Every once in a while I realize how idiosyncratic the shapes and conventions of my world are to their particular points in time. The visual arrangement of the walls and ceiling and doors and decorations in my room are only available as I perceive them from the posture and position in which I sit to observe them, in the time when exigencies of finances and the social freedom of being a bachelor-type (if not in all regards a bachelor) drive me toward certain arrangements of housing. In my life, the things which were familiar to me will become foreign to the welling society. As a kid, I used to be fascinated with film canisters; I used to keep small keepsakes in them or fill them with some concoction or other to pretend that they were magical potions. It struck me as I was sitting here that fewer and fewer people are going to recognize them by sight, as time goes on. Fewer people will know what I'm talking about when I mention them. Film canisters.
I spend so much time in the back of my head or off in other worlds that I don't pay much attention to the granular detail of the world around me. As a result, even details of familiar environments seem novel and surprising when I turn my attention to them. I don't consciously process the arrangement of my room. I don't consider the makeup or implication of the clutter on my floor. I don't remember the tiny truths tucked away inside my memories. Except that sometimes I do, and the world gets this cast of realness to it, and it's strange, and frightening, and heartening. And foreign, and familiar, all the same.
I spend so much time in the back of my head or off in other worlds that I don't pay much attention to the granular detail of the world around me. As a result, even details of familiar environments seem novel and surprising when I turn my attention to them. I don't consciously process the arrangement of my room. I don't consider the makeup or implication of the clutter on my floor. I don't remember the tiny truths tucked away inside my memories. Except that sometimes I do, and the world gets this cast of realness to it, and it's strange, and frightening, and heartening. And foreign, and familiar, all the same.