I’m not sure if it’s just because we’re getting toward the time of year of my birthday, or whatever, but I find myself in the last week or so kind of looking for the paradigm — the overall model by which to live. As we all know, in capitalism, this can be a challenge, sometimes, with the obvious inclination toward a competitive, rat-race paradigm pervasive for humanity.
I’m looking for the truth, essentially, and in order to find this, I need symbols, and I need plots of land to be designated as sacred, somewhat like is prevalent in Rastafarianism (a sect probably unfeasible in America with its widespread land owned by foreign corporations). Lately, the high school on the north side of South Bend, my hometown and current city of workplace, has closed on account of lack of funding. This was the high school closest to the University of Notre Dame, a prominent Catholic institution and college football beacon.
As a Michigan fan who studies Zen Buddhism, I find it a little more complicated going to this side of town and gleaning paradigmatic truth or morality. So I have to get kind of creative, you might say.
The infinite light fixture retail expanse rests right on the main highway that takes you from South Bend into the state of Michigan, where you might go for beach trips, marijuana dispensaries, or, circa 2005 or so, to buy any alcohol on Sundays. I think I must have beheld it once at a young age and kind of pushed it into my unconscious. It resembled Mount Trashmore, in a sense, for its sheer, vast anatomy, like an earmark of our bulbous capitalistic society overseeing levels of transaction and economy which are hard for the human mind to conceptualize. (Likewise, this level of goods production would simultaneously seem to imply the inevitability of an unwieldy level of waste, to follow, hence, of course, potentiating things like “Mount Trashmore,” and such.)
About three or four years ago, following an apartment eviction down state and ensuing bout with living with my mom back in Niles, Mich., the I.L.F.R.E. just kind of reappeared, to me. It was like I’d reached a state of mental hopelessness which gave me the ability to appreciate the establishment, which, as far as I know, encompasses only one proprietor, or company, a fact that truly boggles the mind. The lot stand at about four acres, or so, probably, of parking lot/light fixture vendor/back lot/dumpster space. It’s located very closely to the Indiana tobacco shops that sit near the state line because of Indiana’s more lenient taxes, and ensuing lower price points, of said. There’s a country bakery, a Dollar General, some houses and so open, rural space. In this way, the I.L.F.R.E. takes on a phenomenological disposition totally ironic, even foolish. It’s the type of garish capitalistic wrinkle you’d expect to find in, say, Lake Station, Ind., or Commerce City, Colo. — some very unadorned, off-the-beaten-path suburb to a big city that provides cheap land for manufacturing and proximity to a ballooned quantity of potential consumers.
Well, the closing of Clay High School should help with the I.L.F.R.E.’s budgeting. In general, at that, the north side seems more and more like a problem child all the time — there was a shooting at Cheers Pub, recently, which in fact even rests outside of South Bend’s city limits, and lies closer to Notre Dame’s campus than any part of the city of South Bend. I’ve been in the Clay Pub, before, and heard really perverted rhetoric emanating from a 50-year-old man (that penchant for making bartenders uncomfortable seems way more common in 70s and ’80s high school grads than my Ludacris/Nelly generation, for which I’m somewhat grateful).
Finally, at some point, my reality pared down to the simple predicament of riding in the car with my mom back to her small house, where my tiny room with a bed, some Spotify on the computer and maybe some ESPN+ would await me. And I finally connected with the I.L.F.R.E. in a way I never had before. Its luminescent mainstays seemed polymorphous and beautiful, finally, in a new sort of way. The overall endeavor somehow resembled the afterlife — an infinite, blinding light, yielding a vast prairie of nothing. It provided contemplation, consistency, identity, and, almost, a kind of purity, for its guilelessly uniform objective set of selling light fixtures. And just like the night around me made no pretense for offering any light or moral clarity, the I.L.F.R.E. stood, proud, stalwart, objectionable and indefatigable, on a night that, nobody would argue, was either an odd or even numbered day of the given month, whatever it might have been.