No surprises – the peak of freshness revealing itself only in virtual unreality.
The gritty everyday mere variations on a theme grown grey.
A card in the post injects tales of different lives, all struggling within similar scenes,
but with different characters and different dreams.
Outdoors we become more distant; not only in physicality but in personality, venting inner frustrations in public confrontations as we queue for packaged food in stiff winding formation.
One thing – nature remains the same, takes no heed of gradual change; the conclusion of casual encounters or the fearful flinching or the braving of traffic and thorns in homage to our new motto ‘social distancing.’
I fill my time with paper cuttings, shaping paper realities and marvelling how paper nothings become paper somethings, distinct from my static surroundings.
I cling to paper memories, remnants of unwelcome worlds – tickets sacred in their very materiality – contactless dictating out transactions and our interactions.
Digital worlds seem key to all, yet I clutch my paper memories, deny the death of nostalgia, find sunlight in scraps, and relinquish intangible futures to the shifting breeze.
—
Featured image by María Berrío
tashtastic 
I had no idea that ‘materiality’ was a word – and it seems very contemporary in it’s usage. There is a great deal of interest in what you say here as I have been looking at old postcards and memorabilia myself. I had just read “The Museum Makers” by Rachel Morris which deals with the importance of tangible archives for personal and public use.
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This book looks fascinating, thank you for alerting me to it! And thank you for your kind words about my poem, it’s nice to know I am not alone in thinking about these themes.
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Reblogged this on penwithlit and commented:
Very interesting perceptions raised here and philisophical ideas about contingency and social aspects of knowledge etc.
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