The pathos of Things

I’ve been nesting hard for the last few months, tinkering and tidying and building small things to make our home more comfortable. I could blame it on the cool, dry autumn weather, the fact that this may be our last year in Flagstaff, or the emotional pregnancy of endings that comes with my final year in the university system.

Regardless, it’s got me thinking about what home is, and toying with the idea that there is beauty inherent to built things that is different from the beauty in manufactured goods. This most impacts me when these hand-made things play important roles in my life, bringing utility, comfort or beauty to work, home, or person.

There is clearly a lot of grey area here. Manufactured objects are products of human creativity and intention, and are often more practical, durable, or aesthetic than the things I can build myself. As much as I love the idea of hand-made wooden spoons, I’ve never had one that’s as good at getting soup to my mouth. Similarly, I love the idea of a handbuilt linux installation, but the stability and ease of managing the computer I work on is more important to me. Barring major practical limitations, however, I experience much more satisfaction in using things with which I have a direct relationship.

The Japanese concept of mono no aware seems to play an important role in my nesting instinct and nostalgia. In a transient world, the things which have the most meaning are those with which I have built a relationship. This happens in a few ways. Old clothing may take on disproportionate personal value by accreting warm memories. The ratty grey button-down I’ve worn on nearly every mountain adventure of the last decade is stiff and ugly. It has crinkly sharp holes in it, burned in by beach campfire embers. The sleeves are too short, and it’s getting thin in places. Letting go of it will be difficult when it’s time, though. It’s taken on character as I’ve slipped memories into the weave.

Objects I have repaired or modified are imbued with shreds of self that make them feel compellingly familiar. The pants I am wearing are worn, and have badly mismatched green thread holding the hems in place. They are also exactly the right length for my legs, and wearing them makes me smile.

I’ve put an embarrassing number of hours into jiggety, a set of BASH scripts that auto-configure a development workstation for me, targeting the various flavors of linux I’ve used over the last few years. These scripts are inconsistent, loosely organized, and rarely keep pace with distribution changes. Despite this imperfection and incompleteness, they work reasonably well when I need to start fresh. They reflect the things that I do every day and the way that I think. Even though I know there are better ways to do this, jiggety makes me smile. Running it on a fresh install makes turning the machine on feel like coming home.