More and more I think my existence is to feed a system of constant consumption. I just received a medical bill for $400.00 - there is no itemized list. No accounting that explains what I’m paying for - just “pay this”. This particular clinic and doctor I MAYBE spent five minutes with before he declared IBS and sent me away. He might as well install a magic 8 ball in his office with the most common trash can diagnosis. (A GOLD PLATED magic 8 ball….)

I have to get tags, every time I go down to the DMV the line is literally out the door. There are 300 red necks in front of me, sitting on the floor, leaning against walls, restlessly pacing, sitting on each others laps in the searing summer heat while one myopic old lady way in the back stands behind a giant wooden desk calling out numbers every now and again. Each time so far I’ve been like, “oh hell no” and left. Sooner or later the inevitable line will get me and I will have to stand there for who knows how long and probably hear something like, “you’re missing form #such and such, didn’t you know we can’t process this without a DNA sample — MA’AM.” At that point I’m wondering if I will withstand just snapping.

Maybe it would be nice if I could blame it on THE MAN - but I kinda wonder if we’re not all pigs at the slaughter house. We’re fed this incredibly bad modern diet that encourages a kind of placid existence without questioning while very weird crap happens around us every day.

Case in point - when I was in St.Louis I visited a place called the “city museum” — I expected, a museum. Walking in, the place if filled with acrid smoke and a choking horrible odor. Then they take your $12 per person. The locale is surreal in every respect from intricately laden mosaics on the floor to cheap falling down props on the ceiling - crazy colors and objects are completely out of place and no one - no adult or child seemed to be staring around at the ludicrous nature of the place, at least not the way I was! This is truly WEIRD I thought - I’m eccentric, I’m an artist, but there I was thinking - HOLY CRAP this is ODD. Words just can’t do the place at that moment justice.

Walking through the museum was like finding yourself in the freak show of a different planet. As if carnies had raided and taken over an old building and infested it like fungal growths in an old oak tree.

There was a pizzeria with real stone fired pizza oven - but it didn’t vent to the outside - the wood smoke filtered through the big old building. The acrid horrible burning odor made me gag but people lined up eagerly for pizza. No one else seemed to notice.

There were empty rooms and rooms completely full of odd items that didn’t really relate to anything at all. Part of a railroad track and a wheel sitting on the floor for instance just under a stone archway - no explanation, no reason or rhyme to anything at all.

There was one tiny glass octagonal room and inside sit four adults concentrating on very carefully cutting out snowflakes. In one area a man juggled behind a glass wall. Trying to get away from throngs of people that seemed everywhere and blissfully part of the entirety of the place without thinking it odd in any way - I found a narrow bronze stair case that twisted around, taking it to what I believe was the third floor an attractive blond stood bored behind a long stretching counter, every part of her face pierced. On the counter were cheap silver bracelets - the kind that maybe had some popularity in the 70’s. They were badly tarnished and some looked broken. Old candy lined shelves - but then out the window I saw something even more bizarre.

Children climbing past the window. Four stories up they were climbing through a metal maze of sorts - basically some welded scaffolding with pig wire over the top - but some areas just had hand rails and lacked the pig wire. And people pushed and shuffled and were enthralled with climbing it - even though it perched high in the air over sharp objects, glinting in 100 degree sun, man, woman and child they busily climbed like mad ants. It was in a way spectacular - at any moment I expected it the whole apparatus to collapse yet because it was part of a “museum” whatever caution most people would have at climbing a narrow, rickety structure 100 ft. in the air was totally suspended.

This was taken in 1997 - it was a bit um' more run down when we saw it.

I turned from that and exited down the stairs hoping they at least were in good shape and would not fall, back down and into a tiny corridor where started the “amazing aquarium” display. I walked in and there was stifling heat and the moldy aroma of dirty aquariums. White filmy tanks held “wonders” the man assured us while telling me to step no further until I had paid him $6.00 to see the 1500 foot exhibit of aquariums. “Is he stupid?” I thought - “Does he not know I have an understanding of how much 1500 feet is?” At my feet was an open container of hungry snapping turtles surging up toward me. I wondered briefly why they were open to small hands, or why they would come toward people, but did it matter? I made out some gold fish through foggy glass past the mans shoulders. I didn’t pay the $6.00.

I exited to find myself in wide open spaces that had a row of stone gargoils and a stone archway - not sure why. Then stumbled into an egyptian-esque statue that was nude on top but looked like a man in the face.

Flowing with traffic I found myself again in the mad riot of children and adults. This time I was in a skate park. Wide swooping ramps for skateboards were crawled over by numerous children - not a skate board in site but they gleefully ran rampant over them again and again.

I had on this day left my camera behind. I didn’t have the lenses I needed nor my tripod along on the trip and because I’ve been sick had made an effort to take it easy - but I was quite sure I would have taken some of the most bizarre photos of my life.

From Google Images - Calmer look at the City Museum

We left soon after - the acrid odor of burning pizza and crowded humans making my stomach churn. I think - I truly believe - that if I returned maybe we would find that it had been closed for years, or that something else lay entirely inside, or different people would be there and the riot and strangeness may have been just one of those things.

Anytime Jase and I travel it always seems that we run into the strange, bizarre and unexpected - a giant obelisk in basically a corn field surrounded by the Amish for instance - but I think this really takes the cake in ‘WEIRD’ for me for awhile.

It is so easy to get caught up in what we think of as ‘normal’ — I wonder what it takes at time to see the massive nonsequitors that surround us. What arithmetic is at work when the reality we experience doesn’t add up?

Interesting review of the City Museum,

In the train there was a hole in the floor, this hole proved just large enough for a two year old girl to fall through. A teen, while crawling through one of the play areas, hit he head on the ceiling and passed out. The most dangerous is that last summer a fifteen ton block of granite fell from the ceiling. Fortunatly no one was hurt. In addition to these there are even more problamatic areas and it is only a matter of time untill someone gets hurt or even killed. One area I would definatly avoind is the out side play ground. You are 30+ feet in the air sometimes supported by nothing more than chicken wire. The problem, it was built by artists not engineers who didn’ take the safety of your children into concern.</blockquote>