Yesterday I had a
monday moment of no uncertain
depth nor
fate. From my
place of work walked I into the
restroom, and being as I was in the common
mid-morning state of intermingled
braindeath and utter
lucidity, I
noticed and I
pondered the sign affixed upon the restroom door. It was (as you well know) an
image of a man, stylized to a simple sort of
atheistic perfection, an
immaculate balance of positive and
negative space contained and constrained by smooth lines formed solely by the
heightened contrast.
This, thought I, was indeed a symbol no less powerful, in its own right, than the
Holy Cross of
Christianity, or the
Yin and Yang of the
Chinese. This was, to be fair, a simply jotted
glyph universally recognizable as a valid, if unilateral,
representation of
Man. And yet it was likened to both those symbols for it, too, had been horribly
bastardized,
twisted and perverted, as you soon shall see, into a taunting
reminder of our own truest natures. You see, it was not so simply tarnished as those above; not merely an image reduced to a
pop-culture adornment by
commercialism run rampant, nor a set of lines forever tainted by the gross excesses of
Big Religion; this was a picture expressly crafted to mark, to put it bluntly, the
crapper.
Think, now, of
the works of man that could have been represented by such a
sign; it was, after all, a readable representative of the physical form that unites us all into our
loose association of humanity. But the essential was that this
symbol which was
Man was ultimately and inexorably linked to the action, the process, of (sic)
taking a shit. And after all, how can one complain? Speak, I could, of
arts and
morality, or
science and
religion, of the
proverbial good and the yet more proverbial
evil, but all of these hold disparate meanings for
disparate peoples. Perhaps this was, indeed, the best possible usage for such an overreaching
universality; it shows us united in the common,
all-encompassing, ever-present need to
defecate.
But as my spirits were again picked up, I again looked closer, and my newfound joy in the discovery of human
truth and
meaning was bogged down by
the insufferable details. The symbol, which but a moment ago had seemed to be depictory of the
glorious synergy between the
intellectual (read:
symbolic) achievements of man and the
natural urges and
passions,
so to speak, that make us all human, had turned viciously upon me. It was no longer a unifying
comforter, but rather the self-same, two-faced, returned-upon-itself
villain I had originally taken it out to be.
I had noticed the hands and the feet,
mere rounded stumps, and pondered on the uselessness of such
foreshortened appendages. Was to accept this symbol, to accept this communion, to become, in essence,
powerless? Such was surely indicated. But, I asked, in detailing these details would not the simple wholeness of the
symbol be forever lost? And how, I asked, could any recognition of truth incarnate be truly crippling? What
great works could be done by man, indeed, without a reconciliation between the body and the
mind, the
brain, the
head...
The head! My fundamental
derision was, with finality, revealed in a flash of most
glorious (and
most obvious) observance. The head of this figure, this everyman, was, you see, by no means attached to the body but simply floated in the air, mocking gravity and continuity, reminiscent of the works of
French surrealist Rene Magritte; a travesty, a disjoiner of the union I had just professed to see. A union, no, but a
separation, a
division and a
dichotomy insurmountable! It was as if to say ‘Check you your
head, like your
hat, at the door, for here inside (and where was not?) you will have no need of it! And so in complicated interqueries crumbled my
illusions of a rectified
mankind, one who would no longer pray to a
divided god. I was mired, not by a truth, but by a symbol so pervasive I could not help but take it as one.
Perhaps for the best, my drink from the night before was still rising in me and I hastened to relieve myself within, and with the satisfaction of a good piss, I had forgotten not the fact, but the heart of the matter and left, content again, to continue my
travels of the
day.