Living la vida condo
I moved last November, a full two-plus-thensome months ago, yet I still have boxes in my life. I've done my best to get rid of the cardboard-clad clutter, this last Sunday was in fact a banner day for the routing of the temporary-cum-almost-permanent containers, but I'm still surrounded by the odd straggler, hanger-on boxen. Their compatriots have been flattened, recycled, or shipped off to the storage gulag that is the garage, but these remaining boxes defiantly live on.
Take for instance the box that is labeled only "Random." The danger with a name like that is it's never something you can ever find a place for. In fact its contents have multiplied since I've moved in. It was born to hold all that is unclassifiable, worthless yet indisposable, too good for the trash but not good enough for even the knick-knack shelf. Some items of note: a cup from Legoland Windsor; an inflatable fish I bought in China (deflated); various pouches (cloth, leather, plastic, unknown); a watch from the long-dead start-up I worked for in the waning days of wine and roses; a kit containing the self-installable components to prevent my car from ejecting child-seats like frozen waffles in a Super Dave toaster (can it really be termed a "recall" when the manufacturer makes me do the work?); a mini Eeyore; the largest known dust bunny found in the domestic wilds... maybe I should stop with the listings. To catalogue this box in part means to spill its guts, which now sit on my floor. I'm not sure this is progress.
Other boxes are simply a testament to my laziness. Stuff to hang on walls is in one box, some items framed, some unframed (further testament to sloth). In another lies the viscera of computer(s) yet to be reassembled. I unpacked boxes this weekend that had only other boxes in them. I felt for a moment I was simply a conduit by which these things could multiply and propagate; a hapless host-servant to make boxes into more boxes.
The boxes are dwindling, their days are numbered, but while they live, they mock. It doesn't matter if I was able to successfully install the FLYGGE from IKEA by which I can read my grindingly dull Harry Potter in blazing 50w of halogen light. It doesn't matter that I conquered Mount Hanging Mirror or braved the Rapids Put Books in Bookcases. As long as these stupid boxes litter the causeway, tripping reminders of work left undone, my new territory is not yet tamed. Or maybe it is, and I haven't yet accepted the autonomy of the other immigrants to this shining new land. Who am I to oppress their dreams of inertia, really?
Images courtesy of advanced camerafone technology.
Take for instance the box that is labeled only "Random." The danger with a name like that is it's never something you can ever find a place for. In fact its contents have multiplied since I've moved in. It was born to hold all that is unclassifiable, worthless yet indisposable, too good for the trash but not good enough for even the knick-knack shelf. Some items of note: a cup from Legoland Windsor; an inflatable fish I bought in China (deflated); various pouches (cloth, leather, plastic, unknown); a watch from the long-dead start-up I worked for in the waning days of wine and roses; a kit containing the self-installable components to prevent my car from ejecting child-seats like frozen waffles in a Super Dave toaster (can it really be termed a "recall" when the manufacturer makes me do the work?); a mini Eeyore; the largest known dust bunny found in the domestic wilds... maybe I should stop with the listings. To catalogue this box in part means to spill its guts, which now sit on my floor. I'm not sure this is progress.
Other boxes are simply a testament to my laziness. Stuff to hang on walls is in one box, some items framed, some unframed (further testament to sloth). In another lies the viscera of computer(s) yet to be reassembled. I unpacked boxes this weekend that had only other boxes in them. I felt for a moment I was simply a conduit by which these things could multiply and propagate; a hapless host-servant to make boxes into more boxes.
The boxes are dwindling, their days are numbered, but while they live, they mock. It doesn't matter if I was able to successfully install the FLYGGE from IKEA by which I can read my grindingly dull Harry Potter in blazing 50w of halogen light. It doesn't matter that I conquered Mount Hanging Mirror or braved the Rapids Put Books in Bookcases. As long as these stupid boxes litter the causeway, tripping reminders of work left undone, my new territory is not yet tamed. Or maybe it is, and I haven't yet accepted the autonomy of the other immigrants to this shining new land. Who am I to oppress their dreams of inertia, really?
Images courtesy of advanced camerafone technology.