In Celebration of the Mundane
Things I can see on my desk, from left to right.
1. A copy of Antique Bakery, a translated Japanese comic, sitting on top of a novel by George Perec, translated from French.
2. My wallet.
3. A coffee mug from the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, from which I was drinking tea. It is sitting on a coaster.
4. A black plastic comb.
5. The lid to a Vitamin Water.
6. A computer speaker, standing on some pink post-it notes, standing on a small stack of blank DVD-Rs.
7. A sticker that says "Dubstep" and has a skeleton holding vinyl records.
8. My keys, with a Chinatown fob.
9. A computer mouse.
10. A lazy susan, upon which rests: a small tin with a female Chinese soldier printed on it, a digital camera, a pen, a checkbook, a Budget Rent-a-Car card, a sheet of address labels.
11. A portable hard-drive, unplugged.
12. A binder clip holding two receipts.
13. A post-it with the name of an Indian restaurant recommended to me by my dentist, below which has been written a list of grocery items that were needed weeks ago.
14. A computer tower, topped with unpaid bills.
15. Another computer speaker
16. An external hard drive, blinking blue light.
17. An external hard drive, solid orange stripe of light.
18. A rack of postcards, fronted by one from Nara, a Japanese artist who draws great, angry looking children.
19. A basket full of unfiled, paid bills.
This post exists for the benefit of future digital archeologists. When they dig down to this strata of the petrified internet, they'll be able to recreate a little bit about how we lived. They will wish I wrote more about what was in my wallet. They won't know that I didn't list the Dell mousepad in the above list. They will wonder about the receipts and the grocery list.
I envy them.
Not for their discovery, or their quest, but because they are in the future and they are alive and I won't be.
I had a dream two nights ago where I glanced out a window and saw a nuclear explosion. I fell to the floor and curled up and waited for the blast to burn everything about me away, felt myself falling apart, kept waiting for the point where I wasn't thinking anymore because the atoms that made me up were floating apart on the wind, pushed ahead of the explosion, and there was no me. And I was confused that it wasn't happening, that I wasn't dissolving, that I wasn't sensing when there was no longer a me to sense me.
Does that make sense?
1. A copy of Antique Bakery, a translated Japanese comic, sitting on top of a novel by George Perec, translated from French.
2. My wallet.
3. A coffee mug from the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, from which I was drinking tea. It is sitting on a coaster.
4. A black plastic comb.
5. The lid to a Vitamin Water.
6. A computer speaker, standing on some pink post-it notes, standing on a small stack of blank DVD-Rs.
7. A sticker that says "Dubstep" and has a skeleton holding vinyl records.
8. My keys, with a Chinatown fob.
9. A computer mouse.
10. A lazy susan, upon which rests: a small tin with a female Chinese soldier printed on it, a digital camera, a pen, a checkbook, a Budget Rent-a-Car card, a sheet of address labels.
11. A portable hard-drive, unplugged.
12. A binder clip holding two receipts.
13. A post-it with the name of an Indian restaurant recommended to me by my dentist, below which has been written a list of grocery items that were needed weeks ago.
14. A computer tower, topped with unpaid bills.
15. Another computer speaker
16. An external hard drive, blinking blue light.
17. An external hard drive, solid orange stripe of light.
18. A rack of postcards, fronted by one from Nara, a Japanese artist who draws great, angry looking children.
19. A basket full of unfiled, paid bills.
This post exists for the benefit of future digital archeologists. When they dig down to this strata of the petrified internet, they'll be able to recreate a little bit about how we lived. They will wish I wrote more about what was in my wallet. They won't know that I didn't list the Dell mousepad in the above list. They will wonder about the receipts and the grocery list.
I envy them.
Not for their discovery, or their quest, but because they are in the future and they are alive and I won't be.
I had a dream two nights ago where I glanced out a window and saw a nuclear explosion. I fell to the floor and curled up and waited for the blast to burn everything about me away, felt myself falling apart, kept waiting for the point where I wasn't thinking anymore because the atoms that made me up were floating apart on the wind, pushed ahead of the explosion, and there was no me. And I was confused that it wasn't happening, that I wasn't dissolving, that I wasn't sensing when there was no longer a me to sense me.
Does that make sense?