reaching critical mass

The cuffs of my jeans are rolled up and my bare ankles kick carelessly under this library table on a wet and white March day.  Habit dressed me in boots this morning, but in the haven of the library, winter is no contest for the heating system of this first class, first world institution.  

I think this is an appropriate time for the first post to this first public blog.  

My mass of whimsies and curiosities is helium to rubber, the elastic of my head flesh has stretched far enough.  I've reached my critical mass, now my hot air can be yours.  

I make no contest against being warm.  I am comfortable in this library.  Body in one chair.  Coat, scarf, mittens, socks, sweater, and hat occupy another.  With our instruments, we are always comfortable; our simple inventions keep our necks warm and our fancy inventions keep warm air pumping warm through our hallways so warm blood pumps through our warm bodies.  

I often wonder if we suit our world or if we have made it suit us.  And that's my starting point. 

We live in a world where there a few continuities except for perhaps the love of our parents, annual birthdays, and women's affinity for chocolate - and of course, change.   We rely on something called "planned obsolescence."   Planned obsolescence is the self-destructive feature inherent to most of our modern goods.  It's the intentional design of something to become obsolete, broken, or outdated.  Manufacturers rely on planned obsolescence to keep the public demand for their goods high.  Things aren't made to last, not like my Nanny's thick quilts or my Grand-Papa's well-tailored hat.  Instead, we can count on the style changing, the chip failing, or the screen freezing to the ominous beach ball of death.  

The irony is perfect.  When we are most educated and more clever and all-knowing than ever, we design for failure.  I see it in our fashion, our technology, even in our relationships.  I almost wonder if our greatest fear is the fear of being left alone with the elements.  God forbid we are confronted with a tree, a stream, and an uninterrupted moment to have a conversation with a sibling.  We are so afraid of the notion of just being that we have to design failure into our society to keep us nimble minds focused on the fickle distractions that will be our next trends, our new technologies, and the textiest, flippiest phone.  

You have to be a hypocrite to know.  

So I sit here, and irony sends a cold jolt down my warm back: "Abort Exception: Reset."  I don't understand.  My phone is broken, it's been menacing me for weeks.  But now it seems to have decided to fritz into obsolescence.  Obsolescence so carefully calculated that it gives me a warning message before thrusting me back into the market to which it is loyal to its last cold, sterile flash.  

This urban world we have made, it is strange.