...a man walks into a deer...
“The avant-garde feel important, but they hardly understand what they're doing.”
-Vangelis-
My day is mired in signage. From the billboards that boner above the sweeping highway strip malls I hike through, to the graffiti tagged tundra of west oakland’s warehouse district, I am fed a steady fill of fresh fonts fighting for my fixation.
Sticky from all 106 degrees of hot Texas sun I approached the peppermint printed parking sign and soaked its reverie in. AVANT GARDE PARKING ONLY it said. My mind raced to the myriad of inspirational options. Might one wheelie a Wrangler onto a wall and rest a broom in its tank hole? Perhaps we could flip a nice neighbor’s Nissan onto its top and paint its belly with happy little bob ross clouds? Better yet we put a Passat in neutral and never park it at all. Here in this alley, under this sign, all options would be on the table.
So many of our options are latched to previosity, our emprise embarking an enterprise already explored. For sake of this rag’s rant I am thinking specifically about Religion, Wellness and French Toast. We sail our spirituality through suggestion of shamans who have seen what we hope to see. We pill our pain per the voices of vendors who volunteer views of our visions. And we make French Toast with bread, eggs, butter and sweet stuff.
My mind has melded to the idea that so many things I do in this life are attached to methods previously discovered. We park how we park because we park how we have parked before. But just as one can approach parking in a manner avant & garded, I’m thinking so too could one approach almost anything in this manner.
Or specifically I am thinking about Religion, Wellness and French Toast.
ACT I :: Religion
The belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers, regarded as creating and governing the universe. A particular variety of such belief, especially when organized into a system of doctrine and practice. A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.
“All religions must be tolerated... for every man must get to heaven in his own way.”
-Epictetus-
I was raised as a catholic in a rarely religious household. Monthly church outings when the mood emerged, some after school classes on christianity, and a beginner’s bible with a baby blue cherub. I’d read the pages of proverb with the skepticism most human’s hold for sasquatch and wonder whether the squatch was just as sincere a potential belief. It’s blaspheme but bare with me.
Religion is faith, and for some reason robes and beards and dudes. So many dudes. And banks, and bad music. Wafers and watery wine. Old bad and good thoughts. Tall tales told, retold and told again. I practiced rituals, read parables, imagined miracles, and felt terrible. For all the joys of jamming to Jesus I just couldn’t juke that some other somethings might suit me similar.
Without a raising in religion I’m not sure I would have ever found any use for it. When I think back to my christianity classes my monkey mind screeches disbelief. The bible was full of fun stories and practicing peace was a pleasure, but with every priest’s passionate plea that the records they reported were reality, I found myself circling other angles for direction.
The anxiety of existence left me living a nightmare when I should have been sleeping more. And at night when I thought I was dying I had two streets to sleepy…read Garfield, or watch the 92-93 Chicago Bulls NBA Championship VHS. For some reason the fat lasagna loving tabby cat’s comedy kept me sane. And watching windy city roundball was a pillowy past time to sum sheep to.
As I came closer to catholic confirmation my religious creature found body and mind in other entities. I took to wood of all varieties and began knocking on it whenever and wherever I could. With two fisted knocks on a wall and my head, and then a duplicate pair of pounds wherever I would find any wood, I ritualized a superstitious divinity in a great number of lumbers. I think now of this era as my knock knock years.
*Knock Knock*
*Knock Knock*
I saw the sky as a scribe and called to the clouds for a cause.
*Knock Knock*
*Knock Knock*
The record stores at suburb’s edge provided me revelry in reverence of spaces filled with endless sonic spark.
*Knock Knock*
*Knock Knock*
The ring of the Taco’s Bell dinged me to praise all of life’s delicious dong.
*Knock Knock*
*Knock Knock*
Who’s there I wondered within and without.
And all of this to say that I found spirit and remnants of religion by any means necessary that didn’t involve an old man in a robe regaling me with his thoughts on one thousand year old other old robed man thoughts. We religion how we religion because we religion how we have religioned before.
None of this was avant garde though. This is all just lazy attempts at self entertainment by sharing the gains I got during my time cruising catholic classes. Anything will give you god if you ask loud enough. Right now as I write this I am staring at a grey gorilla transformer and saying show me heaven. Provide purpose to my pen. And with that, the robot gorilla turned into a tank and blew up a robot car man.
Religion is a rocky road.
ACT II :: WELLNESS
The quality or state of being healthy in body and mind, especially as the result of deliberate effort. An approach to healthcare that emphasizes preventing illness and prolonging life, as opposed to emphasizing treating diseases.
“Well done is better than well said.”
-Benjamin Franklin-
Well, well, well. From the valhalla of Gwyneth Paltrow’s goopiness, to HR departments assigning meditation apps as a way to defeat PTSD their business gave you, wellness is the word of the decade. Everyone wants to be well. But when I grew up well meant something different. Well meant a hole, often on a farm, filled with water and a bucket on a pulley system.
When the news would mention the word well, it was usually talking about babies that had fallen down one of them. Baby Jessica was one of the most famous of these babies. She was the billionaire titanic implosion of her era, albeit with a happy ending. If you are not familiar with the story it actually is a pretty compelling read (see here), but the jist is a baby fell down a well, rescue crews pumped her oxygen and sang her nursery rhymes for 58 hours, and after some drilling, and endless news stories, voila, a baby was saved.
Whether it was this media phenomenon or just fear of an unknown hole, I spent far too much of my youth thinking about falling down wells. My idea of wellness throughout my life has been to try not falling down any wells. I lived near no holes I knew of, barely saw farms or well adjacent spaces, but still the prospect of coming upon a well carried with it the specter of me eventually stumbling down into it. With little upper body strength and no rock climbing skills I wasn’t sure how I would ever escape if this were to happen to me. The hours spent daydreaming this macabre fantasy of well life is barely a pixel of my life’s real life. But one pixel is all it takes to sully the screen.
We well how we well because we well how we have welled before. There are many great metaphors related to water. Me thinking about myself at the bottom of some well is merely a drop in the bucket of all catastrophic thoughts I have ever conjured. If I choose to lose this memory, I should also avoid throwing out the baby with the bath water lest I lose all the good my well wishes might bring with them. I should just go ahead and jump in the deep end, get my feet wet and make a splash. Embrace the well and what comes with it. And in the bucket of my mind I pull myself up and put my baby back in it. I send my baby to the bottom so that it can cry and I can ask the news to come help me. Dear god, sing me a nursery rhyme (about robot gorillas).
ACT III :: FRENCH TOAST
Bread dipped in a mixture of eggs and milk and fried at low heat.
“I don't mean to brag, I don't mean to boast, But I'm intercontinental when I eat French toast.”
-Mike D-
Avant Garde French Toast Recipe #1
Toss your eggs at the wall.
Keep the shells.
Blend the bread on low for 23 hours 56 minutes and 39 seconds.
Replace milk with thick liquids (ketchup, mayo, gojuchang) stirred to pourable with any of a number of alcoholic beverages ABV > 41%.
Place all ingredients in a window sill bird feeder.
Throw it all away in a trash can.
Throw away that trash can in a bigger trash can.
Listen to Can.
Avant Garde French Toast Recipe #2
Order french toast.
Slap yourself in the face with the toast.
Return the toast, it is overcooked.
Avant Garde French Toast Recipe #3
A banana.
You are brilliant.
"Anything will give you god if you ask loud enough."
Not sure if it scares or comforts me.
I had to google 'avant-garde' :)...
Oh my, the notes under the photos of the deer are so funny. "…A deer walks into a man…The man says excuse me…Did you not see me here?…The deer says nothing because it is a deer…"
Hilarious