A far Better Fate
abluephoenix' blogArchive for nothing sacred
Throw Away Culture
Newfangled Appliances
So I was prepping the ingredients to put into a yummy spinach quiche (my mother’s recipe), and in-between stirring the onions and checking on the bacon I was putting away the dishes from the dishwasher.
I’ve become so spoiled with this nifty piece of machinery that I did not have for the first 27 years of my life that I will attempt to put just about anything in there. Barring my gorgeous hand-made knives, the cutting boards, and the non-stick pans… yeah, I’ll try it.
Brain Ticks
But it got me thinking about wear and tear on dishes and glasses and silverware – I mean, isn’t hand-washing less harsh? Is putting things in the dishwasher once or twice a week rather like putting pantyhose in the dryer on high? Are we going to have to start replacing things because we’ve WASHED them too hard?
I stirred the onions. I chopped the cheese. I beat the eggs. I waited for the bacon. And my brain kept ticking like it’s wont to do.
‘Splosions
When my fiance and I moved into our apartment a year and a half ago, we ditched the mis-matched, chipped, ugly plates and cups we (and multitudes of ex-housemates) had accrued over the years, and purchased a nice new set of black stoneware, with black-handled silverware to match. It’s all dishwasher safe, and so far so good.
Except last week I blew up a plate in the microwave.
Not sure if it was the bacon grease, the ancient microwave malfunctioning, or the plate being a little more brittle than it should be by now. Either way, the thought ran through my head, “well, we can always get another set if a few more break.” And it’s that thought that came to mind again tonight, and made me pause.
Nothing Sacred
Sure it’s just a plate, but we can replace it. Just like we can replace every other item in our house if we want to. Just add money, throw some more stuff in a landfill, and voila!, new stuff to feel happy about owning.
Now having never been exceedingly rich or lucky, it does please me to be able to own some nice things. Some things that match. Some things that make our living space pretty and comfortable. But I’ve known people who collect things just to show them off, or who don’t take care of their things because “they can always get another one.”
Disposable… Everything
But this mentality isn’t what I want to focus on right now. It’s the thought that this “throw away” feeling applies to a lot more than just “stuff.” Lately I’ve been feeling like it applies to our culture.
I was looking at some of the books we have in our conference room at work. I work at a web development company, so we have books on programming language, usability, writing for the web, you name it. And it struck me that half of them are outdated. Some of them were outdated a year after they were published. As a burgeoning writer (so I like to think) it depresses me that something that can take years to put together can be obsolete in less than a year.
And our whole CULTURE is like that these days. What can Americans claim to create that lasts longer than a few years? Books become outdated. Technology becomes obsolete. Career change is a given (an estimated 8-12 times for those of us in my generation). What is there anymore that stays? What is there that defines us? What can we hold on to?
A Room of My Own
We’ve come so far in the past handful of years. Farther technologically speaking than we’ve come in the thousand years preceding. Just think where we’ll be tomorrow – how much will have changed so fast.
Someday I’d like to exist in a place where the landscape is natural, the work I do is concrete, tangible, and rewarding in a long-lasting way, and the community I live in has a sense of longevity and connectivity that makes it cohesive.
Until then, I’ll try not to bust too many plates in our outdated appliances.
A far Better Fate 