Spring Cleaning - Friday Flash
The bookshelves were denuded of volumes. The magazine rack was bereft of both magazines and newspapers.The coffee table played host to not a single photo album. The HiFi stacking house neither CDs nor vinyl records. The TV unit hosted no DVDs. The TV itself was merely collecting dust, not having been switched on in an age. Same thing his computer at the workstation in the study.
All of these home entertainment devices had been supplanted by his phone. All their offerings were now accessible on its tiny screen. Any words or sounds imbibed through minuscule earphones.
He set about spring cleaning his reorganised house. He put out the magazine rack for collection with the refuse. Sold off the TV. Couldn't find a buyer for his turntable, not even an antique or curios shop. With the TV gone, there was an ugly imprint of its border bevelled into the wood of the unit. He threw out the unit. As he did with the coffee table, disfigured by rings from his coffee mugs. He gave his computer away to a charity shop.
The rooms were looking spartan. He decided he didn't need quite so much space. He could get by with a bedroom for his futon, a bathroom, a galley kitchen and a living room with just a chair or maybe a two-seater settee if he wanted to spread out. He didn't need anything else. So he sold his house and invested the profits in a phone with more memory, greater sharpness of video and faster streaming function. In his new pad, the bathroom was the largest room to accommodate a bath with perfect dimensions for lying back and internet surfing. He didn't have a shower since you couldn't take your phone in with you.
And so he begun his new life. Contained wholly within the confines of his phone, itself enclosed within the cosy dimensions of his home. Only his future was completely determined by his past. Not in a headshrinkery sense of being stuck in repeated patterns of behaviour; his radical rehousing scheme being disproof enough of that. No, through the phone having become the repository of his entire past life and trove of memories, meant it also became the suppository of his entire futurity. Since the phone prompted and pinged and alerted him to films and albums and books and TV shows that based on his past tastes and preferences he would be sure to like. And it did this constantly. Without pause. His life algorithmised, calculated and finitely spat out into a shopping list. He had been himself sprung clean of any quirky or unconventional entertainment that diverged from his usual fare, simply because it was never offered to him any longer. He held his life in the palm of his hand. Only it wasn't his life any more.
All of these home entertainment devices had been supplanted by his phone. All their offerings were now accessible on its tiny screen. Any words or sounds imbibed through minuscule earphones.
He set about spring cleaning his reorganised house. He put out the magazine rack for collection with the refuse. Sold off the TV. Couldn't find a buyer for his turntable, not even an antique or curios shop. With the TV gone, there was an ugly imprint of its border bevelled into the wood of the unit. He threw out the unit. As he did with the coffee table, disfigured by rings from his coffee mugs. He gave his computer away to a charity shop.
The rooms were looking spartan. He decided he didn't need quite so much space. He could get by with a bedroom for his futon, a bathroom, a galley kitchen and a living room with just a chair or maybe a two-seater settee if he wanted to spread out. He didn't need anything else. So he sold his house and invested the profits in a phone with more memory, greater sharpness of video and faster streaming function. In his new pad, the bathroom was the largest room to accommodate a bath with perfect dimensions for lying back and internet surfing. He didn't have a shower since you couldn't take your phone in with you.
And so he begun his new life. Contained wholly within the confines of his phone, itself enclosed within the cosy dimensions of his home. Only his future was completely determined by his past. Not in a headshrinkery sense of being stuck in repeated patterns of behaviour; his radical rehousing scheme being disproof enough of that. No, through the phone having become the repository of his entire past life and trove of memories, meant it also became the suppository of his entire futurity. Since the phone prompted and pinged and alerted him to films and albums and books and TV shows that based on his past tastes and preferences he would be sure to like. And it did this constantly. Without pause. His life algorithmised, calculated and finitely spat out into a shopping list. He had been himself sprung clean of any quirky or unconventional entertainment that diverged from his usual fare, simply because it was never offered to him any longer. He held his life in the palm of his hand. Only it wasn't his life any more.
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