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Have you ever been in a historical or archaeological museum? You know, where a local rock hound or community college professor curates a collection of arrowheads and pottery shards?

And you know how you can just tell, when an artifact is a replica or authentic?

For that matter, you know how you can sometimes tell when something is hand-made by a human, versus mass-produced in a factory? It’s not just the look – there’s something about the way the object feels that’s hard to put into words.

There’s just something about a human owning a thing, using a thing, or making a thing that infuses it with … something.

So let’s talk about that.

The shirt

My wife and I took a trip to Mexico last year to visit family. Originally, we had planned a trip to Europe with our daughter’s family and in-laws, but that was cancelled at the last minute over health issues.

So the next best thing was a week and a half visiting family in Puerto Vallarta, in a condo with privacy from – and access to – some of the major resorts in the area.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve seen pictures of me, but my skin color isn’t so much white as it is translucent. My people are descended from northern European folks who needed as much sunlight as they could get. Sucks for me, because the summer sun will burn my skin in about 20 minutes.

So I’m going to Mexico. To a beach resort. Where apparently there’s some sun.

So we’re preparing to go, and I figure I’ll get a sun-proof swimming shirt and the widest-brimmed hat I can find. (Which helped.) The shirt is long-sleeved, white, made of some kind of stretchy-knit kind of thing. It worked pretty well to keep my upper body burn-free the whole time we were there.

When we got home, it went through the wash, then into a drawer for the next time I went swimming. (So, permanently.)

Karate

This past weekend, instead of working out in the dojo, sensei had us wear loose street clothes and meet at the park hear his house.

Now, this is a summer in the desert of southern Idaho, which means you can count on a lot of heat, and a lot of sun. And by “park,” our town means a wide swath of grass and one twiggy old poplar whose shade is half-wasted on pavement. Having grown up here, I figured this would be one of those days that risks a double-digit increase in my risk of skin cancer.

So sure, I loaded up with sunscreen – neck, ears, nose, and so forth. Even my shins above my socks. But what to do about my upper body? For two hours, will a t-shirt be enough? Or is there a better solution – one that is designed to block UV rays?

You guessed it – my old swimming shirt from Mexico. And here’s where it gets interesting.

As we were working out – punching, blocking, working through sequences of moves – I kept getting vivid mental flashes from the trip to Mexico. One minute it might be the bright white stucco reflecting the afternoon sun. Or the smell of the ocean and the water breezing through town. Or the scent of exotic trees and flowers. Or the feel of the tropical sun warming up a swimming pool.

Analysis

Now, it could just be that the feel of that particular cut and fabric on those places of my skin triggered memories of the trip to Mexico. Especially since I don’t normally wear that kind of shirt.

But when I wear a karate uniform, it’s long-sleeved, and I don’t get those flashes. And the flashes seemed to have a different quality than memories. Like my wife and I were reminiscing about our wedding-day adventure, and in comparison, memories have a distinct feeling which is different from the images that popped into my head wearing that shirt.

The flashes I was getting weren’t like recalling memories. They were sharper, clearer, and more vivid. Like, there were smells. I don’t know about you, but my memories are visual and tactile, not olfactory. And it wasn’t like when you smell something and it evokes a memory or a feeling, like when you smell someone’s perfume. It was the opposite – whatever I sensed from the shirt evoked the sights, sounds, and smells of Puerto Vallarta.

(Note: I’m not saying Mexico smelled bad. I mean, the airport had a distinctly musty smell, like the poor kids’ swimming pool in late summer. But the country itself just had a characteristic scent that’s different from home.)

My theory is that spending time in Mexico was an emotionally and spiritually exciting thing. This caused me to feel a lot of things, and those feelings sort of seeped out of me and infused my shirt. And then, just sitting for a year, there weren’t any new impressions to add on or push out or overwrite those impressions.

Context

Remember how I started by talking about how human-made or human-loved objects seem to feel different from things that are made in a factory? I think they’re infused with the same stuff that went into my shirt.

To some degree, all humans can feel that difference. Some people more than others. But it’s why everyone loves a grandma-quilt more than a Walmart-blanket. Why the cookies you make yourself taste better than the cookies you buy from the store.

This is one reason I tend to favor hand-made things over machine-made. Obviously there are some hand-made things that are outside my price range. (Like cars.) But bread? Burgers and fries? Paintings? Greeting cards? Kitchen knives?

Ultimately, I think that there are really two things at play when a human makes something by hand. The first is art – the expression of style and form by human hands. Two different hand-made knives might be art the same way that a Monet and a Van Gogh are both paintings, both different, both art.

The second is the vibe – that non-tangible feel that gets infused into an object by human interaction.

The downside of object reading

And this isn’t always all fun and games. I seem to be pretty sensitive to picking up impressions from objects. Like, going into an antique store is a lot. Imagine a space packed with people having coffee and doughnuts, and talking about their favorite hobbies, and trying to be heard over everyone else.

In those situations, my mind is trying to parse all the input and decide what to filter out and what to pay attention to. Which is tiring. And it’s work to hone in on one thing and really get an honest sense about it. Like trying to hear one conversation in a busy coffee shop with hardwood floors.

Some people get amped up and recharged by being around a lot of humans and humanity like that. For me, it’s just exhausting.

Thrift stores are even worse. A lot donations are from people who have died in varying degrees of physical and/or emotional suffering. And they’re being handled and touched by people who are desperate. Walking out of those stores, there’s like a clingy yucky vibe that wants to stick and linger.

(And not all people who go to thrift stores are desperate. But desperation is a strong emotion, and desperate people often go to thrift stores.)

I’m sitting in a library right now. The senses from the books aren’t quite as intense as things that are handmade, or things that have been owned. But I very much enjoy the feeling of being around books. Like, there’s the intention of the authors, and there’s the emotion of the readers, and there’s the sense of accumulated knowledge, and just this kind of potential that I adore. Helps me focus on writing.

Taking it into the world

We humans have created machines that perform miracles on a daily basis. And it’s not just factories that can make bread and cars. It’s also machines that tell stories through flashing colored lights (televisions). Machines that connect us with other humans halfway around the planet (smartphones). And that doesn’t even touch on artificial intelligence.

And, machines are predictable. When you program or set up a machine to do a thing, it always does that thing at the same speed, using the same materials, and the output is always the same. A business that uses a machine to make products can eliminate the uncertainty of humans making products. (Have you ever fucked up a batch of bread, or had a meal that didn’t turn out like the recipe? Corporations hate that kind of waste.)

The job market is going that direction. As a writer, I have to compete with a chat-bot AI that can turn out reliably readable words at a reliable rate. A cashier at the grocery store has to compete with a computer that can do self-checkout (along with a camera using AI to watch for fraud.) A baker has to compete with a bread factory. A burger flipper has to maintain the speed and consistency of a machine, working to make each burger identical.

Our whole lives have become predicated on industrialization. On the one hand, it allows more people to have more things at a lower cost. When we buy a coffee maker, we can expect that it’s going to be pretty much the same as every other coffee maker. When we buy clothes, we can get standard sizes at affordable prices.

But I have to think that, when we industrialize a process, or even when we have humans laboring to mass-produce things, it strips the humanity out of it. When I buy a shirt from Target, there’s virtually no art to it. There’s no vibe – no emotions, no psychic impressions from the person who made it. Even the energy of the original designer has been diluted and stripped out by the process of industrial manufacturing.

(Though I will say that items produced by slave labor probably carry some of that vibe into the product. Think Temu and iPhones. If iPhones carry the energy of desperate, underpaid child workers – how do might those vibes might impact a culture that uses them?)

And I get it. We can’t all afford to buy bespoke clothes or hand-forged kitchen knives.

One of my gripes about Protestant Christian values, is the emphasis they put on labor. “Work should be its own reward,” and “Idle hands are the devil’s plaything.” I’m even more annoyed by how this philosophy got hijacked by capitalists, who funnel the wealth from that labor right up to the already wealthy.

But the older I get, the more I think about why we’re here. Why be human? What’s the point? And the answer I keep coming back to, is that it’s about the work that we do, and the service we do for others.

Well, that, and for the connection we have with other people. And the stories we make with our lives.

So if the point is the work that we do; and if putting human work into a thing infuses it with extra juice; and if things that have extra juice have more meaning and more humanity to them…

I’m not sure there’s more to that. Except that if you don’t want to feel like a machine, don’t work like one. And try to minimize the machine-made things around you. And the more you do human things, and surround yourself with human-made things, and humans who make things, the more human you’ll feel.

Life-hacking art and juice in objects

Want to get your things to have that extra-ness to them? Here’s how.

First option – use them. The more you use a thing, the more it will pick up your personal vibe. My experience is that it works better when you can cultivate an emotion while you’re using it. Some helpful emotions might be flow, joy, curiosity, confidence, and calm.

For example. If you spend a few bucks on a good kitchen knife, take a moment to enjoy how the knife glides through vegetables as you prep your meals. Buy a painting, hang it, and then spend some time gazing and enjoying the feelings it evokes.

Bonus: you can push those emotions into the object.

Second option – consecrate them. By “consecrate,” I mean: perform a set of meaningful actions to deliberately infuse a specific vibe into the object. (Consecrating can mean “making something holy.” And while I think that applies, it feels a bit narrow. For me, a better definition of consecration comes from Fabeku Fatunmise, who maintains that consecration places an object into a specific energy current.)

For example, you could consecrate your kitchen knives. Start in a clean kitchen. Wash the knife, and hone/sharpen it if needed. (A new knife won’t need sharpening.) You can heat up a burner on the stove and toss some cinnamon or other nice-smelling spice on it, then wave the knife through the smoke. (Don’t heat the knife on the stove, you can fuck up the temper.) Maybe kiss the knife with a little salt (but don’t leave salt or salt water on a carbon-steel knife – it will rust.) Rub the knife with your favorite fresh herbs. Then talk to the knife as if it were a person. Tell it what you’re hoping to accomplish together, like asking it to help you make delicious food. If you have special requests – like not slicing your fingers off – tell it. Then listen, and see what impressions you get back.

(I say listen, but you may not get audible impressions. In this case, listening means paying attention to all your different senses, and noticing what kind of impressions or sensations come through. Think of it like listening to someone you care about talking about something important.)

Virtually anything that you own can be consecrated, in virtually any way that you want. You can consecrate your lunch box. Your spiritual tools. Your car. Your computer. A journal. Painting or writing tools. Work tools. The only limit is your imagination.

Sometimes, you may accidentally consecrate an object in a way that isn’t helpful. For example, I used to wear a small wristband of prayer beads, which I use to manage my anxiety. Over time, the anxiety infused those beads, and I would actually experience more anxiety when I wore them.

I find that the simplest way to reprogram the consecration on an object is to just reconsecrate it with the vibe you want. Like a good, well-seasoned wok, the consecration will just get more complex, helpful, and meaningful.

But you can also completely blank out the vibes on an object and start from scratch. Burying the object in salt for a while usually works. A more gentle method is to clean it with a mixture of salt, water, lemon juice, and vinegar. Some kinds of smoke/incense can have a cleansing effect – frankincense resin is pretty good at both cleansing and consecrating.

(Note: be careful, some items can be damaged by the kind of cleansing you do. Obviously, don’t dunk a deck of cards in lemon water. If you’re in doubt, do a quick internet search for how your cleaning substance can affect the object you want to cleanse.)

Final thoughts

Not sure I really have a takeaway point with this one. I mean, you may or may not have a sense about the emotions and imprints on objects, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Everyone hears the world in different ways.

I think maybe the takeaway is for us not to lose sight of our humanity in the face of our fancy mechanical toys and of corporate balance sheets.

Maybe think about the things you love, and why you love them. Maybe it’s a favorite kitchen knife. Or grandma’s sewing machine. Or grandad’s old army compass. Maybe you haunt antique stores, listening for people’s old treasures to speak to you.

Or, maybe think about making things yourself. That could be baking your own bread, or cooking your own meals. Or you could get esoteric and start playing with woodworking or pottery or painting or writing. Literally anything you make can be art. This essay that you’re reading is art. (Consider – how are your thoughts and emotions shifting after reading this? And how is that like the way thoughts and emotions shift when you’re looking at a painting?)

There are tons of places you can learn to make things. In my home town, I found a glass art studio offering very reasonably-priced classes. Your local community college may also have classes you can take. And there’s always internet how-to videos. You can buy a few inexpensive tools to start – that way if you don’t like it, you’re not out a bunch of money. And I give you permission to suck at it. And permission to love it, even if you’re not good at it. Or to just like it. Or to like it, and have a problematic relationship with it. Or even just to play around with it, nothing serious, just goofing around.

The question, again – what is the work you want to do, and what do you want it to mean?

Be human. And express your human-ness creatively. And try to cultivate more human-ness around you.

Thoughts? Hit me up at dmkoffer at gmail dot com.