Went out to find a post office. It was closed. Found this instead:
Though I'm not religious, it's pure genius to surround the place of worship with the bodies and memorials of the dead. What a stark reminder to live and follow the lessons taught inside. It's why I visit cemeteries so often. There's no better way to test whatever philosophy it is you live by than visiting what will ultimately be our final resting place; wandering through a catalogue of the dead has a dreadful way of providing a stark contrast to the first-world problems we think we suffer so much from. I've never thought much about doing an art installation, but if I ever did one, I'd surround an office building or a factory, or a mall, with a pop up graveyard, complete with families mourning. Whether you walked out of the mall with--or without--that new 4G TV, or punched out, or merely left your cube after getting tweaked over your company changing from Peet's coffee to Starbucks, a pop up cemetery would surely disrupt the patterns that are too easy to accustom oneself to, the patterns that don't matter.
Another essay on cemeteries? Yeah....well, I write this now while bleeding over my keyboard. Literally. Remember that .... I mentioned about "What doesn't kill you the first time will most likely try again?" Well, it keeps trying. I signed a consent form this morning acknowledging that I understand brain damage, death and blindness could result from a surgical procedure I underwent at 7:30 am. Though the risks were 'small', the surgeon somberly emphasized again that the statistics for blindness were 1 in 20. I spent the past couple weeks really fixated on that. What if....could I somehow develop a painting style that allowed me to create without the gift of sight, could I ride my bike in a giant parking lot with proximity-sensors just to experience the joy of motorcycling again? I wondered how much I'd miss the internal feeling I get when I arrive at some strange, uninhabited place and look out over a vast expanse of earth, city, sky. I thought a lot about how my internal mind's 'eye' would evolve over time in complete darkness (in 20 years would I remember what the texture of clouds or sea foam looked like?). I thought about mundane things, too....like, 'will I have to ....... sit down to take a piss for the rest of my life?'
At around 10:30 I woke up to the glorious site of medical cabinets. Can't tell you how happy that made me. Medical cabinets--medical cabinets made me happy. Think about that for a second.
Merely the act of imagining loss unbridles a power to recognize pleasures of life forgotten, unnoticed, neglected, excluded. Profound, titillating, incomparable, superlative sensations containing essences of joy, bliss, wonder, delight, euphoria, quite literally, are everywhere. Perspective, perspective and context. We have the power to modify the relationship of our existence to the rest of the world in such a way that even something as ordinary as a row of cabinets turns exhilarating. Or so says the guy bleeding into a face mask writing in the dark.
