credits: Dave Franzese

Pure Zone

Two kids play some variation of California Cruisin’ at the Fun Zone inside the International Arrivals Terminal at JFK.

A man, perhaps a guardian (though the remove at which he watches suggests he is a stranger) has been drawn from his seat towards the whirring glow.

credits: Settlement Heart

The Man Knew Before He Knew

Others will join him, not speaking.

The placement of the Fun Zone, in the middle-smack of a smooth swath of terminal linoleum, suggests that its makers understood the Zone’s resplendent, almost monolithic quality. It seems to radiate prophecy, the potential for salvation.

credits: Settlement Heart

Radiant presence

Calling out in a span. Unlike us, the Fun Zone does not crave validation. It will continue to blink without any human movement.

The placement of the Mastercard advertisement on the adjacent pillar is not fortuitous. “Seeing the Real New York: Priceless.” There is intelligent design at work here.

The Fun Zone has the same appeal as the New York most tourists see when they come to this island: glitter knobs and clicking strobes, invasion invasion invasion.

The advertisement and the Fun Zone both know that most people will never see the real New York–that in fact, it is impossible for anything to be any more real than it is, more real than the experience of Cruisin California’s 32-bit hills. The Fun Zone is the hyper-real.

credits: Settlement Heart

The Horror of the Real

Indeed, The Real is at first shocking. But we will learn to live with brutality, shock, the dusty sun.

And when the world has become something we no longer recognize (for many of us this is already true) it will be the hyper-real which persists, and our experience with the hyper real that assures us we are still alive.

In a failed world, void of commodity and luxury, our will to survive will force most of our interactions with nature into the realm of brightness, of extreme penetration, of mind-searing. The smell of the wind, the tremors granulating through an abandoned strip mall will fill us with a holy awareness of our lives.

credits: Settlement Heart

The Wilderness

Is the Fun Zone that different from a Mission, a Spanish Cathedral, a sacred cave?

It’s no mistake the Fun Zone occupies the center of an otherwise barren airport aisle. We’re being prepped for our time in the wilderness when we will elevate to savior the monument or person who first makes us feel intensely occupied with an experience.