"We Exist."

I chose this photograph — of a door in the East Village — as the next picture to blog from the trip we took to NYC over the weekend. I chose it for 2 reasons:

1. I'd just blogged "Beautiful woman reads a book in Russian by the light of the refrigerated pastry case" and got caught up thinking about the other woman in my photograph. She too exists.

2. We were talking about Maureen Dowd's pot freakout. She'd broached the topic of her possible nonexistence: "I became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me."
In the comments, Drew W paraphrased her: "She said 'I know what it's like to be dead/I know what it is to be sad'" and asked: "Do you think Maureen Dowd sat up during her pot trip and said, 'Oh my God! I totally get that Beatles song now!'" I thought of The Byrds' "5D": "All my two dimensional boundaries were gone I had lost to them badly/I saw the world crumble and thought I was dead/But I found my senses still working...." And Meade thought of the stories of the origin of the word "assassin" in the word hashish, which some say was used to make newcomers believe they were seeing an afterlife, to which they might hope to return.

I see that "We Exist" is an Arcade Fire song, and the video tells "the story of a young person's struggle with gender identity." I sense wan didacticism on the familiar, trending topic. That's less universal and existential than I was hoping for when I took the photo and when I selected it for this post. We all exist. Isn't it strange to need to be reminded? "Reminded" is a funny word. It could be misread as meaning getting a new mind... which is something that might happen with Maureen's drugged chocolate.

(Here's the new Arcade Fire album that has "We Exist," and here's an old Arcade Fire album that I listen to sometimes.)

AND:  Serendipitously furthering "We Exist" theme, the disembodied hand in the upper left corner of the photo drapes gently like Adam's hand as he comes into existence in Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam":