Idealism

I was watching the Antique Road Show today and a woman brought a few small Chinese carvings.  She just smiled while the appraiser priced them at between 610 thousand and 1 million dollars. 1 million dollars. For some dandy handiwork. And someone would actually buy it.  They looked like shit.  Pasty and dirty, like something you'd find at a garage sale, but the under-the-magnifying-glass view was so impressive, with all of the concise cuts and what not, the collection was "the best thing they had ever seen".  The next guy had a picture.  It was an unbelievable, black and white depiction of a civil war battle.  The detail of the men's faces were spectacular, the back drop fascinating.  I literally want a copy in my room.  The appraiser priced it at 200 dollars.  It was a copy, not the original, this was apparent by the corners and the lack of some copper lining or something.  This beautiful piece of art is worth 200 dollars, and four ugly sculptures are worth 1 million.  It's the same principle of the way I live.  The ugliness if praised, while the beauty is thrown under the rug.  I don't understand collecting.  Give me whatever looks good, I don't give a shit how it was made.

(This was written November 23. I didn't post it at the time because I hated it but I'll just throw it out there because I re-read it and found it somewhat interesting.)


I'm not exactly sure why, but rainy late night Sunday drives are usually the intellectual braingasms of an isolated day. Hydroplaning through the damp materialistic wasteland of Chenal french court neighborhood signs and piles of construction bricks and dirt, the scary thoughts that sleep underneath the soil of routine crack through and show themselves. Across the city of Little Rock is the misty lights of downtown. It's absolutely beautiful. Dim twinkling flickers on the far off horizons. I just stared at them for a minute, slowing down my car for a while, enough to where the person behind me nearly rear ended me. I started blurting out the ways I would describe them.  I screamed the adjectives and the noises that I might capture the mood I was feeling of the lights. And I realized that that's both the bane and purpose of my existence, to articulate the far away beauty that you can never get close enough to. The closer the light comes, the more apparent is the actual object; office buildings. No wonder. Cheap fluorescent death.

It seems to be the story of my adolescence.  There's an ideal and there's reality.  It's longing with no resolution; begging with no reward; running with no finish; reaching for the person popping out of the movie screen with your 3-D glasses on, and grabbing the air.  What did you expect? Did you think there was really a 10-foot-tall person floating above your seat? No, but it's a second of make believe hope.  It's a makeshift way to deal with the makeshift problem.  I'm ridiculously lucky to be able to question my own existence.  Most people don't get passed the worriment of how to exist in the first place.  I don't care what I do when I get older, I have to be able to change it on the instant.  I have to look at that far off light and be able to chase it, even if I know that I'll be lead to that dullness.  If I ever am the person eagerly anticipating Monday Night Football, please kill me.