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diff --git a/aesthetics.txt b/aesthetics.txt index 928c5af..43c3be0 100644 --- a/aesthetics.txt +++ b/aesthetics.txt @@ -1,32 +1,34 @@ I tore the rear air conditioning unit off the back of the bus today. It [joins the front unit](/jrnl/2015/09/progress) in the growing pile of bus trash at the side of our house. -I've been thinking about the feeling I got after I was done and I stood back and looked at the Travco, the way those lines and curves all came back together, sliding smooth and unbroken down the back until they dip back under and forward again, unified, the way the designers intended them. The big blue bus looked whole again. +Afterward I stood back and looked at the Travco. All the clean lines and curves joined together again, no more air conditioning warts to interrupt the sliding smooth and unbroken swoop of white and blue. The big blue bus looked sleek and whole again. -It gave me a feeling somewhere between the satisfaction of thinking that perhaps, amidst the insanity, you've made some tiny thing right in the world, and the joy eating dark chocolate. The aesthetic perfection of hundred percent dark chocolate. +I'll admit it gave me no small measure of satisfaction, thinking that perhaps, amidst the exponentially increasing insanity, I'd made some tiny thing right in the world. It was that same sort joy that comes from eating really dark chocolate. The aesthetic perfection of hundred percent dark chocolate. -I didn't really get a chance to savor this feeling because the universe hates smugness and soon after I had another thought, hmm, maybe I should check and see if it's going to rain any time soon... Oh, well, yes it is, for three days straight, starting tomorrow and I just opened a fourteen inch square hole in the roof of the bus. Genius. +I didn't really get a chance to savor this feeling because the universe hates smugness and soon after I had another thought, hmm, maybe I should check and see if it's going to rain any time soon... Oh, well, yes it is. For three days straight. Starting tomorrow. And I just opened a fourteen inch square hole in the roof of the bus. Genius. I got a trash bag, some painter's tape, some duct tape, a dictionary of German swear words, and got to work. -I had some time up there on the roof of the bus to reflect on what I had done. More or less an incredibly impractical thing. In the service of what I think is my offbeat, but at times deeply felt sense of aesthetics. I think I should probably look up aesthetics in the dictionary and make sure. Or I should read Kant. But then it all gets very technical and is predicated on the belief that there is an absolute sense of "good" and "bad" to beauty and I don't know if it matters that much. Maybe metaphors about dark chocolate are good enough. If the dark chocolate is good enough. Screw Kant. +I had some time up there on the roof of the bus to reflect on what I had done. More or less an incredibly impractical thing. In the service of what I think is my offbeat, but at times deeply felt sense of aesthetics, I had ripped out two at least partly functioning air conditioners. -I did, somewhere in a tangle of duck tape and torn plastic trash bags, start to be a little curious what Kant would have made of a 1969 Travco. Kant was probably familiar with Gypsies at least. The mobile home thing would be familiar. Probably frowned on, but familiar. +Actually I should probably look up aesthetics in the dictionary and make sure that's what I'm acting in the service of. Or I should read Kant. But then it all gets very technical and is predicated on the belief that there is an absolute sense of "good" and "bad" to beauty and I don't know if it matters that much. Maybe dark chocolate metaphors are good enough. If the dark chocolate is good enough. Screw Kant. -But what would he make of tearing out an object of convenience and comfort because I think aesthetic integrity and beauty trump personal comfort? I decided there was a high probability he would think I was an idiot to forego the comfort of air conditioning, which, from his point of view, would be like magic. The problem is I've never been able to get through more than a few pages of <cite>Critique of Judgment</cite> without being overcome with a desire to reach back through time and give the man a hug[^1] and say, relax, it's all going to be okay. +Somewhere in a tangle of duct tape and torn plastic trash bags, I tk curious what Kant would have made of a 1969 Travco. Obviously the engine thing would be new. But Kant was probably familiar with Gypsies at least. The mobile home concept would be familiar. Probably frowned on, but familiar. But what would he make of tearing out an object of convenience and comfort because I think aesthetic integrity and beauty trump personal comfort? + +I decided there was a high probability he would think I was an idiot to forego the comfort of air conditioning, which, from his point of view, would be like magic. The problem is I've never been able to get through more than a few pages of <cite>Critique of Judgment</cite> without being overcome with a desire to reach back through time and give the man a hug[^1] and say, relax, it's all going to be okay. Aesthetics have always seemed pretty simple to me. There is stuff in the world that makes you feel delight. So when you discover this beauty and delight in the world around you, you embrace it and do what you can in service of it[^2]. Like removing ugly air conditioners. The designers of the Travco, to my mind, felt the same way, though they were doubtless bound by certain economic and marketplace constraints I don't have. Hence, warts on the roof if you must. But no one who's of a purely practical bent would ever have designed the large front sliding windows the way they are designed. They're wildly impractical, worse, they leak. But there they are. Pure aesthetics. They look like the person who designed them had discovered delight in their beauty. Little water coming in? Get a towel. -The market place does not value aesthetics though. The wonderful sweeping curves of the Travco's windows leaked badly enough that at some point (early '70s) the idea was abandoned altogether. +The marketplace does not value aesthetics though. The wonderful sweeping curves of the Travco's windows leaked badly enough that at some point (early '70s) the idea was abandoned altogether. -Aesthetics are a learning experience, a feedback loop of sorts, though the experience is better when it creates change in other direction -- adding in wildly impractical, but aesthetically delightful, sliding windows as it were. +Aesthetics are a learning experience, a feedback loop of sorts, though the experience is better when it creates change in other direction -- adding *in* wildly impractical, but aesthetically delightful, sliding windows as it were. Consider dark chocolate. I'd never really had any until I started dating my wife. I thought chocolate was something that skins a cheap candy bar full of nougat and indecipherable ingredients. The first time my wife gave me a bit of real chocolate was revelatory. The possibilities of life expanded, I had discovered more joy and beauty. Aesthetic progress you might say. Aesthetics are a life long process, always in flux, that's part of what drives us all to want to know what's around the next corner, over the next hill. As naturalist and herbalist Juliette de Bairacli Levy writes, "I believe that this endless search for beauty in surroundings, in people and one's personal life, is the headstone of travel." -My own aesthetics are like yours I imagine, complicated and often contradictory, nothing so firmly delineated as to please Kant. But one thing I have figured out is that comfort is transitory and moreover, relative. Aesthetic are neither[^3]. +My own aesthetics are like yours I imagine, complicated and often contradictory, nothing so firmly delineated as to please Kant. But one thing I have figured out is that comfort is transitory and moreover, relative. Aesthetics are neither[^3]. Which is to say, removing the air conditioner might mean that I end up hot, sweating and unable to sleep, but this too, as they say, shall pass. I won't *always* be hot sweaty and unable to sleep. I will always have to look at the air conditioning wart that used to be on top of the bus. Comfort must be chased; beauty exists. @@ -38,11 +40,11 @@ By the time I got to [Seam Reap](/jrnl/2006/03/angkor-wat) several months later During the day we spent our time outside exploring Angkor Wat in the heat of the day, when the rest of the tourists were passing the time in air conditioned cafés). We went out in the heat of the day precisely because it was hot, because hardly any other tourists did. We had Angkor Wat to ourselves. -We could have returned home to a nice air conditioned room. But if you do that you never adapt. Our bodies are fantastically adaptable machine over the long run. You get used to the heat. This never happens if you retreat to air conditioning at every opportunity. +We could have returned home to a nice air conditioned room. But if you do that you never adapt. Our bodies are fantastically adaptable machines over the long run. You get used to the heat. This never happens if you retreat to air conditioning at every opportunity. At night we would crank the ceiling fan to 11 and then, one after the other, take the coldest shower we could get, which was just below scalding because the water tank was in the sun all day, and then dive in our respective beds in hopes that we'd would fall asleep before the real sweating started. -What does this slightly masochistic experiment have to do with aesthetics? Nothing directly, but I came away with from that experience knowing that comfort is relative, both psychologically and physiologically. Seam Reap set my relative quite a few notches above where it had been previously and ever since then I have never really been hot. Sure, it gets moderately unpleasant to be out working in the heat of the day in the Georgia summer, but every time I catch myself about the complain I think, well, at least it's not as hot as Seam Reap. +What does this slightly masochistic experiment have to do with aesthetics? Nothing directly, but I came away with from that experience knowing that comfort is relative, both psychologically and physiologically. Seam Reap set my relative quite a few notches above where it had been previously and ever since then I have never really been hot. Sure, it gets moderately unpleasant to be out working in the heat of the day in the Georgia summer, but every time I catch myself about to complain I think, well, at least it's not as hot as Seam Reap. If you're going to be spending a lot of time in the heat it makes more sense to push through a bit of discomfort until you start to adapt to it than it does to hide out in air conditioning all the time. Eventually, after a few years I suspect, you'll be pulling out the jacket when the thermometer dips below 80. |