There are two ways to go about it really.

The first - the transcendentalist view - involves going out to the country. Roughing it with nature. Feeling the gravity of life and the cold harshness of the earth. Watching the stars at night away from the light pollution and air pollution that diminishes the glow. Breathing slowly, my friend, breathing in the awe.

The second - the metropolitan view - involves going to the most over-developed areas of a city that you can find. Delving into the intricately woven fabric of social relations and the most unusual fetishes imaginable. Walking the streets with the neon lights, blasting music, and strangely attractive people living out their celebrity-induced dreams. Eyes wide open, intoxicated by the enveloping scene that defies everything including sleep.

I fight between the two, and sometimes I get lost in the neon stars strobing my vision across the antechambers of businesses or churches (indistinguishable differences) that are far too clean, too white, and create too perfect an echo when slowly walking across the polished ground. I get lost in the feminine eyes gouging me from behind delectable haircuts, neo-Toyko Paris make-up styles, and the random deer that managed their way into the city's interior - walking the edge of the city streets looking for a quiet and dark place to settle for the night.

They fight for my attentions, and I suffer from different forms of exoticization of the soul. I feel oddly plain in my mildly cluttered house. And plainness, despite all attempts, is utterly unmotivating. Plainness is the painter's equivalent of coating a white canvas with a beige coat and staring at a small picture of the glass door that sits next to you as inspiration. Looking out the door is more engaging, as passing through it is as well.

I like to imagine Daniel Boone with an iPod. Andrew Jackson furiously sending a text message on his Blackberry to Washington after fighting in New Orleans. Deciding this really could be a nice city someday, without thinking a moment about hurricanes and levies - instead taking in the warmth of the Mexican Gulf's breeze. I can see Andrew Johnson interviewing Rob Blagojevich on YouTube, while off camera W.E.B. Dubois and Oprah roll their eyes while discussing the latest cover of Esquire Magazine with a bare-chested Mathew McConaughey. Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King Jr., and Cindy Sheehan meet at Starbucks to talk about active non-violent resistance using their laptops to scan Google Maps for the right places to take a stand. Ridiculous pop-ups of intelligence quizzes asking if you're smarter than Millard Fillmore and Michael Vick keep interrupting the search until they find their locations and take a deep long breath before moving along.

I like to imagine land rushes on over-developed country cities filled with vacated McMansions. Not everyone gets a home, but Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise get a nice one next to a water canal that helps divert water several hundreds of miles inland toward Las Vegas, which by all reasoning should be an empty desert wasteland. But is is not.

I read a while back that Michael Jackson was going to build a 50+ foot tall robot with lasers in his likeness that was going to march around somewhere out by Las Vegas. True story, I saw it on AOL.