The Eaton Centre

The Eatons Centre in Toronto is shaped like an Anglican Cathedral, long, thin and tall, 25 meters, domed by glass which extends down the West facing side so that the afternoon sun illuminates the mall as it would a well-built church except that instead of saints and stain glass, the light here falls on the visages of giant sized athletes, on TV stars and shapely women, disposable saints of a culture for whom the only prerequisite to Canonization is form.

The Centre extends down into the earth and up into the sky, 4 levels with a parking garage below, fountains filled with pennies, crosscutting walkways and green plant shaped plastic creations along the concourses, plastic fronds blooming out of beds of shredded tree trunks.

Masses swam beneath the 30 foot advertisement deities, the biggest bras on earth, lips that could devour 35 penises and calf muscles that would make Lance Armstrong weep in front of his children. 100 yards long with stores fanning outwards from central walkways, each store a node selling spatialized experience, moments of immersion, fleeting accession. For this is a church that preaches accession, indeed, one could say that its all that it preaches, its only doctrine, you can overcome, just, if only, one more thing, for God's sake, you've got wrinkles, how could you seriously expect...

The consumers inhale the signs proffered here gleefully, a glittering eyed mass stiffened with sincerity, instead of silence and evocative darkness this Centre stews with the silky burble of the diverse elites who form the faithful, glittering in their personal manifestation of the consumerism of the Centre; like stigmatics livid with the blood of Jesus, these faithful are flush with the signs of consumerism, watches, earpods, jewellery, cellphones, high heels and the righteousness common to the faithful of all sects when the time has come to consume the signs sacred.

Do we worship technicity as a modern god or are we merely hunting through its products for what ease or overcoming they promise? Resplendent yet never satisfied is the consumer, never sated by worship of particular technical object, always desiring more, something higher...

The stores beckon, the best semi-religious experiences unto themselves, the late teen ivy league club-smut of Abercrombie & Finch, the sheer cost and decadence of Lady of Godiva and the smooth evolutionary pull of the mac store.

Here I linger, the store teems, consumers basking in the company's trademark clarity, the displays are purely product and information, no sell, no pitch, each device is presented on a single colour background, there are less than 30 products in the entire store although the products colour scheme changes. Theres one for each of us, pink, light green, surprise us, the advertisments say, a vegan didn't choose green?! express yourself, ex-plore.
The bright, clear light and these humble effective products bring definition which the consumers had previously lacked, faces come out of the mass, brightened through the ease of the mac brand, the assistance it gives to todays technologically enhanced consumer.

Indeed, one feels that mac is not selling products so much as evolutionary upgrades, another step forward for the subject, and that the whole store and its equipmental apparatus are merely the implements of upgrade. The ads- the Vegan with pig tails in that Field of tall grass, the trees behind, now their together, she choose pink, the thing is, its not just advertising, this isn't a sugar-chocolate ad, its a mac ad, mac consumers do love the products, these people's technology blooms in its accessibility till it doesn't appear as something properly technical, till its no different from a well used cell phone, a vibrator, an alarm clock, closer and closer, shoes, shirts, a toothbrush. Meanwhile the patterns of production, the heavy metals, the global systems of trade, these disappear, i'm typing thoughts onto the Internet...computers become invisible behind the daystar of their utility, another step closer to technicity, another silence in the history of the earth, growing ever broader, another, the same.

A world fully inhabited settles around the Eaton Centre, from the consumer, intent, manifesting content in the brilliance their church offers, dreams, sirens of purity, of garages, laughter, Christmas, aspect upon aspect, bedside lamps, loved ones and soft carpet, the consumers mind quivers and they buy again, string the dream along, outside it is snowy but the consumers warmth, their bulk of purchases, their dreams push the cold away and they slip softly back indoors