Or maybe it's like The Truman Show?

So this morning I was leisurely walking down the hallway in my apartment and noticed there's a smoke detector installed on the wall.


It's about a foot above eye level, right outside the bathroom.

A number of questions ran through my mind at that point. Has that always been there? The casing is cracked--does it even work? How do I know it's a smoke detector and not, like, an NSA monitoring device? Or a Cylon plot device? (It says something about the state of cyber-paranoia nowadays that my first leap was to the NSA, rather than Cylons. WHO AM I?) But, yeah. A smoke detector, hanging out, and I'd never seen it in two years!

Except, false. Of course I'd seen it. I've lived here for two years; I have walked down the hallway innumerable times. I have seen that smoke detector every time and just never thought about it.

Huh.

There are lots of things that could be said about the things seen that go unseen, the invisibility of the everyday, the--sorry in advance--the always already there. I'm a writer and a scholar--these sorts of observations are the entirety of my wheelhouse.

We could talk about infrastructures we take for granted until we look at them, and they break. Think about calling 911, and all that goes into the organization of it. Think about the eerie, horrifying beauty of tornado sirens. Think about walking down a busy road and coming to a block that doesn't have a sidewalk.

We could talk about the assumptions we carry around, unchallenged until it's apparent that they can be harmful, or limiting, or wrong. Think about that hazy, reflexive mental picture you have when you read or hear the word doctor, or gamer, or friend. Or suspect. Think about your epistemology, the way you recognize that something you know is something knowable. Think about the last time you said something was "common sense," or claimed that "everybody knows that." Think about the last time you hurt someone's feelings.

We could talk about losing places, or things, or people that we need, and how we tried not to think about it beforehand. Think about the stages of grief. Think about friends we've spent the past four years with, the ones who are moving away, and how that changes the way we consider all our relationships with everybody, ever.

(Obvs, when I say "we," I mean, "I.")

What I'm going to think about for the rest of the morning, however, is why I didn't think to check for smoke detectors when I first moved in. I remember checking for a fire extinguisher, but not a smoke detector. Inefficient.