the modern man, as seen by the shoe rack...

...consider for once the possibility of being able to sit back and take a look at life from the perspective of an ashtray!

or maybe from the images that the mute dust accumulating vase sees from it's perch atop the shoe rack; the shoes, that are being painted copper-gold by the room-mate amidst peels of jeering and laughter from the rest of us; the basket that hangs from the wall, which we have deliberately neglected to clean so that the spiders may nest and build their mesmerizing webs that filter the faint yellow rays of the lamp that nests smugly within that basket. the twisted metal wire scooter that somehow ended up by the bedpost; the books that make love to the dust that permeates each and every spot including the bookshelf. wonder how they would be seeing things? knowing us for what we do in our day-to-day life. seeing us the way we are when not facing the world. when we are happy. when we are sad. when we are lonely. when we are partying. when we are wasted. when we are ecstatic. when we are asleep. would they judge us?

"if and when Judgment Day arrives, i'd personally rather have them judge me. no man or woman shall or can judge me. but the lamp in my living room and the book by my bed, well, they most certainly can!"

***

had a small quip at jabbering with a few folks a while back. something to do with the consciousness of modern man and Modernity itself. i mean, when does Modernity begin? Wallace believes the concept to have emerged around the middle ages in Europe. Foucault thinks it is only about 500 years old.

but the one thing that sort of comes to mind was the whatever it was that was the idea of Modernity, it was a very Eurocentric view to the world that discarded everything non-European, calling them barbaric, savage and ignorant.

but then this brings us to the concept of rupture and religion in Modernity, it's utopian as well as dystopian views and it's definition as per Webber. Benjamin quoted a "loss of aura" when he conformed the ideologue called Modernity; the entire Christendom ruptured at it's seams and tore itself into two halves with the Protestant movement, and much later came back together to collectively confront Nietzsche heralding the "Death of God". we dragged in a lot of the well known hearsays of the yesteryears. Foucault with his belief in discourse as the basis of modernity would have been impressed. Leotard would have called us a bunch of incompetent fools attempting to justify the synthesis of the 'Grand Narrative' that is modernism to the 'Micro or Polite Narratives' of post-modern era. Keats would have embraced us with open arms as fellow Romantics. most others would have called us book reading idiots with too much time on our hands. in any case, it was fun that day. but if i were to say what i have to say on Modernity, then once again it becomes a matter of perspectives. when confronting modernity against us, modernity is simply a question of the identities that we give to ourselves and the world around us. the perspectives to modernity are limitless. they are as infinite as the knowledge that we possess. the more we know the more it approaches infinity. perspectives to our self identity. who am i? what am i?

"i think therefore i am." ~ Descartes

...i am a modern man.