Imposters & Truth
May 8, 2005
Chemical clean and air-conditioned cool. This is often the way of things in such a modern world. I wonder how it got to be this way. Hundreds of years ago when we ran around in scraps of clothing, without running water, the luxury of electricity, or prepackaged home cleaning agents, what was the standard, the archetypical “clean?” What was the smell of “clean” then? Fresh lilacs from the garden, a long breeze from across the horizon, a hot glycerin bath, freshly baked bread in the oven? Naturally occurring niceties were surely the gold standard…..at least I’d like to think so.
And I’m curious how we got here from there. Here and now, with our chemically manufactured, emotively, Pavlov-ian tailored products to seduce our every sense….. from the smell of McDonalds fries to the “sea-breeze, linen” scented Lysol cans that smell nothing like a sea-breeze or fresh linen, but rather their chemical counterparts that have been constructed to closely mirror their original superiors. The verisimilitude of the imposter often hard to recognize. But when you have stood on the edge of a ship in the ocean, or frolicked in between sun-lit crisp line dried sheets, you know this difference. You know this difference like you know real love by the softness of a tongue, like you know your best friend's body-movements, and like you know of the blood that whirls through your veins when you're hanging off the edge of yourself. When you know this difference, real, the prototypes of these things becomes sacrosanct to your thriving existence. The imposter nearly unbearable, and absolutely unacceptable. And if you want crisp linen sheets, you'll wash them yourself, rather than spraying them from a can. No matter how inconvenient it may be.
In the south, summer is unbearable without air conditioning. A metal clicking, energy-sucking unit plugged into the wall that indeed conditions your environment to be conducive to functioning without having to shower every 15 minutes. But I can’t help but feel something very good is lost in the churning in and out of re-constructed and conditioned air particles. I have no tolerance for a/c blowing directly on me. I prefer to be hot and perspiring than to have contrived ice-air bellowing around me from fans, or machines, or car dashboards. It feels as if it’s an attempt to further homogenize the soul, the natural commitment a human body has to the organic earth, as uncomfortable as it sometimes may be. I’m not saying there is some conspiracy being plotted and primed, but for me personally, these machines make me cold in more than one way. Cold and conditioned are not of much interest to me.
Maybe I’ll move to Mexico.
Chemical clean and air-conditioned cool. This is often the way of things in such a modern world. I wonder how it got to be this way. Hundreds of years ago when we ran around in scraps of clothing, without running water, the luxury of electricity, or prepackaged home cleaning agents, what was the standard, the archetypical “clean?” What was the smell of “clean” then? Fresh lilacs from the garden, a long breeze from across the horizon, a hot glycerin bath, freshly baked bread in the oven? Naturally occurring niceties were surely the gold standard…..at least I’d like to think so.
And I’m curious how we got here from there. Here and now, with our chemically manufactured, emotively, Pavlov-ian tailored products to seduce our every sense….. from the smell of McDonalds fries to the “sea-breeze, linen” scented Lysol cans that smell nothing like a sea-breeze or fresh linen, but rather their chemical counterparts that have been constructed to closely mirror their original superiors. The verisimilitude of the imposter often hard to recognize. But when you have stood on the edge of a ship in the ocean, or frolicked in between sun-lit crisp line dried sheets, you know this difference. You know this difference like you know real love by the softness of a tongue, like you know your best friend's body-movements, and like you know of the blood that whirls through your veins when you're hanging off the edge of yourself. When you know this difference, real, the prototypes of these things becomes sacrosanct to your thriving existence. The imposter nearly unbearable, and absolutely unacceptable. And if you want crisp linen sheets, you'll wash them yourself, rather than spraying them from a can. No matter how inconvenient it may be.
In the south, summer is unbearable without air conditioning. A metal clicking, energy-sucking unit plugged into the wall that indeed conditions your environment to be conducive to functioning without having to shower every 15 minutes. But I can’t help but feel something very good is lost in the churning in and out of re-constructed and conditioned air particles. I have no tolerance for a/c blowing directly on me. I prefer to be hot and perspiring than to have contrived ice-air bellowing around me from fans, or machines, or car dashboards. It feels as if it’s an attempt to further homogenize the soul, the natural commitment a human body has to the organic earth, as uncomfortable as it sometimes may be. I’m not saying there is some conspiracy being plotted and primed, but for me personally, these machines make me cold in more than one way. Cold and conditioned are not of much interest to me.
Maybe I’ll move to Mexico.
posted by kristin diable | 12:54 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home