Kant's Delicatessen

These words, which were once inside my head, are now outside my head. They were floating in a nebulous vortex when they were first apprehended, an amorphous wad of electromagnetic impulse floating in the ether of my mind, everything that was essentially needed to advance my situation as a participant in the masquerade of life, which is to say fuel for a polemic, juice for a remark or conversation, energies to be burned into locution, embryos of meaning to be prodded, glowing & vagabond, into hectic articulations, woodcuts bouncing on the tongue of a moment, making a carnival of significance, which was always a little wobbly, a little shaky minus the encumbrance of logic, & shoved into existence with nine beautiful wings & a semantic carapace. Minutes later I swing by the couch on my way from the kitchen to see R reading The Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz. Intriguing title. How might a mind be captive? Imprisoned by what, its own biases, predilections, ideas, opinions, or induced – by propaganda – into believing its truths are solid, reliable, and non-negotiable? When, in fact, those truths impoverish the mind, lock it in a cell of illusion, give it a small space in which to be a king of echoes and mice. And is the mind even real? The mind is a flywheel, spun by thousands of angels, to produce a spark of recognition. Zen mind beginner’s mind is a very different spin: openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions. An emptiness. A nothingness so vital that it vibrates like the stars, bending the universe around a campfire. And at Kant’s Delicatessen all the meat is rational, categorical, and emphatically imperative. It’s also juicy, smoky, and delicious. The corned beef is a thing in itself. And by that I mean its various slices are thin and marbled and have a certain shape and a duration in time. And that it tastes of postulation and gravity, which are things not to take lightly, but with sauerkraut, cabbage, Swiss cheese and a transcendental dialectic engorged with the thiamine of thought. This is getting prolix. Gear upon gear of subterranean hydraulics. I’m wordy. I know I’m wordy. I shouldn’t be this wordy. Said the words. That I wrote. Or thought I wrote. Maybe they wrote themselves. It’s a dance, is what it is, an exchange, a give and take, a foxtrot. Don’t do a foxtrot in a delicatessen. My advice. Take it or leave it. Some places require patience and stillness. It takes the mind a while to formulate an opinion, a system of guidance, an approach to the counter and a way to make oneself heard. The city is noisy. Too noisy to hear oneself think. Because when we talk to ourselves the words aren’t always carefully chosen. And if we have to say something sudden in public it never comes out right. If the power of art is located in its power to negate, I’m on the wrong train. Which is the kind of negation that gets you to Chicago. Where the delicatessens on the south side smell of boiled cabbage & coleslaw & a surrender to circumstance that comes in the form of warm bread and the smile of a passerby.