Sometimes, odd thoughts steal into my brain when I am half asleep. A lot of them are very stupid (but sound profound to me at the time when I'm half asleep; my idea for the invention of a Munsell soil color chart being mounted on an elastic like a wrist pincushion was an example of that) but sometimes a thought sticks, and doesn't seem so silly in the light of day:

I wonder how our lives - our very way of thinking - have changed since the Industrial Revolution (and later, cheap mass production technologies). How all the stuff we own affects our thoughts and our perceptions and the way we operate. It occurs to me that I, as only a moderately-well-off American (which is, after all, quite rich in the global scheme of things) own more stuff than all but the richest kings and caliphs of a thousand or more years ago.

I think the disposability, and the fact that we own so many "copies" of one thing (I am reminded of a joke my grandmother told, about a girl getting ready to go to a dance, and asking herself, "should I wear my new dress, my blue dress, or the one I wore before" and they are all actually the same dress) affects how we value things, and perhaps even the effort we go to to learn how to maintain those things.

Another joke: back in the early 80s, my family and I were at the mall. My mom was looking everywhere to buy some darning cotton to repair some of my dad's socks. She couldn't find it, not even at the good old Woolworth's. My dad made the comment: "Fifty years ago, when socks got a hole in them, people said 'darn these socks' and put them in the sewing basket. Now, they say 'damn these socks!' and put them in the trash."

It's funny, and yet it isn't.

Just thinking out loud here. For some reason, every spring I get hit with a desire to pare down and simplify and get rid of stuff.


usually I just lie down in a darkened room until it goes away.