I walk down the street using both my legs. Today it seems like they are stirring something, spinning the globe beneath me while my top half sits still in space. I call for someone to come help me, to come out here and move me; but that would draw them into the same trap I have fallen into, so I stop pleading after a few minutes.

The houses look like spots on a cat. They look like complicated fences strategically keeping me out of carpeted rooms where I might steal the warmth drawn from friction in the carpet as if it were the breath of a living thing. The houses also look like private carnivals, or mythological plants in a vast, theoretical garden.

But now that I have decided on a garden, what lies outside of it? Probably actual fences with little gardens growing up the sides of them, with their own private gravity that keeps them held fast while totally sideways. I laugh and toss my keys in the air, catching them. The lonely jingle perishes without echo.

I walk down the street and there are so many houses that I become suspicious. Surely there can't be so many of them. I jog around a corner and take hold of a stop sign with both hands. The sun is so bright, it feels like the only living thing on this Earth. But it is neither of those things, living or here; and in light of the facts I am stricken with acceptance.

Unless I am mistaken, there is another dimension of houses running parallel to the first one. How did they spring up like this, so suddenly, so instantly, right now, as I am seeing them? Could that even possibly be the case?

I look at a sign across the street, pretending I no longer recognize the alphabet. It works for a second, but as the undeniable meaning seeps through the delicate barrier of my imagination I have to return to my reasonings.

Now I know some things, and there are some things I know so well you could say I know them twice. For everything else I must wait until the results are in. And I think I have plenty of things in both categories.

You can see sunlight for the first time in your life every day if you want to. You can find out about the other houses, and then not find out about the other houses. But then, things like Chinese. It is impossible to learn Chinese. It can't be done.

The other day I decided to hang my washed sheets in the sun because of excessive summer warmth which I could not bear to consider pointless. They were dry and very fresh to the smell only twenty minutes later.

I could not believe it. So fast? Faster than a dryer? And with zero waste, and I got to keep my quarters? "Yes" with Sioux seriousness.

Finally the process is started; but the question is, how long will it take for us as Americans to come down off this appliance-based market mountain? Power-burning laundry machines, can-openers you have to plug in. Rotisseries you can "set and forget", a process which sounds like a mantra for senility.

Fetish items of convenience are no longer defined as "a box of machinery that you plug in and watch it go" but more like "something you would have invented yourself if you had the inventor's confidence." There are so many primitive things a person can discover and feel just as much a genius as whoever invented the timer that controls your waffle iron.

As I strung my fishing line through fence posts and clamped damp pants onto hangers, I felt like a primitive being improvising the first steps of the Agricultural Revolution. The smell of the Indus River Civilization blew in from the dump of history, where its composting process is near complete and it is ready to enrich the natives of tomorrow. That simple smell enslaved my soul. 

My first apartment didn't have a dishwasher. Sure, life was harder in that situation, but you made friendships that lasted. Not like today. I felt richer for not having to use some slick merchant's top of the line mechanical obstruction between the reality of this world and my life. Dish water is soapy and hot: Time spent doing things we know how to do creates time for critical thinking.

As I develop these rustic systems, I tend to think about how much oblivion has been sown into us by the things we own or use. They direct our energy and thoughts, but also our sense of creativity and some primordial amount of common sense.

The other day I asked my friend if it would be practical to have a magnifying glass that could heat up a skillet, and thus you could cook your food just by being outside during the daytime. He told me they have something like that. I had been beaten to the punch, but I was still satisfied. Appliances gave unto people the convenience to sit in padded chairs all day and do nothing... if the dismantling of abusive technologies involves a lot more going outside, less engine noise and pennies on the dollar for the consumer, then I think we have many more happy days ahead of us.