Wandering Lights

I went to an estate sale. Looking into someone else’s past obsession was fascinating. Brushing my fingers on the beautifully designed objects from the past takes my breath away.

After I pass, what would my estate sale look like?

It would feature many mechanical keyboards mostly from early 2010s, several film cameras in various working conditions from 1970s to 2000s, several digital cameras in different sizes and statures, many expired film rolls, a full 21-book set of 토지 (To-Ji) written by Park Kyung Li (surely this will be a jackpot for someone), a lot of outdated books on how to build usable technologies, a collection of dictionary and thesaurus, a big pile of stickers, many books on a wide variety of all my hobbies, photography, running, water color, typography, Japanese vocabulary, sewing…the list goes on.

Who would be the people who end up staying for hours, meticulously thumbing through pieces of my aspirations, obsessions, fascinations, and hopes?

Analogue souls who appreciate the way a pen glides and pauses on the cool surface of a good, heavy paper. People who would patiently observe at the way ink soaks the paper in awe. Followers of ASMRs consisted of sounds of clunky sound of mechanical camera shutters. Surely those will be my people.

If I could reach over the block of time to tap their shoulders and say hi. Even though we would still be complete strangers, instead of meaningless small talks, we could bond over our mutual love of all things analogue. It would be a shame that I didn’t find these people while I was still around.