The Heart of America throbs for thee
...Who in your Fraction of Myself behold
Myself within the Mirror Myself hold
To see Myself and each part of Me
That sees himself, though drain'd, shall ever see,
Come you lost atoms to your Centre draw,
And be the Eternal Mirror that you saw:
Rays that have wander'd into Darkness wide
Return, and back into your Sun subside. (1)
When I arrived in Kansas City I knew Downtown Kansas City was about to do the Real Estate Rock despite the fact that it appeared to be a 'one cow on a pole' ghost town, the deadest, most haunted city I had ever seen in my entire life.
But sensory perception or worldly intuition is not everything. Certain people such as myself, despite our mundane experience, have a direct, transcendental access to the unseen world, the infinite sphere beyond the illusory domain of real estate. We happen to know that, contrary to the sales pitch, real estate is not the basis of all wealth.
The basis of all wealth is the intangible unity, the One that we are occasionally privileged not only to know, but, at the same moment, to be. Some call it Being, some call it Nothing, but we mystics should not quibble over the difference, if any. Of course the One transcends the intuited parameters of the time-space continuum, wherefore it is impossible to explain just how unreal time - the past, present, future - is collapsed in such a way that we can know everything at once in all particulars; for instance, that an imaginary real estate project will be proposed and eventually realized in fact as yet another illusion veiling Reality - not that we would try to jump through its walls or leap off the top of one of its towers to prove our point.
I was therefore not surprised when the power elite emerged from their cloistered conventicles to unveil the grandiose revitalization plan for the blighted South Loop of Downtown Kansas City. It will include a new seven-block office and entertainment complex dubbed 'Kansas City Live', adjacent or contiguous to an expanded convention center and performing arts center. Will their plan work? Yes it will, and even if it does not, I know a similar one will.
Please mind you that mystic intuition is reliable; however, the view in the crystal ball often nebulous. Does the proposal please me? Yes and no. I am not pleased by the vision of Downtown Kansas City as Sin City. Giving up drinking and smoking years ago had an ascetic effect on me, although I did develop an extra-dry sense of humor to make up for lost martinis. And, the closer I get to Nothing, the more the mere idea of vulgar entertainment disgusts me, especially when they are organized as chain operations, making it a waste of time to travel, for every place is the same kind of consumer center, with the same kind of inlets and outlets. When I escape from Reality, I prefer diversity. And if I were to escape into sin I would want to frequent all sorts of sleazy taverns, strip clubs and smoky after-hours joints, each one perverse in its own way. Otherwise, my concrete vision of utopia is in accord with that of Joachim of Flora's Age of Love: a monastic world of monasteries built in the form of a crucifix.
Nevertheless, I am tolerant. Everybody agrees that "something" has to happen downtown, so, whatever - we do not get to vote on the particulars anyway. One thing that I do like about the revitalization effort is that it is seemingly based on insubstantial factors, communal visions our pythia, Mayor Kay Barnes, has intuited while elevated on her tripod over the gaseous abyss:
"I am increasingly convinced our frame of mind as a community is the most important part of the equation. We can truly become what we believe we are." (The Kansas City Star, December 3, 2003)
Wherefore we must think highly of ourselves and the projects proposed for us although the numbers might not be quite right to proceed with our community's mystic real estate strategy. Some of the greatest world leaders have said, "To hell with the facts, to hell with the numbers." I recall the Doctrinaire leader, Royer-Collard, said that nothing disgusted him as much as a fact. They had the courage of their seemingly irrational decisions. And so should we with our Downtown Kansas City revitalization plan.
If new buildings cannot be filled with tenants, if tenants are fleeing in droves, let us build more new buildings. If the downtown hotels are barely half-full, let us restore old hotels and put more hotel space on the market. If the convention hall cannot be filled, we should add more space off to the side of it. If downtown restaurants and clubs are struggling and closing down for want of business, we must build more restaurants and clubs. If we cannot afford the blighted old library, it will be to our advantage to invest $50 million dollars to build one that will be more expensive to operate - we thank the real estate gods for that new library! Of course more jumbo parking lots will be needed if the existing ones are half-full. In any case, if something does not work, or even if it does work, renovate, convert, or rebuild it. And so on and so forth, pursuant to our mystical approach to real estate development.
In fact, the mystical approach was blessed by no less than Blake Cordish of the Cordish Company; Blake is handling the entertainment district component of the recently unveiled Kansas City Live plan.
"It is a bit mystical, it isn't always logical, " said Blake of his company's selection of Kansas City for the project - I call him by his first name because I admire Blake the poetic mystic.
We have not seen the Cordish statements of financial operations and balance sheets, but we can still thank our lucky stars that the Cordish Company picked Kansas City out of the long line of city suitors at its door: the firm has a number of successful entertainment districts under its belt. Of course it is not all crystal ball with the Cordish Company. Still, there are intangible factors at work, and, after the final analysis, the decision is often based on a peculiar hunch or intuition, perhaps gospel from spirits, angels, maybe even the Onement - the one-god. Of course we are creatures of habit; success (and failure) can become a matter of habit; hence an intuition might arise from the subconscious reservoir, the memories of worldly experiences, and be wrongly referred to as 'mystic intuition.' The Star reporter who quoted Blake seems to think Blake's 'mysticism' is of that sort: "There are intangibles that only experience can teach," indited the reporter.
But your mystically inclined author does not believe that Blake's source is a mental record of ordinary experiences, but is rather the akashic record or something else again. However that might be, we should keep this in mind in regards to our mystical revitalization plans, a mystically inclined developer needs no proof whatsoever that his plan is sound; in fact, it is more likely to succeed the more irrational it might seem to be. If the reader believes this mystical author is joking, please know that he is laughing out loud because he knows there is truth in good jokes. Like it or not, as repugnant as the overall plan is in certain respects, he knows that it or something quite similar will be realized, and that Downtown Kansas City is going to rock.
Kansas City, Missouri
December 28, 2004
(1) Fahrid-Uddin Attar, Mantic-ut-tair , transl. Edward Fitzgerald
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