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Feb. 1st, 2012 07:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
longerthanwedoThe assignment: physically describe a place in your life: features, setting, structure, and incorporate some sort of meaning of commentary in your description of the place.
What I did: couldn't think of an interesting actual place to describe that I hadn't already talked about in another essay, so I described tumblr. As if it were a physical place. I am kind of in love with this ngl so I'm posting it here (instead of on tumblr, whatever, allergic to text posts) ahahaha oh man, I feel so clever. Or something.
If this were a house, it would be blue. Not sky blue or ocean blue or navy blue, but a dull, grey, neutral blue, intended to illicit as little emotion as possible and failing at that simple task. If this were a house, it would be on the corner of Conviction Drive and Superiority Lane.
The house looks small but is bigger on the inside. There aren’t two rooms, or three, or four. There are millions of rooms, and rooms within rooms, different sizes and smells and decibel levels, all packed together, squished inside a creaking, bursting frame. The hallways that connect them are winding and a shadowed shade of that universal blue. From the ceiling there are signs hanging that say “follow” and sometimes you turn a corner and the hallway is blocked and scrawled on the wall is a message that says “we’re sorry, this hallway is unavailable” or maybe “try again later”.
There are different rooms for different things. There is a room dedicated to Renaissance art and one for Justin Bieber. There’s a room for people who love Glee and a room for people who hate it. A room for kittens and one for Korean pop bands; one just for misused historical quotes and one for artistic pornography and one for people who need relationship advice. There’s a room dedicated to pictures of girls in Native American costume, and one dedicated to discouraging cultural appropriation. A room for people who don’t belong in any other room.
This house doesn’t have furniture. Each room has walls covered in images and words, but no chairs, no couches or beds or stoves or fire alarms. Instead, it has people. The people are the fixtures, moving, breathing, leaving, speaking features with names like “fangsandblood” and “hipsterzombie” and “angels-x”. They crowd in the centers of the rooms, looking out, looking at the walls, maneuvering the maze, bumping against each other and this is why there is no furniture. There’s no room for furniture.
If this were a house, it would be the loudest house the world has ever heard. The furniture talks. The people talk, they talk over each other and over themselves, spouting opinions and laughing and shouting in all caps and crying. Declaim to the room, tell the house about your physics test. Maybe the house will help you, maybe not, but you scream it anyway. “I am not okay!” Each person in a battle with the rest, fighting to be in control, to dominate the conversation, to speak in the first person, to pull the topic to themselves, their interests, their thoughts. Write a paragraph on the wall about how you lost your phone. Everyone is important. Everyone is the most important.
If this were a house it would be chaotic. Someone moves out and someone moves in. Its joints would be breaking down, its big blue roof arching up to accommodate the sheer volume of ideas and minds, intelligent or otherwise. It would constantly undergo repairs to no effect. If this were a house, the name would be painted in big white letters and spelled wrong on purpose. If this house was for sale the sign would say “maximum capacity: unknown”.
Now picture this house and flatten it. Compress it down and coat it with LCD technology. Tack a .com to the word on the front. The address is now a domain name. The people are now removed presences, their voices now text, the pictures intangible and when you reach out to touch them you feel static instead of paper and drywall. This house is now on the corner of every street.
If this were a house, it would blanket the world.
What I did: couldn't think of an interesting actual place to describe that I hadn't already talked about in another essay, so I described tumblr. As if it were a physical place. I am kind of in love with this ngl so I'm posting it here (instead of on tumblr, whatever, allergic to text posts) ahahaha oh man, I feel so clever. Or something.
If this were a house, it would be blue. Not sky blue or ocean blue or navy blue, but a dull, grey, neutral blue, intended to illicit as little emotion as possible and failing at that simple task. If this were a house, it would be on the corner of Conviction Drive and Superiority Lane.
The house looks small but is bigger on the inside. There aren’t two rooms, or three, or four. There are millions of rooms, and rooms within rooms, different sizes and smells and decibel levels, all packed together, squished inside a creaking, bursting frame. The hallways that connect them are winding and a shadowed shade of that universal blue. From the ceiling there are signs hanging that say “follow” and sometimes you turn a corner and the hallway is blocked and scrawled on the wall is a message that says “we’re sorry, this hallway is unavailable” or maybe “try again later”.
There are different rooms for different things. There is a room dedicated to Renaissance art and one for Justin Bieber. There’s a room for people who love Glee and a room for people who hate it. A room for kittens and one for Korean pop bands; one just for misused historical quotes and one for artistic pornography and one for people who need relationship advice. There’s a room dedicated to pictures of girls in Native American costume, and one dedicated to discouraging cultural appropriation. A room for people who don’t belong in any other room.
This house doesn’t have furniture. Each room has walls covered in images and words, but no chairs, no couches or beds or stoves or fire alarms. Instead, it has people. The people are the fixtures, moving, breathing, leaving, speaking features with names like “fangsandblood” and “hipsterzombie” and “angels-x”. They crowd in the centers of the rooms, looking out, looking at the walls, maneuvering the maze, bumping against each other and this is why there is no furniture. There’s no room for furniture.
If this were a house, it would be the loudest house the world has ever heard. The furniture talks. The people talk, they talk over each other and over themselves, spouting opinions and laughing and shouting in all caps and crying. Declaim to the room, tell the house about your physics test. Maybe the house will help you, maybe not, but you scream it anyway. “I am not okay!” Each person in a battle with the rest, fighting to be in control, to dominate the conversation, to speak in the first person, to pull the topic to themselves, their interests, their thoughts. Write a paragraph on the wall about how you lost your phone. Everyone is important. Everyone is the most important.
If this were a house it would be chaotic. Someone moves out and someone moves in. Its joints would be breaking down, its big blue roof arching up to accommodate the sheer volume of ideas and minds, intelligent or otherwise. It would constantly undergo repairs to no effect. If this were a house, the name would be painted in big white letters and spelled wrong on purpose. If this house was for sale the sign would say “maximum capacity: unknown”.
Now picture this house and flatten it. Compress it down and coat it with LCD technology. Tack a .com to the word on the front. The address is now a domain name. The people are now removed presences, their voices now text, the pictures intangible and when you reach out to touch them you feel static instead of paper and drywall. This house is now on the corner of every street.
If this were a house, it would blanket the world.
