Thursday, October 21, 2004
(8:57 PM) | Anonymous:
The Phenomenology of Breaking Into a Pontiac Sunfire.
My car was broken into on Saturday morning. Rather, I discovered it had been broken into on Saturday morning but the actual break-in could have been anytime from 6:50, Friday morning to 11:15, Saturday morning. Regardless, I had the odd experience of walking up to my car, seeing it surrounded by blue-green glass, a lack of glass where the driver side windshield once stood, and thinking to myself "Someone hit my car." I expected there to be a note on my window, something along the lines of, "Sorry, I hit your car. Call me 555-555-5555." Instead I looked in and say two wires hanging out where my CD player had once been, and then I looked up to my visor where my CD wallet had once hung to find it missing. It contained some Belle & Sebastian, Wilco, The Catheters and some random burned CD's - they left the MC5 and the Brown Bunny soundtrack (Thanks!).Husserl says that when we perceive of a thing we perceive of its value at the same time. Since this perception of value is also a perception it appears as something along a horizon, meaning you can be mistaken or take the object as something completely different when you perceive it again from a different vantage point. I drive a Pontiac Sunfire that was given to me by my parents after my dad, a police chief, had acquired it as a stolen vehicle. I am very thankful that my parents were able to help me out in this way, but it isn't a car I would choose to buy. When I think of Pontiac Sunfire and make it present to me in its absence I perceive it as a car with an overly-tan college girl driving it. Even when I think of my Pontiac Sunfire, I perceive it as such. I have no reason to believe others would see it too much differently, since it is a rather sparkly green color, I still haven't scraped the large fairy sticker off the back, and it is a Pontiac Sunfire. When you perceive of a car you apperceive of a driver, so I imagine the thieves say my car and say it as the car of someone who would put some money into the sound system (I hadn't, the CD player was from Wal-Mart.). They may have even perceived me, in my absence, as someone who listens to music they would like, after all I did have a nice CD player (Which I didn't.) so they stole my CD's.
I wonder how drastically their experience changed once they had broken the window, and ripped out the CD player, rushing to grab the CD's, and broke the grill on my heater vents. After that rush of adrenaline had faded I wonder how they experienced the realization that the formerly perceived nice CD player was actually a Pioneer from Wal-Mart. Did they suddenly perceive of me as a gay man when they heard the first few bars of "I Fought in a War" by Belle & Sebastian? Do they still think it was worth it? In the end that irony may have given me the last laugh, at least the perceived irony in my head. Regardless, if I ever find out who did this I will fucking stab them in the face.
