is the job of the ASE certified mechanic, not the backyard grease monkey. It’s easy to miss when something goes wrong on the inside, until a problem presents itself or “surfaces.” True of cars, true of buildings, true of people. We’d like to think we know our insides, inside and out so to speak. But that doesn’t really hold water—were that the case we’d self-diagnose our own internal problems promptly and intuitively: “Oh, I feel a bout of stomach cancer developing. Better get that checked out.” Not until the bloody stool presents or the blinding pain in the gut wakes us does our internal state reveal itself. Often only at the point of severe malfunction; your body is not equipped convenient early indicator dummy lights like your Mercedes.

Speaking of fixing up my new place, the roof leaks (water passing through the surface of the ceiling, goddamn it)! It rained like all hell Friday so I get up on my trusty ladder with a caulk gun to seal the gaps in the wood ceiling. That way it’ll just dam up and ruin the wall…or the neighbor’s floors. Hope the landlord does something about it. Regardless I hope it doesn’t wreck any of my shit—if he gets water stains so what, but I don’t want it coming drip drip drop onto my television. (Which after having been off for three weeks now I may never turn back on…oh, who am I kidding? I miss the Colbert Report.)

While tooling up Lakeshore Drive looking for a bookstore with a Route 66 map I get to thinking about the city like I haven’t in a while. I don’t mean Chicago in particular, I mean the ability for people to congregate into large—in fact amazingly huge—communal living spaces. The city has its own agenda whether it is conscious of it or not. We feed the city, keep it moving and running, although the way it happens to be today isn’t the way it will be tomorrow; it’s more symbiotic and evolutionary. In that sense the city is simply a projection of the human mind. Not one human mind, not projected from an infinitely detailed God perspective (even Daley’s vision for the city isn’t specified to the blade of grass…well, almost) but the natural consequence of years and years and years of passion, investment, and growth coupled with disinterest, neglect, and decay. You’d think a city would feel somehow more organic—after all, isn’t a city is just the projection of the human mind rendered in material? Having learned to forge steel some clever tool-wielding primates observed, “Oh, an I-beam is stronger than brick. Let’s shall we use that to make some really big buildings then?” Even the erection of a single building serves as no testament to the isolated genius of the lone architect; rather he or she will have worked with city planners, engineers, designers, clients, trades people, and the community to turn a vision into a project. To render in material form the content of the human mind.

Fifty years later, knock it down and make a bigger one. Or let it sit there abandoned. Or make a park. Or declare it historic and try to preserve it. Do this over and over and over for 150 years and you have a Chicago. And as remarkable this has been for many large American cities the pace is accelerated in developing countries where what took 20 years of building infrastructure now takes two or three. Modern Tokyo was a post-war invention lain on the ruins of the old city and it just exploded. Imagine what India and China have in store for the world…

For the sake of argument come along with me on this. Let’s pretend that our physical world—our roads, our cities, our houses, our cars—are a projection of the human mind in that they are products of the human imagination rendered in material form which in turn support the development of other aspects of imagination (such as faster cars, bigger houses, etc. with no judgmental criticism intended, just an obvious accumulation of changes that appealed to some people somewhere). What then would be the difference between rendering in material as compared to rendering in, say, storytelling? Or digital format? Or holographic mind projections ala The Matrix? If imagination stimulates imagination, and every now and then the imagination kicks of a few material byproducts, what would it mean for something to be real? “For really real.” Because of the groups I belong to and the places I haunt I hear people remark, “Well culture isn’t real,” and “Political power is just an illusion,” and “Economics describes reality it doesn’t say what’s right or wrong.” These remarks suggest that there’s a real thing and a fantasy thing and the fantasy is the lesser of the two. In fact it would seem that the distinction isn’t what’s “really real” but what is internal (within the mind or body or psyche or soul) and what is external (in a rough sense, outside my skin and not within another person’s skin). What if imagination begets imagination and material (because thoughts give rise to both thought and action); furthermore material begets imagination and material (because physics will occur whether or not we choose to observe).

What intrigues me about this notion is that it put abstraction on equal footing as application; it knocks the eggheads out of the ivory tower. There’s no reason that the institutions man makes are any more or less legitimate that the temples that house them—and by temples I mean temples, churches, government centers, and shopping malls. The spirit of these institutions may be immaterial (consumerist hedonics, spiritual fulfillment, whatever) and that fact diminishes their standing in no way, but instead informs an awareness of the immaterial component of the institution. In fact it’s difficult to imagine once-great institutions such as the Egyptian pyramids or Chinese Buddhist shrines in their institutional glory; the material remains by the source spirit has moved on, leaving behind a perhaps a distant sense of awe and wonder but no lineage, no coherent progression. The city as projection foreshadows the city as ruin, as derelict, as abandoned. State and Madison just might not the center of the universe for green parakeets and white maples; myspace identities may be honest and true aspects of a fifteen year old virgin despite being unrepresentative of her entire coherent self.

Maxim: Discipline as the good you don’t like. Indulgence as the bad you enjoy.

This butts against Plato’s distinction (or synthesis) among the good, the beautiful, and the true. I’m not sure the human imagination is particularly true but it is good. And beautiful. And doesn’t that make them sort of all the same?

Back at home one of my new neighbors drops by to borrow a bike pump valve (a little urgent bicycling was in order) since I apparently I look like the bicycling type. Which I am, except my bike was stolen from the Prairie District Loft a year ago and I haven't gotten around to replacing it. (What makes me look like a cyclist by the way: the lycra spandex hot pants I insist on wearing or my disturbingly disproportional calf muscles?) Left without a cup-of-sugar equivalent I invite my neighbor, McCoy, in for a bullshit session. McCoy is a professional artist, well known in the city who does some amazing sculptural pieces. Being an artist she puts herself out there…and like most non-artist human beings she welcomes other people’s judgment with psychic razorwire. What I find fascinating is that I don’t think she gives a shit what people think of her art; she could take or leave critical accolades. Rather she’s attuned to the judgment that pervades relationships. A little background is in order.

McCoy seems to have a taste for married men. Harsh—more that she has a taste for men regardless of their current relationship status. That would seem to rub up against her settling peer group who code her mistress status as, “You’re a whore you threatening-my-man and now I’m settled enough to care BITCH!” One has to wonder if an abused runaway reformed junkie artist might just have a dispositional tendency toward high-risk behavior. Which I can’t help but respect. It surprises me when people so over other people’s bullshit (an artist quite literally projecting her own reality in material form independent of public sentiment) find themselves sensitive to other people’s bullshit (the slings and arrows of her peer group). Yet there it is: the peer group, in being recognized as filled with peers, has elevated relevance compared to the great unwashed. Cognitive psychologists tell us that the degree of personal relevance of something significantly influences the emotional response, suggesting that peers hold far more emotional sway than strangers (for most people—as with all social research the results are statistically true but not invariant) and that how one self-identifies affects who one counts as peers. Think about it: doesn’t it hurt more when close friend tells you how fat you are (ouch, you think so?) compared to a stranger (right back at you, you arrogant fuck).

As McCoy and I talk and I try, uncharacteristically, to listen rather than fix, I get the sense that there's something fascinating going on. She feels an urge to follow her interest, to pursue her heart, regardless of the consequences. It’s just that she doesn’t expect hypercritical commentary to be the response. What with her peer group accepting other aspects of her abused runaway reformed junkie artist being why get so worked up over a little marital infidelity? Might it be, I thought, that newlyweds are a little insecure in their recent purchases and the idea that someone might override the marriage vow suggests that her someone-of-a-husband damn near will disrespect his vow? How terribly threatening to their developing identity and world view.

And to hell with them for it. At any rate that's my narcissist-friendly advice to her (you meet a real artist and 97% of the time they are full-fledged clinical narcissists and God love them for it). If you can center yourself and live with the consequences of your actions the feeling I have about the opinions of others is all at once:

• Thank you for your interest, I love you and care about you too
• Fuck you for your judgment, I can change my own diaper
• Accept me or don’t, the sun’s still gonna rise tomorrow
• Allow me to change at my own pace
  

Next stop: Twas the Night Before Roadtrip