Joshenilia (1)
By:
November 1, 2015
One in a series of posts exhuming the juvenilia and significant objects of HILOBROW’s Josh Glenn.
MR. NATURAL PATCH
In the mid-1970s, when I was 9 or 10, a hip older cousin (he was probably 13) handed down to me his jean jacket covered with sew-on patches — patches he’d acquired at Philadelphia novelty shops earlier that decade. The meaning of most of the patches I understood: “Skateboard Pro — I Don’t Go Slow,” Looney Tunes’s Road Runner, a lightning bolt with a stars-and-stripes motif. This one, however, which was sewn over the jacket’s left front pocket, was a mystery. A bearded, robed man, with booted feet, hands behind his back, expressionless — walking. Who was he? Where was he going?
Some years later, as a teenager in high school, I read a Victor Hugo poem about a man walking in a similar fashion: “Seul, inconnu, le dos courbé, les mains croisées.” The protagonist of Hugo’s poem sees nothing as he walks — his eyes are fixed on his own thoughts. He is in the world, but not of it. He belongs nowhere. Teenage me could relate. I dug the jean jacket out of the box in the attic to which it had been relegated, removed this patch, and sewed it onto my bookbag.
When I was in college, studying Religion and Philosophy in the late ’80s, Fantagraphics began publishing The Complete Crumb Comics, at which late date I finally discovered that the wandering figure on my patch was none other than R. Crumb’s con-artist/guru character Mr. Natural. Asked, “What does it all mean?”, Mr. Natural responds, “Don’t mean sheeit…”. Undergrad me could relate. I removed the patch from my old bookbag — can you tell, by now, that my mother has never thrown anything of mine away? — and sewed it onto my gas-station attendant’s jacket.
I’m now nearly 48 — not quite as grizzled, or wise, as Mr. Natural, but getting there. I’m still hanging onto this patch. I have a feeling that I have more to learn from it, much more.
READ MORE essays by Joshua Glenn, originally published in: THE BAFFLER | BOSTON GLOBE IDEAS | BRAINIAC | CABINET | FEED | HERMENAUT | HILOBROW | HILOBROW: GENERATIONS | HILOBROW: RADIUM AGE SCIENCE FICTION | HILOBROW: SHOCKING BLOCKING | THE IDLER | IO9 | N+1 | NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW | SEMIONAUT | SLATE