Haute Couture Monster Mash

 The "Object" is a hot topic with philosophers. It is because the "Object" presents a crisis in the way we construct our worldview. The "Object" is a false receptacle of permanence in a system of systems.  The most elegant answers to life's questions proposes that these systems do not exist in permanence but in constant flux. The relationship of the "Object" to our sense of self should not stay fixed. But no, by our simply believing in the thing we aspirate these carcasses of will. The "Objects" are given life through the emotional placeholders we proxy about their false concreteness.  Desire is a complicated emotion. Whether that desire is between people or people and the objects we build our sense of self around. I find well made shoes to be particularly strange objects. So are beautiful cars and beautiful boats. Within the infinite diversity of the mind nothing is immune to the persistence of desire.  I don't know why I pour so much into these particular categories of objects. I believe it is that there is a peculiar scale and relationship to one's humanity in these objects. One notices an efficiency of line, form, and silhouette. Svelt transitions of planes are hallmarks of these peculiar objects.You see them and if you are lucky you can put your hands on them. I will admit to casual groping the occasional Porsche Targa in the grocery store parking lot. I was convinced this abhorrent behavior of mine was a personal querk. A behavior that is harmless, but borderline anti-social if not slightly psychosexually sociopathic. Then I noticed someone else doing it and they did it to an object of personal pride. I am currently riding a Cannondale road bike. It is an object of some material worth. While waiting for tacos to go one crowded busy evening, I noticed a man leaving with his order, cross the parking lot to where my bike was locked up. Without even pausing to see if he were being noticed the man leant down and casually squeeze my back tire. I then watched the man drive away in a recent model Range Rover. This object evoked risk of confrontation in a man with a steamy brown bag of burrito the works in one hand and the keys to a 80,000 dollar SUV in the other. Objects can do this. Or rather the projections we hang on them have the ability to possess us. In this sense objects are peculiar. They are objects that are and are not at the same moment. The shoe is there and its shape is pleasing to the eye and to the touch. That is, it is pleasing until the desire to own it takes control over you. Then it becomes a beast. Then it will subtly haunt you in all the objects that gave it form. All the shapes that inspired its genesis will serve to remind you of that object's absence. That absence will grow. The object has now become a phantom in your mind. That object has become a monster of the unobtainable. That creature does not obey your will. That sublime grotesque taunts you from a vacuum.

So, an effigy is made.

The Object, The Desire, The Monster