Monday 10 August 2015

The Fly

The large black and white floor-tiles are very pleasant, they combine clean modernism with classical allusion. The only problem is that the black is good quality matt, a black so black that it seems to suck the colour out of things that come to lie upon them, form and edges disappear and the tiles themselves sometimes look like they are at a lower level than the white tiles. That fly, for instance, how big is it? You just can't be sure. It was easy to see when my eyes were just drifting around, but I'm trying to look at it now, and it just doesn't work. Easy to see, but hard to look at - how does that work? It was so annoying yesterday, but now it's dead, it's still annoying, and it might end up being there for days, just because I can't see it properly. It might be pushed back and forth by drafts of air from the window or under the door, or people passing by, going from one black tile to another until it falls apart. And then I probably won't be able to see the parts of it.

I've got to do something about it, can't have a dead fly on the toilet floor, no way.

Choice: to pick it up with the fingers - no - or use a fresh piece of toilet paper, or the folded papers I've just used. There is no way that a dead fly is worth a single sheet of toilet paper. The economics just don't add up. On the other hand using the soiled paper would almost definitely soil the tiles, it's not worth considering the risks of a) soiling and b) infection. It's a choice between two wastes of resource. 

Maybe a dead fly is worth a sheet of toilet paper. How do you go about assessing it? Dead fly, toilet paper. What points of similarity or comparison do they have? Materiality, functionality, ability to make this a better planet, or a worse one? It's not good when dead animals have this much influence. Or toilet paper.





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