A thought: I went out to see a movie with a friend of mine last night and I brought IJ with me so I could read it in the car while I waited for her to meet up with me in the parking lot of the theatre, and when we left and I locked up the car I had this really weird moment of being concerned that because it was sitting out so obviously on the passenger side car seat that someone would break into my car and steal it – which, like, ???? But the idea of losing my copy of the book is really upsetting to me which I’ve never really had with a book before because I can always just buy a new copy, but for IJ I can’t because it’s got all my underlines and margin writing and sticky notes.
It’s weird to think that there are very very few things in my life that aren’t completely replaceable. Basically everything I need to “keep” is saved on the internet somewhere, so other than the cost of buying new stuff, I could essentially lose everything I own and be cool with it. The only things of mine that aren’t replaceable are my journals, IJ and maybe one or two other books, and a couple of things I have that friends of mine made for me as presents.
I feel like this is symbolic, somehow. Or indicative of my generation - but not really in a bad way or anything. Like my grandmother just recently left her house to move into a retirement home, and she was very upset because she could only take so much with her and she had a huge amount of “stuff”. Just things, objects, that weren’t replaceable. I don’t really have “stuff”. I have no desire for “stuff”, when I’m older I don’t want a house or any kind of permanence, really. I feel like the world now is moving more toward an experience-based culture, rather than a stuff-based one. I don’t want to have things, I want to do things. Not that people didn’t want to do things before, or that people now don’t want to have things anymore, but I think there’s just been a wider shift in what people consider to be of value. Not much is permanent anymore, but the things that do hold a kind of permanence are held in much higher regard than they were in the past, I think, because they’re few and far between.
If that makes any sense?
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