Traveling around the world is fun, but then coming home again after a long trip is awesome.
I know I shouldn’t get so sentimental about this, but there is something simply wonderful about the familiar little things, even the annoying things. The temperamental coffee maker and its arcane rituals, the newspaper that arrives with a bang at my door every morning at 5am, the faucet in the shower that keeps falling off, the light in the entryway that still doesn’t work (I’ve tried).
And of course there’s that one side of the toaster in the kitchen that either doesn’t toast or else burns the bread to a crisp. I’ve never been able to find a pattern — it seems to operate from a random number generator. God I love it!
We each have our little daily patterns, the groove of seemingly meaningless physical details that help us properly orient ourselves for the day to come. There is something about the physicality of these things — their connection to our body in space and time — that creates a powerful bond.
I’m sure we will eventually create amazing places with augmented reality, limitless landscapes and virtual environments limited only by the imagination. Brave new worlds in which the toast comes out perfectly every time.
But I wouldn’t trade that toaster in the kitchen for anything.
You need to do something with that toaster! Maybe keep a record of it, generating a random number between 0 and 127 per week?
That’s a great idea. Alas, I bought that toaster before they came out with the fancy seven bit models. My toaster only goes up to 63. 😉