In the valorized object (Stuff), we shall find communion. Let it (Stuff) sanctify our dutiful existence towards its (Stuffs) incessant gathering. With great pomp shall we parade it (Stuff, shiny perhaps) upon our breast, to befall the eyes of others. May it (Stuff) shield our shriveled souls from the many that pass and pry and from those who can only observe, yet never understand, from afar. Finally, upon return to its secure vessel for stowage, we find solace in the Stuff-mandala of the world: boot, trouser, cap, watch, ad infinitum.
Amidst a throng of shrieking tweens, we find the recently exhumed and reanimated corpses of G. Simmel and W. Benjamin strolling rather raucously through the Mall of America, their bodies having long been stripped of their soft tissues. A phantasmagoric scene, undoubtedly, for such a cast of unsuspecting characters. Aghast and disgusted are several nearby tweens: not by the ravages of decomposition or the appearance of two walking skeletons, but by their seriously outdated threads.
“OMG! Those guys are so, like, last century,” proclaims Suzie.
“Totally. Like, how creepy?! Halloween isn’t for like… um, what month is it,” stammers her cohort Jill.
Suzie, unfazed by the morbidity manifest in the motley mega-Stuff-mandala-of-them-all (which she not-so-secretly wants all to herself… well, maybe Jill can partake in the loot) notices Zach, the cute boy from math class, at the vendor just beyond the two teetering theorists. Hurried, the girls brisk past our unfortunate heroes with scant notice that they, our heroes, aren’t crude Halloween props but real life skeletons walking through the mall.
I jest, of course, for I know not the inner workings of the tween mind nor that of the reanimated corpse. An interview with worm may provide insight and, perhaps, a recipe or wine suggestion. Nevertheless, our heroes are reduced to bags of bones – shabby bags at that.
The parallels of Simmel and Benjamin, not in their less-than-stunning appearance decades post mortem, is in the evidence and/or conclusion of spectacle based in objects of the magnitude of human proportion (the garment, the vehicle, the building, the city). Each order of magnitude connotes another layer of stimuli, growing from within the psyche of the individual and spreading beyond the boundaries of flesh to adjacencies and beyond. These truly meaningless orders – they are abstractions of sustenance – pervade the conscious mind of our subject and create a false sense of value. This abstraction of value based monetarily has enabled the mind-numbing cacophony of human conglomeration presented as the city. Wherever the city may provide emancipation, it enslaves exponentially and eschews lucidity.
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