Tactile destruction (and creation/reconstruction)
Tactile destruction (and creation/reconstruction)
By Odelia from Percolations
By
fromFire is epic. Especially at night. Especially when you don’t want fire.
Three mornings ago, I looked up from the flames in my woodstove to see that the rubber stove jack around the chimney – the part of the tent that wasn’t supposed to ever catch on fire – start to burn.
It was still dark at 4am in the morning. It was a complete surprise, rather unbelievable for a few seconds. And thus, it was epic.
Photographic proof:
Granted, the fire and resulting destruction was mainly my fault. I’d forgotten to check and clean the chimney regularly prior to this use; the soot had crusted on the inside of the metal tubing, causing it to overheat as I was happily making some early morning tea. The red-hot pipe came a little too close and cosy to the jack: the result was a slightly frantic few minutes spent knocking bits of burning rubber away from my abode, pouring water onto the pipe to cool it down faster, and me praying I don’t witness the grand finale of my canvas-tenting dreams right then and there – alone, cold, and afraid. (It wasn’t that bad, but for a few seconds it did feel a little like it...)
So yes, repairs are in order. I’m deliberating between getting the same stove jack as a replacement, or experimenting with another kind of stove jack, one that’s 65% cheaper but at least three times as difficult to connect to the tent effectively. And it rained before I could get a proper cover in place over the new hole – now I’m waiting again for a hot, sunny day for the interior of my tent to dry up, the wooden “furniture” to stop threatening to mould, and the textiles within to feel a little more comfy and inviting.
(Sleeping on and in blankets and rugs that’re just a tiny bit damp is still uncomfortable, I find – I also wonder if the high humidity and relative coolness of the night I’ve just spent outside contributes to early ageing, where my joints and bones would start reporting to the pain centre of my nervous system more often than is healthy...but I digress.)
This experience gave me a thought, however – which saved me from wracking my brain on Thursday evening for something worthwhile to write. And the thought it this:
I live so much in and through my mind as a reader and writer; I build things digitally, connect with many of my friends online; I am still, in all seriousness though partly as a joke, a bobblehead who lives a step or two detached from reality.
At least, reality so demanding and immediate as watching something you own burst into flames when you don’t exactly want it to cease existing as it was.
That exquisite realization (with the consequent emotions and thoughts) of such tactile destruction is something I experience so rarely, perhaps too rarely for my mind to maintain a healthy grasp of what is here and the now.
(The same sort of mental situation happens in tactile creation and in reconstruction, please do understand – I’m not asking you to burn the pretty tent down when you visit. Thought I’d clarify.)
Deleting a file on the computer, pressing backspace a few too many times, something refusing to upload fully or properly – all these cause a bit of stress and disappointment, to be sure. Especially if it’s a big project, say the final version of a short film you’ve poured your soul into but somehow you forgot to ‘save’ it and now it wanders as scattered bytes somewhere in your computer.
But don’t you agree that there’s something different with watching something be incinerated before you? Something you were just touching and holding and manipulating – or depending on and took for granted, such as I had with the stove jack – and in a few minutes, realize it’s no longer a ‘thing’?
I’m not sure which is more poignant – touching the ashes in the aftermath, or watching the wind take the remains away from you forever.
In a sense I know the loss is essentially the same – I own the file just as much as the stove jack, they may have even been equally as valuable or important to me – but the relationship you have with the physical is different than with the digital; it is as if the former is more real, the loss more damning, the moment more fraught with unknowns and the sense of “uh oh.”
Speaking of tactile experiences, let’s shift to more constructive matters. Here are a few snapshots of my adventures with yarn-spinning so far.
From the left, clockwise: Drop spindle + resulting string; the ugly bit of yarn from my third attempt at spinning on a Lendrum wheel lent to me by a friend; a walnut stick, a completed wooden crochet hook, and the $2 pocketknife I used to carve it; a bit of crocheted material, the result of the yarn and hook made.
That little bit of a woollen masterpiece serves as a ‘proof of concept’ for my ultimate goal of spinning and crocheting enough yarn from scratch to make a wool cloak or shawl by September.
But back to my main point: It’s that inward sensation, driven by the necessity (or choice, in that of creation) of response to an external event, that forms the main thought of this piece.
And it comes as a series of questions, not a conclusion:
Have you given thought to the tactile nature of your life and how it’s been shaping you and your perception of physical reality?
Is there an imbalance between how comfortable, adaptable, and knowledgeable you are within the ‘real world” and the digital one?
What can you add or take away from your life to revive the “rapport” you once had with things you could touch, move, create or destroy with your body?
There isn’t really a right or wrong way to perceive the divide between the tactile and the virtual. (I have a bias, of course – a strong one, though also somewhat paradoxical.)
Being the pragmatist I could be at times, I just thought I shouldn’t let a good object lesson go to waste.
Thanks for reading, as always. I’d catch you again next week!
Odelia
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