I concede. I felt a memory reminiscent of hygge, Gemütlichkeit or gezelligheid. That feeling of my childhood when we used to eat around a table somewhere in a private garden on the Flemish flatlands.
abbey beer and red wine, cheese and thick pea soup with thicker slices of bread. Fish still sizzling from the smoke box with oyster mushrooms plucked from in between the bushes behind us.
surrounded by trees, grapevines, grass, birds, elephant hawk moths and white butterflies. A peacock or two irritating the neighbors. There, that’s my mother’s trained sparrow. Throw a piece of bread. it will swoop it away; mid flight.
Laughter and loud speaking with multiple conversations occupying the same space. If I had to compare it to a rawness I would call it a feeling of dark crunchy wood and thick grey woolen socks.
I felt this gezelligheid when my children were trying on some plastic shoes at the department store; here in Beijing. We sat on a bench peacefully void of rush trying on sizes 36, 37 and hopes for soonness with 38.
Knowing that the plastic of their shoes would one day end up in my and their bloodstream, was strengthening our bond and togetherness, for they too shall carry on and own their share of memory.
—animasuri’22
—-•
Long form:
<< cyberhyperhygge in a plastic world >>
if “hygge” were one of humanity’s highest aspirations, would we have to (commercially) cling on to it —or on its translated variations— as if it were the last of the relational and relatable imaginations, not yet delegated to the transnational automated, measurable, artificial, virtual or synthetic? (or has it?)
I wonder, how will “gezelligheid” translate into a measured metaverse, gulping energy as dark red wine? Will it be transcoded into customizable statistical models and (in)discrete crudeness of alienated interaction？
Were Second Life or WoW any hint of what to eagerly continue to expect (as to human forms of interaction rather than the techno-centric innovations alone)?
Will we gradually prefer elaborations based on the interfaces suggested in “Existenz”, redefining the plasticity of “Gemütlichkeit”, its ecosystems and its seriously human and nomadic play?
And, or, are these opportunities for re-informed reinvention, for wonder (as too often masked and forgotten by confrontations with overwhelming complexity), and for exploration, toward an acknowledgement of the unwavering grittiness of shared joy of shared life, even when the odds might not seem in one’s (collective) favor?
The future, as I agree with some, remains open.
I concede. I felt a memory reminiscent of hygge, Gemütlichkeit or gezelligheid. That feeling of my childhood when we used to eat around a table somewhere in a private garden on the Flemish flatlands.
abbey beer and red wine, cheese and thick pea soup with thicker slices of bread. Fish still sizzling from the smoke box with oyster mushrooms plucked from in between the bushes behind us.
surrounded by trees, grapevines, grass, birds, elephant hawk moths and white butterflies. A peacock or two irritating the neighbors. There, that’s my mother’s trained sparrow. Throw a piece of bread. it will swoop it away; mid flight.
Laughter and loud speaking with multiple conversations occupying the same space. If I had to compare it to a rawness I would call it a feeling of dark crunchy wood and thick grey woolen socks.
I felt this gezelligheid when my children were trying on some plastic shoes at the department store; here in Beijing. We sat on a bench peacefully void of rush trying on sizes 36, 37 and hopes for soonness with 38.
Knowing that the plastic of their shoes would one day end up in my and their bloodstream, was strengthening our bond and togetherness, for they too shall carry on and own their share of memory.
—animasuri’22