Wires

I’m almost done moving into my new apartment.  I love it.  It’s more spacious.  There are huge picture windows that I can look out of.  It’s amazing.  Except for one little thing.

Wires.

They were a pain in the arse in the last place I lived.  Come to think of it, they’ve been a pain in my side in EVERY place that I’ve lived.   Why are wires so obtrusive.  Why does a tiny plastic sheathed piece of metal snaking across the floor get under our skin?

Controlling tendencies?

I don’t think so.  There is good reason to dislike wires all over the place – they tend to become obstacles to trip on.  When you trip on a wire you can do one of two things.  You can either trip and fall on yourself, or you can trip and yank the wire out of the piece of electronics its’ connected to…or you can even pull the electronics down to the ground.  Come to think of it, you can do all three things.

But in addition to being functionally annoying, wires are aesthetically annoying.  Wires are to electronics as flies are to food.  They come with the territory.  But they are a limitation.  A snively reminder of our lack of control over our environment and an annoying reminder of our lack of intellectual freedom outside the confines of our built environment.

We’ve come to think of minimalist architecture as clean, natural.  Straight lines and plumb walls are understood as one of the highest manifestations of purity and nature.  They are however an illusion.  Nature rarely knows straight lines.  Nature knows only curves and swooping gradations.  Nature is messy, a true manifestation of entropy.  Wires are entropy.  They trip you, things fall, they become tangled and complicated to root out.  They fray.  They catch fire.  Wires are nature.

I still don’t like them running across my carpet though…