Why Garment Racks Matter

The most prominent thing inside a dry cleaning shop is the automated garment rack. I hand the man my ticket, he presses a button, and all those suits move around in single file until my own suit stands front and center.

If I was wealthy and had a lot of clothes, I could have one of those racks installed in my own giant clothes closet. I could hang everything there, including accessories: scuba gear, cowboy hat, snow skis, Halloween costumes and the rest. I could be ready for virtually any situation just by pressing a button.

The fact is, that is exactly what I have, and that is exactly what I do. Though conventional eyesight can’t see it, there is exactly such a mechanism hovering near me wherever I go. It gives me immediate access all day and night to whatever clothing and accessories I require as various situations arise. From years of practice, I can execute changes with blinding speed; literally, blinding speed.

It’s not a literal, physical garment rack, of course, and they aren’t literal, physical clothes. It’s the guises I put on – a different guise for each unique situation; a different set of accessories for each kind of relationship.

I have my inward protecting-outward attacking military gear for forced conversations with rivals and enemies. I have my show off tux for that meeting with the boss. I have my intelligent, lovable, slightly entertaining, good listener casual wear for chance encounters with attractive members of the opposite sex.

And it’s no different for you, and for everyone else. When a lot of people gather into one place, the air just above us is bursting with wardrobes and accessories, all madly, randomly rotating. It’s really quite a sight; or would be, if we could see it.

Of course, if there is anything like a real self or a real person, then that’s what’s pressing the button each time the situation changes, selecting the appropriate attire for each occasion; or each moment, really.

All of this is relatively easy for most of us to understand – as a mere metaphor if nothing else. It is no great insight yet, but let’s dig a little deeper:

What if, in reality, there are not really all those constantly changing people and situations “out there”? What if there is really only one ill-defined entity – “God,” “humanity,” “self,” – and it’s that whole entity, acting as a complete unity, that keeps changing its many appearances for it’s own mysterious reasons, since there is no one else watching? Is it just being playful – a sort of lonely costume party? Or is something else going on?

Or, if that’s too pantheistic an idea, just consider the possibility that my constant costume changes so confuse and fragment my own perceptions that, who or whatever is “out there” is known by me only very imperfectly, if at all? What if each outfit automatically carries its own perceptive grid along with it so that what I think is “out there” is little more than a series of my own dreamy, changing visions?

What if nothing more is out there than other people, or other living beings of some sort, each with his or her own automated garment rack? Human experience would be little more than a dance of solitary, bouncing, projected shadows and images, and I would just be one of them.

In which case, there would be no “out there” at all, because I myself would be part of everyone else's “out there,” just as they are part of mine. “Out there” and “in here” would be exactly the same location.

And what if each outfit carries with it the perceptive grid to see only its counterpart, so that all that can be “out there” for me is a mirror of my current clothing choices “in here”?

If all or any or even just a little of this is possible, do you see what an absurd madness it all is? Do you see the insanity of what we usually call sanity? The fantasy of what we usually call reality? The unity of what we usually call diversity? The delusion of what we usually call intelligence?

Maybe this is all that human experience is or was ever meant to be. In that case, I simply need to accept the fact and move on; or pretend to.

If there is any hope whatever for something like real sanity, real reality, real objectivity, real intelligence, then that hope can only be in this: the possibility of interrupting my clothes changing habits. I must come to grips with the fact that I have been automatically choosing a certain designated outfit whenever a given situation or person comes into range. My supposed understanding of any given person or situation is pathetically limited by own silly choices regarding appearances.

If there is any hope, I must somehow make myself willing to experiment, to wear for example my mechanic’s overalls for skiing, my best suit for grocery shopping, and my scuba gear to the fair. Perhaps even more bizarre and frightening, I must somehow make myself willing to put on my homeless rags for a meeting with my boss, my church going clothes to meet the guys at the local pub, and my clown suit for church.

But first, of course, I must identify the outfits I wear and the specific situations and people for which I choose them. And it probably will be good to keep in mind that some accessories go with different outfits. Sunglasses go well in several different situations; and running shoes; not to mention both a suit of armor, or almost no clothing at all. That’s significant, I think.