Our World

Sometimes I like to read the LL. Bean catalog.

Normally I don't buy anything because as I have said, it is not my taste. Here and there when I've gotten something though, I have been happy with it, such as gortex gloves that were totally warm and I still have them; and a set of very pretty, extremely dorky floral flannel sheets that I think are an exceptional shade of blue.

Right now I'm thinking about getting rid of them, but the color of them does something to me; it is like if the winter light in your bedroom became kryptonite. But even though I hardly ever buy anything, I can't get enough of the world of the people of L.L. Bean. I mostly look at the print catalog, the Website is a little bit different because it doesn't show as many people and scenarios, but in both versions, maybe it is that sometimes the people are invisible to us?

Maybe the beings of L.L. Bean are in a Phantom Zone, like the one in Superman, but without villains.

Whatever is happening, everything in L.L. Bean is practically coming to life.

This shoe,

Invisible Jack's hammock,

and this man-pants segment,

they all have a special presence. May I ask what the situation is that this man is standing this way? But there is a Haitian saying, "What is there about a pumpkin that a knife does not know?" This is true in the world as we know it, and when you enter the L.L. Bean Phantom Zone, everything is subject to its laws.

People and/or their spirit objects inhabit the world of L.L. Bean together. It is a fantasy of facial expressions and inanimate objects populating a spiritual world that is like animism. It is as if they are caught in the moment when we might see their secret inner life.

It is like the Police song, Spirits in the Material World,

or all of Ghost in the Machine. That is an eerie, sad album, just like ghosts, but also exciting like ghosts. Unsurprisingly, eighth grade was the main year that I listened to this album. The L.L. Bean catalog can have an eerie, sad, exciting atmosphere that is also like the story of Beauty and the Beast, which also has people and objects animated together, like in the Disney version. The Jean Cocteau movie, La Belle et la Bete (that's Beauty and the Beast in Frawnch), also has this. It is an awesome movie, but it also makes me want to barf and run away at the same time.

Here is Belle, with her beautiful searching eyes,

and her boyfriend la Bete,

who we are supposed to find weirdly hot? and he kind of is. In spite of the obvious obstacles, they are a surprisingly plausible, though in my opinion unfortunate, couple, living in that dreary, neurotic house of delusions.

Is this love?

She prefers this, a hybrid of puppeteer/gym rat/copy shop worker.

How relieved are we when he turns into a dude? And yet the searching quality to this story, and the way he makes the world come alive for her are completely magical.

Not everyone would be turned on in the form of an elephant-face teapot get-along-gang, but ok the beast is a magical being who rocks her world.

He uses his powers to call her on a quest into his Phantom Zone. This is why she is wearing a hooded cape.

Here she is entering his magic bachelor pad lair, where he has a hallway of disembodied animated arms holding candelabras, which are also very Meatloaf.

Philip Glass's score for the Cocteau movie is very captivating and also evokes the Phantom Zone, which swivels like a revolving mirror through the depths of space.

L.L. Bean is a private metaphysical experience. It enjoins us with its inhabitants, and we are meant to share in a spiritual moment with them as private beings. By sharing in their personhood, our own personhood becomes remote as we reflect, and then is deepened.
What is it like in the Phantom Zone?

?

It is possible to access overlooked places on the space-time continuum.

We can see her timeless, pre-natal origins.

They can be reverted to because they are always there.

What does pleasure mean? In her corner of the Phantom Zone Eden force field, this woman appears to be discovering something new today. Maybe it's a genital wish, a new lettuce, or the view of a favorite turn down a street.

The question about pleasure turns over and over, but it is not repetition because experiencing pleasure is not identical each time.

She is beautiful and she is succeeding at whatever is happening.

In my mind this woman's name is Johanna. In D&D she would be a night messenger who plays the flute or the lute. In some ways, she is always thinking about a mountain. Some of her atmospheres are self-evident.

Sometimes it is lonely here. This couple has descended into an autumnal netherworld. They don't look at each other even though they are holding hands.

This person has been L.L. Bean's non-white man for approximately fifteen years.

This is his female counterpart.

It is unclear whether or not we are supposed to perceive them as a couple. Their photographs often appear on the same page, but I cannot remember ever seeing them "together."

Regardless, in the years that I have come to know this man, he appears to have had a son.

This is an intimate day.

One thing I found in the Phantom Zone Online was "Uncle Mike's Cartridge Slide."

This surprised me, as I had never seen this side of L.L. Bean. It made me feel as if I was a little boy snooping around at my aunt and uncle's house, found this in a drawer, and later I whispered to my brother, "Look, I found Uncle Mike's cartridge slide." Is that the idea with this? Or is it more mature, like I am 24 instead of 10, and I say to my younger brother,

who is wearing the "Commando Sweater" in Sable Heather that smells like some combination of Drakkar/Right Guard/Old Spice, "Why don't you use Uncle Mike's cartridge slide?" since he left his back at school.

Then we gather up our leashes, collars, hunting knives, rifle cases, survival kit, and maybe some socks, and do whatever it is we were planning on doing that day.

I landed in Bean's online-doggyworld by accident.

I had never seen these dogs before, and wearing hunting vests.

It was very different from the doggyworld in my L.L. Bean Home catalog where my sheets came from.

That version of life has only very soft, cute dogs.

It also has a beautiful patterned mosaic entryway to the epicenter of every world.

The cross-over regions through these worlds are vast:

Douche bag chin strap, harmless.

Starbucks cowboy.

Birdwatcher androgeny/Pepperidge Farm

L.L. Bean in the hood.

This sweater constellation is a little bit like this example of what it means to be alive.

The heart of the cross-over region eventually becomes more specific/enthusiastic without becoming proportionately logical. The Mission Plant Stand got five stars, but five stars of what? Does that mean it is a first-rate plant stand in any world? If you had to guess, which one would you say is the Mission Plant Stand? That is right, unfortunately it is the one with the picture that does not show a plant. Also, it is $89.00.

This one with the plant is the Slate-Top End Table. It is $319.00, and you can put a geranium next to a book on top of a book on it. It also received five L.L. Bean Phantom Zone/Cross-Over World Stars.

Silence of the Lambs Cargo Liner, includes "It puts the lotion in the basket!" bumper sticker. Fits many vehicles.

Check it. I think that Poseidon is the god of this blog.

This plate is also the god of my blog.

It is a pantheistic blog, and gods can be added if something makes that happen. As we know, in addition to the sea, Poseidon is the god of earthquakes and horses, but what I'm saying is, how hot is that? Poseidon is quite hot. He is not real, but I am sure that no one cares.

This one probably says more about the artist than anything else. In terms of metal heads, I think Poseidon would be way hotter as a metal head than he is in this picture, which kind of makes me think of a cross between the movie The Room; my roommate's boyfriend from my sophomore year in college; and the WWF, except that it is all taking place under water. In my head I just heard the beginning of "Mutherfuker" from Mellow Gold.

This is a nice one. He's the one on the left. It's a classic, he looks great here, knows his job and does it.

Poseidon is not Mr. Clean; why is that even a possible fallacy? The association is a little bit at cross purposes --> Poseidon makes shit happen, but he also can be kind of a hot mess. In this I like the foggy gray thing though. But why does the ship wrecked guy have a Jesus feel? Jesus worshiping Poseidon is also not plausible.

Again, why is this preoccupied with Jesus? His halo is bigger than his trident, plus why does he even have a halo?

Old dude Poseidon. This is fine, something for everyone. Old dude mermaid isn't for me, but that is just one person's opinion. Is that supposed to be Zeus in the sky watching him show that little boat who is the boss?

He's superhot here, and the aquatic horses are mint.

This is a weird one. He *should* be hot, but he's actually not hot at all. Even though his body is all whatever, he seems awkward and self-serious, and the room in the background is terrible, the sad guy with no forearms and a lone museum goer, plus they made it look like he's giving the track light a kiss with his awkward lips.

Here he is with Amphitrite at their wedding. This is a nice one, and a little bit sad; they look good here but they weren't that happy.

Anyway, he is superhot. Windows are full of pantheism. You don't even have to be trying, to see the presence of every god you can possibly think of in this window setting.

It is not very visible, but the curtain in this picture is not there anymore. A while ago, when I was cleaning, as part of it I threw out all the curtains. They were like gentle diapers of nostalgia and they wafted sunlit dust every day and creeped the shit out of me. The day I took them off and put them in the basement garbage of my building, it was like the end of El Orfanato, the movie by the Pan's Labyrinth person Guillermo del Toro, and it was like I left the Tomas's little house of my mind, except that I am not dead. As a temporary solution I put rice paper on the windows, which is probably sadder than I realize, but window dressing is such an enormous, Freudian step, and now that they are gone, I am not ready to rejoin society in this important formal way; they are like a fountain or a mausoleum.

Other decorating advice that I would offer is to buy nice bedding and expensive statues. Buying bedding is a shopping preference of all the gods for obvious reasons. Recently, I was shopping for sheets. It can be difficult to decide on bedding if it is important to you, but a lot of times, something unexciting that is comfortable that blends in is all you are looking for. Even the fanciest of what I liked --> Marimekko mish mosh and Marimekko knock-offs --> is much less exciting than most of what I saw, or what I might do in a parallel universe. Here is some bedding that suggests that only a small percentage of our existence is concerned with logic and the rest of it with things that mostly aren't called anything.

Bedding:

This wouldn't be my bed, but something about it moves me. It makes me think of being somewhere in a strange house, but somewhere I might actually sleep, like visiting someone for a weekend or a holiday. It is from L.L. Bean, not my taste esp., but this picture has something.

Again, this wouldn't be my bed, I don't think, but this one I find as mysterious as Crate & Barrel wants me to find it. I don't know if I should hope to find myself in this bed one day or not. I think I would like it if it was in a very fancy, contemporary hotel in Germany, Japan, or Sweden, or in a minimalist mansion overlooking a pond.

Defining Elegance was a deeply exotic bedding tour. It is not a place I would shop, but it was more like bedding porn. This example is obviously modeled after those disgusting Italian candies that are ribbon candy on the outside and chocolate on the inside and taste like a funeral parlor.

Kathy Ireland has her own bedding collection, which can be found on Luxury Spreads.

She recommends dry cleaning the Hacienda sheet set. Maybe it's because these have door hinges all over them.

Cannock hinge.

Luxury Spreads also has a camouflage collection.

If you notice, in the corner of this picture, it says Mossy Oak New Break-Up. I am going to guess based on my brain power and some light googling that this term refers to something having to do with the woods. This bedding is also cross-listed under Men's Bedding, which is where I first encountered it, and Luxury Spreads listed the name of this set, not as "Mossy Oak New Break-Up," but as just "New Break-Up," which is of course why I clicked on it: who does not want to know what newly single men's luxury cotton/poly sheets should be?

After some time has gone by, the man can settle into regular sheets, called Break-Up.

Other camo-themed sets included this barftastic bedding event that no doubt smells like paint ball.

And this set, called Young Attitudes Camouflage Khaki. Should post-traumatic stress disorder be expressed as bedding?

This one is called Blaze. I don't know what that means, unless it means exactly what it sounds like, which is that when you close your eyes you dream about burning villages.

ZZ Top meets Miss Piggy. I probably would have had an orgasm over this when I was 8. I am arguably having an orgasm over it right now. There is probably a bowl of m&ms on the nightstand. Also comes in purple.

For sleeping? These ones are called Nepal, but it seems like anything people would do in this bed they already do at lots of places, like the Hampton Inn on I-80 outside of Youngstown, or in any building on my block.