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Guy YedwabWriting The Essay12/10/2006The Vibrantly InvisibleTwice a week, I walk up and down Greene Street, on my route back and forth from class.Greene, like many in New York, are grey and undistinguished; crossing other streets in the sameubiquitous angular intersections that can be found almost anywhere in the city. It isn't the neon nebulathat is Times Square, nor is it the serene natural rolling of Central Park. Any one particular corner—say,where Greene meets Washington Place—seems as normal as the next.One day, as I was charting my usual path down Greene, I happened to notice a bronze plaqueattached to one of the buildings, declaring it a historical site. New York, with its distinguished historydating back almost four hundred years, is littered with similar declarations. The building it wasattached to didn't seem like a monument, but even the most nondescript buildings can be a home tohistory. I was interested in what politician had ordered the plaque, and why.In a clinical, official tone, it told me that the building I was standing in front of had once beenthe Triangle Shirtwaist Company. From there, I had to fill in my own memory of high school historyclasses. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company had been the site of a terrible fire; the women seamstresses,surrounded by highly flammable material, had been locked into the room so that the boss wouldn't haveto give them bathroom breaks. As a result, the women were forced to decide between burning to deathin the building, or jumping out the window and dying on the pavement. The bloody brutality of thatevening had shocked the entire nation into finally creating the first workplace safety regulations.This dull corner of Greene and Washington Place was unlike any almost any other corner in thecity. Suddenly it seemed to me filled with the blood of women and children, as though they had justtumbled to my feet that morning. Nothing had changed about the street corner. None of my five senses had changed at all. But my perception of that corner would never be the same again. Every time I walk past that corner, I feel alittle colder, the street feels a little uglier, and the wind howls a little louder.Our five senses provide a blank canvas of experience, but without the perception of the mind, itwould have no meaning or texture. It is our mind which focuses our attention, which identifies what wesee, and which provides meaning to the world around us. Consequently, a change in the ideas in your mind can change the way you perceive your life and the world around you.Many things can change the way your mind looks at the world. William James, in his seminalexistentialist work 
 Pragmatism
, said that the human mind changes its perception of the world whenever some fact, idea, or experience does not fit your previous experience of the world. Either the new idea is
 
tailored to fit your previous experience, or your previous experience is reevaluated in light of the newidea.Most movies we see are evaluated in the light of our previous ideas, but a compelling movieasks you to reevaluate your previous ideas with that movie in mind.
 I Heart Huckabees
, a movie whichseeks to look at life through an patchwork of existentialist lenses, has the capacity to change your own perceptions. The main character, Albert Markofsky, is attempting to shape his own perceptions, and themovie takes you along his search for a way to look at his world. At the beginning of the movie, he sortshis way through a maze-like office building to arrive, confused at the office of Jaffe and Jaffe,existentialist detectives. They want to examine his life from the lens of an optimistic existentialismwhich says that the entire universe is interconnected, and use this to find comforting patterns inexistence. But as the movie progresses, Jaffe and Jaffe continue to exert stress on Albert's life, losinghim chairmanship of the conservancy he created, until he finally rejects them. Through a new-foundfriend, Tommy Corn (a fire-fighter who has been depressed about the meaning of life since 9/11), hediscovers a nihilist existentialist Catherine Vauban, who says that the entire universe is nothing butdivision and pain. At first, Albert and Tommy find this new philosophy more comforting, because itmatches their own experiences with pain and the seeming meaninglessness of life. But at the height of Albert's pain, he realizes that it is ignorant of him to deny that there are connections between thedifferent parts of his life. At the climax of the movie, he faces both Jaffe's and Vauban together, and berates them for attempting to separate the connections from the disconnections, the pleasures from the pains. Having realized that life is neither one whole nor fully separate, he forges out on his own withTommy, and the movie ends with the two of them ruminating on their experiences in the movie.The storytelling allows the audience to examine the ideas that Albert struggles with by closelyfollowing Albert during the movie. Most of the movie is filmed naturalistic ally, presenting thingsmuch as they appear in Albert's life. But because most of Albert's life is so “normal,” the few times thatsomething extraordinary occurs, it is very clearly presented. The entire movie is set up in the first fewmoments of the film, as Albert Markofsky is trying to find the office of Jaffe and Jaffe. He wandersthrough the uniform walls of the office building, pausing at the forks in the corridor and constantlyreferring to the business card which is his only guide. As he becomes more and more lost in the mazeof the office, he becomes more and more agitated. The maze is passing by faster and faster, the turnsquicker and quicker. Suddenly, as he turns a corner, he catches sight of another person turning thecorner at the end of the hall. A sharp eye can detect that it is, in fact, himself. He nearly catches up withhimself, but when he turns the corner, all he finds is the office of Jaffe and Jaffe.Part of the existentialist philosophy presented by Jaffe and Jaffe is the idea of 'deconstruction,'which Catherine Vauban later mirrors. The everyday life, they say, distracts from the deeper meaning,
 
and it is only at those moments when the everyday life seems to completely fall apart that one can seethe meanings. Lost in the maze-like hall, he reaches a point of desperation; and it is precisely in thatdesperation that he 'finds himself' and, in turn, finds where he is going.Both Jaffe and Jaffe and Catherine Vauban's philosophy is deeply rooted in a school of existentialist thought called mereological nihilism. Mereological thought states that everything in theuniverse is made of either parts and wholes. Mereological nihilism then takes the next step, and statesthat 'objects' which are really just parts of larger objects or which are divisible into smaller parts are just mental illusions. The only true wholes are those of the smallest, indivisible particles: currently,quantum physics would hold those to be quarks.But the consequences of that strain of thinking are not necessarily all the same. Jaffe and Jaffe believe that, in the end, because the whole of the universe is subject to the will of the mind, the mindcan reshape the world around you into a more satisfying life. It's simply a matter of rearranging patterns of connection until they satisfy. On the other hand Catherine Vauban holds the truly nihilistconclusion, that because everything eventually divides into tiny particles which are completely separatefrom one another, nothing in the universe is connected and everything is isolated and alone.Even the same belief (that everything breaks down into tiny particles) holds vastly differentconclusions for different people. Why? Because of the matter of perception. Just as the same streetcorner in New York can suddenly become a bloody, frightening place because of the knowledge of what happened there, each of your beliefs becomes colored by the other experiences of your life whichlead you there.The two Jaffes and Catherine Vauban have beliefs which seem to be perpendicular; one resultsin a world which conforms to the optimistic view of the mind, the other results in a world which isnothing but terror and pain that can only be temporarily coped with. Through the entire movie, thesetwo philosophies seem immutable and opposite. Albert, trapped in the middle, battles in his mind between these two philosophies. They become confused in his mind; especially as Jaffe and Jaffeaccidentally increase his isolation by losing him the job he loves, and as Catherine Vauban suddenlyenlightens him as to connections between a coincidence in his life (a Sudanese orphan he encountersrepeatedly) and his own childhood (where Catherine says he has been “orphaned by indifference” byhis callous mother).At the height of his confusion, the film suddenly throws both ideas into absurdity in anargument between Tommy Corn, representing Catherine, and Bernard Jaffe. Bernard exhorts Tommy tosee the connections between the particles of air, which flow together in the wind. Tommy retorts thateach particle is floating alone. Bernard responds that those particles are still sharing electrons, whichtravel freely between them. But Tommy observes that there are even smaller divisions between the
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