Have you ever thought about how many times a day we touch plastic? Yesterday I started paying attention to the sensation of plastic as I held it, carried it, grasped it, stirred with it, scrubbed with it.
A ziploc bag feels smooth except for the little ridge along the top where two tracks come together to form a sort of zipper closing. The cap on the carton of my dairy-free creamer has vertical ridges to provide my fingers with a good grip as I turn the cap counterclockwise to open it and clockwise to close it.
My favorite red stirring spoon has a lightly pebbled surface, and the silicone makes the handle seem simultaneously firm and gelatinous. The black handle on an old saucepan is light, but also brittle. The orange and yellow pot scrubber is a mass of pebbly webbing.
The square yellow lids belonging to my oldest storage containers don't bend as easily as they used to. On some of them, long cracks run diagonally from a corner towards the center of the lid. The round and the rectangular dark blue lids sealing leftovers in their glass bottoms have a more malleable quality to them, perhaps because they contain silicone.
It's amazing to think that plastic didn't exist until fairly recently. In all the sensations available to us in this beautiful world, the feel of plastic is still brand new, comparatively speaking. Are my senses enriched by the feel of plastic? I honestly don't know. I'll think about this for a while and come back to it. What do you think, dear reader?
From "The Graduate":
Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Just how do you mean that, sir?
Posted by: Claire Walter | March 19, 2011 at 03:52 PM