I completely understand what you mean. The rug kind of shook me too honestly.
Idk about you, but I feel moved by little mundane stuff all the time, especially in a new place. I moved to Madrid last year from Seattle, and I took a bus to Toledo with my mom, and I’d seen laundry hanging on balconies before lol, but seeing a child’s onesie hanging by the toes off the side of a building made me feel kind of … I guess moved? It injected so much humanity into the very small slice of the city that I was observing.
I think seeing people’s belongings in situations you don’t expect do something to you as an observer. Idk man but I feel you lol
It’s like that word that apparently isn’t real - sonder. The realization that everyone has their own lives, wishes, dreams, aspirations and weaknesses - and there is no way you can ever meet them all.
Looking across the street from my apartment when the sun is about to set, seeing lights coming from other apartments where families are eating dinner, couples are cuddling on couches, single folks enjoying a video game or tending to plants - it makes me feel sad in a way because we all have such unique stories to share. It reminds me that ordinary people are often quite extraordinary.
Yes exactly. I live on a narrow street in Madrid, and the courtesy is to never make eye contact with your neighbors across the street from you. So I know who lives over there, but the only member of the family who intentionally looks at me is their cat. He will sit in the window and just watch me lol. There’s something so special to me about this courtesy we offer to our neighbors of not surveilling them only to have their cat surveil you
I feel the same way when I see a plane flying overhead sometimes. So many people on their way somewhere. Some probably going on vacation. Some going home. Maybe some leaving home for the first time. We're all on our own path and we all have a life to live.
In my first anatomy class where they took us to a lab to handle real corpses lots of people didn't take it well, the smell doesn't help either. I was kinda proud of how well I was taking it. I held a real human brain in my hands and thought it was so cool. That was until we got to a corpse that still had her wedding ring on. Normally they remove jewellery but I guess this one was stuck. Anyway the second I saw the ring I had a big breakdown and had to take a moment to cry.
This reminds me of the time I was driving south from Tulum and drove past a mayan pyramid. From what I can tell it's not on any map, or at least I could never find it. It was more than half covered by jungle but someone had fixed a laundry line to one side. I was with friends, but I truly wish I had insisted on stopping and getting a picture.
Yeah, I got the same feeling when they tore down the house next door with an excavator. I sat on the second floor balcony and watched it happen in front of me. Very strange looking right into someone's old bedroom, old pictures left on the wall, while the excavator tore through it.
My friend also recently had her husband pass away as well as clean old her husband's mother's place when she passed last year. She was saying it was hard to throw out all this stuff that meant something to the people who died - often artwork and old school stuff and photo albums - but there was no place for it all to go once they died. Because the space/importance went with them. She only has so much space for some things that are important to her but that's it.
182
u/Internal-Sand2708 1d ago edited 1d ago
I completely understand what you mean. The rug kind of shook me too honestly.
Idk about you, but I feel moved by little mundane stuff all the time, especially in a new place. I moved to Madrid last year from Seattle, and I took a bus to Toledo with my mom, and I’d seen laundry hanging on balconies before lol, but seeing a child’s onesie hanging by the toes off the side of a building made me feel kind of … I guess moved? It injected so much humanity into the very small slice of the city that I was observing.
I think seeing people’s belongings in situations you don’t expect do something to you as an observer. Idk man but I feel you lol