Exercise one: everyday object

A pack of gum
on a
counter top.  

First, there is the initial surface cut: the gum came to be here, in my studio, when I purchased it at the university bookstore three days ago.  It is a new flavor called “sweet mint.”  Let’s refer to the emotion that surrounded this choice as an impulse. Impulsive buying let to this gum laying on this counter in this studio. It's possession was a surprise to me.  That's the first thing about this thing.

In discussing the thinging of a thing, an object that is mass produced and mass consumed with often little thought involved or overt communication between the object and the consumer seems like a poor choice.  There is little to discuss in an object of mass production, maybe.   Or maybe not.  Maybe there are multitudes.

But another layer unfolds itself:  there is incredible serendipitousness in this moment.  Or maybe not.  But in the interest of writing another line, (and anotherandanother) let’s go with maybe. To grab wildly from other readings/watchings in the course: “why this instead of nothing at all?”  why this gum instead of nothing?  Why this gum instead of no gum?  The  answer folds in on itself with complexities, which begin to write and imagine histories and pasts forward and back with exhilarating speed and possibilities.  

Even if the history of this gum is exceedingly pedestrian/typical, and even if there is incredible effort put into making this gum exactly the same as all other gums, there is no possibility of this sameness being truly successful. A convoluted history emerges.  Let’s say, maybe, that the gum itself, the wrapper, and the packing came from widely disparate locations.  It's possible.  Probable, even.  This possibility alone suggests narratives of staggering proportion.  

The hands of each person who touched the machinery that made the gum came with different intentions, different histories, different Moment Right Before’s.  The vast networks of paper mills, processing plants, and printing presses insinuate people, insinuate a huge volume of machinery, all of which approach the gum package with differences.  Each of these narratives is, in the most basic sense, "true." 
 
And these narratives, these truths, begin to clash.  

Maybe the thing about things that are one of many is they thing differently for everything.  The thinging of this particular thing is different for the woman who (I imagine, with my own imperfect and biased imaginings) observes the passage of this gum on a conveyer belt, waiting for her mid-morning break, checking to make sure the ink has dried on the package.  This thing things to her in a particular way.  It things differently than the first gum package she saw that day, and it will thing differently than the next.  

To me, it things in a different way.  It things of a break from typing and a fulfillment of nervous energy and oral fixation and OCD and whatever other weird baggage I force onto and into the gum package.

The human narratives screams loud and clear from a mass produced object.  These narratives inform one another.  They exist side by side in the same bed, breathing off-beat from one another and sweating miserably, but coexisting none the less.  These narratives shriek of context: what do we bring to this gum?  How does the gum receive or fend off our advances?  Our demands?  

So then, the object.  How does a gum package thing, in its essence?  It things of spaces.  It things of the regimented holes where the gum lies, packaged neatly in paper jackets.  It things of the gradual absence that is created.  It things of time: it decomposes quickly.  It is vulnerable to liquid and shock and over-use.  At its core, it reminds us of the earth- it is of trees and is taken into our bodies, mediated through the most chemical and sterile of processes.  It reminds us of the muddying of these things.  Of the way technology and globalization melds and confuses the perceived pure differences between the natural and the artificial.

The gum things of impermanence.  It things of sharing, potentially, or hording.  It things of systems and order: twenty pieces to a pack, one paper jacket to each piece, one pack for all of this.  It things of portability: clearly designed to fit in a loosely clenched human hand.  It speaks of efficiency and ease: it will go with you.  It will stay.  We attempt closeness but not nearness with mass produced objects, but our interactions force a dialogue, and the dialogue is infinite.