Sometimes I think about how the can opener wasn't invented until the can had already been around for 50 years and how ridiculous this sudden tool would seem to some. Today I learned that we got to the moon before we invented rolling suitcase and though I can't put my finger on why, there's a similar type of energy in both these timelines.
Sometimes I look around the world and think: what is missing?
Once upon a time, I'd take my ideas and post them on a webpage- this, in the age of forum and live journals. I'd mock up the art for them. I'm pleased to say many ideas have seeped into the world and become realities. I'm even more pleased to say many of my inventions were just left to exist as a baby blueprint for something, because I'll be honest- they weren't all winners.
I still do the inventing though they live only like a conversation topics now. I don't even write them down.
This week: a flat faux-leather table mat that works as a transportable work station. You set it up on the dinner table, and work from home. When the table is needed for other things, the sides lift up and snap together, and become a large tray that can be carried elsewhere- with all your work piles still in tact. Even better if, when the tray is on the table, it just looks like a heavy tablecloth.
Writing this out reminds me why I used to include visuals. It's amazing how people see different things in the same sentence.
Here, imagine an elegant hybrid of a mat that could be all of these three things:
(Pictures below show a small letter carry-all tray, a deep green leather table cover on a table, and a bordered felt portable cubicle.)
I like the faux-leather because it emulates a classic office scenario, but I keep thinking about how much more joy and affordability it would be in that material that they use to make plastic cutting boards.
I honestly don't know where this is going. I'm not sure if this would solve anything for more than a handful of households. I'm not suggesting we go into the table-station business. It's been a weird enough year already. I'm just thinking a lot about possibilities lately, and how progress in one direction doesn't mean progress in all directions.
I keep looking around the world looking for what's missing, who's missing, whose stories are missing.
I keep wondering why my brain is so quiet. The only thing I could think to write yesterday is something I know in and out. As in, the words weren't floating around in my mind, nothing is. I plucked them from storage and served them as-is.
I tell myself this has been a long week, a long year, a long decade. I tell myself that no one really knows anything about brain bruises, and why someone who always talked with her mind full would find herself suddenly chewing on total silence.
It's like I'm accidentally meditating.
It's like my brain canned itself and I'm more likely to get to the moon that I am to invent an opener.
I soothe myself with stories I pull out of storage. That maybe this is a wound making its own medicine. That maybe my brain is a bit of an inventor, too. That maybe it looked around and said, you know what this tired and clutter place really really needs?
Less of this,
and less of that,
and more room for, yes,
yes-
more room for
*crickets*
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