They're funny things, really, knowledge and memories and such like. We perceive them everywhere around us, in every object and movement, everything we observe is saturated with them. But they hold no substance, and only exist within our own minds - and us such, their potential quantity is nearly infinite.
What I mean by this is that the memories, the stories if you will, beholden to a specific object are potentially huge in number - an object and its components could have any degree of significance to any person. Take for example the iPod - a person owns this single object, and probably has a massive number of memories just of that person using it. But what about looking on other levels - what about the stories behind each one of the thousands of songs? What about the ideas that have gone into the creation of each line, each bar of music; the effort gone into the editing and production of each track; the careful planning of the release of every single or album... so many stories, and within the memories and people involved, whole lives connected to just a single piece of music, and yet the circuits and chips in this incredibly tiny piece of gadgetry hold them all. And it doesn't stop there. The expertise, knowledge and inspiration required for every circuitboard within the iPod itself, physically, and every microchip too; the thought and care gone into the choosing of materials of the casing, the wiring, the insulation; again, the meetings and brainstorms and sales pitches just to bring all the people together and create a final product... The sheer scale of it is impossible to fully comprehend, and that is just in a single iPod. There are backstories to every building, every room, every piece of furniture, every grain of wood and block of stone, and we wander around knowing so little of it all!
It's scary to think of how much there is to know, and how impossible it is to know even half of it. It's sad to think that the majority of the stories and the knowledge is lost, gone from any memory of archive and never to be known again. And it's strange to think that so much of this knowledge is totally irrelevant and unimportant to so many people, but a lot of it is the story of someone's life, and every little bit of knowledge in some way affects and dictates the events of the here and now.
And we write books and fictions devoted to things that have never happened at all, and these are granted more significance than the knowledge of actual events and people's lives!
I fear I've rather lost the thread of any kind of purposeful narrative now, but it's food for thought. Au revoir!
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