Thursday, May 22, 2014

temporary homes

I’ve always been very taken with hotel rooms. Not because of their sanitized, neatly-tucked-edges look (which would delight any obsessive compulsive), which promises comfort, but because these meticulously kept units always have oodles of character. They gather personalities over the years, by bits, from the numerous occupants who come and go.

When I was a kid, I used to explore the impossible nooks of hotel rooms I stayed in, while my parents snoozed or conversed. What I found always told me a little about who had occupied the room before us. A bindi stuck onto the top right corner of the mirror (a woman), a bead fallen off someone’s trinket (a decked up woman), a big pink nappy pin in one of the drawers (a baby), a cigarette butt in an unreachable corner (a smoker)…

People set up makeshift homes in these impersonal spaces. And they always leave transitory traces of themselves behind. Those seashells you gathered, and the sand they came with, those wildflowers in a glass, that matchbox on the windowsill…

When you walk away, you always leave a piece of who you were in those hours and days. Maybe for someone else to discover.

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

epic

"used diamond-tipped wires to slice ingots into wafers"

doesn't that sound like a line right out of an epic poem?
I can just hear the heroic saga in my head:

"...and then he used his diamond-tipped wires 
               To slice the ingots into wafers!"

yeah...it's actually an extract from an article about renewable energy. :\