Cherry Picnicking
The beauty of misplacement.
You walk into your living room and there is a bright blue soda machine staring you down. The contrast strikes you as gorgeous. Yet, it feels weird to imagine yourself conducting such commerce in the home. There is something unnatural about faceless shell corporations selling and reselling things wherever you go. Inside every room of your house, you have already done business, but this machine next to the couch has you feeling wacky because it is occupying physical space you didn’t authorize. It's breeds a fun kind of uneasiness. One that leads to accepting the inevitable, if under the right circumstances.
From a young age, we are taught the parameters of order and what must be kept inside of them. Everything is labeled and assigned a special spot, yet the daily rhythm inevitably becomes disheveled and you end up sweeping the day away. There is something enticing about a dustpan on the neighbor’s roof or a recliner left in the driveway. A story lurks just beside them, a piece of a life occurring that you haven't been told yet. It distracts you from the monotony of all this tidying.
It is like waking from a nap where the glow of the soda machine merged into your dreams and you fell out of place in your own home. The tumbling cans unleash a thunder that breaks your glass veil. You run to the window and see a shiny cherry picker because they were trimming the trees in your backyard. You aren’t afraid it will come crashing through when the lights are off and the vehicle is parked. You feel larger than life, even though the emotional side of you almost microwaved your soul before coming to your senses.
Perhaps the mechanisms behind misplacement are more fruitful than meets the eye. Since we have been trained to find the efficiency that comes from order, the disarray keeps the flow of it all. One must discern their lot to differentiate sameness from the rough, much like a cherry picker reaching into the heights to trim overgrowth. This recognition is repetitive and vivid, a binder turning “lost” items into musical notes. It pieces together a melody that hums the tempo of your excited heart.
The soda machine in the living room reminded me of the opening chapter in Phillip K. Dick's Ubik. The main character is trying to get into his apartment, but he hasn't paid off some bill, so the automated lock has shut him out. Not that part especially, but just the way these corporate machines are in our homes with a life of their own.
But I like the idea of displacement also present here as well.