Dear Reader,
We know midnights at home by the hum of the fridge. It’s one of the most important appliances in the house, after all. The fridge has a complicated problem to solve: everything expires, and we know that, but we’d like to be able to eat before that happens. The fridge has to figure out how to slow down time, to give us the space to live our lives before that which is organic decays into rot. And with its day-to-day importance, efficiency, and clever execution, one aspect of the fridge sticks out: the light. We all know how it feels to stare into that green bean glow. To some, a tool, to others, the epitome of melancholy.
To the fridge, the light is entirely unnecessary. The fridge can do everything it needs to on its own; the light is for us. When the door is closed, our yogurt and beer stays in the dark. We are the ones that need to see. And as we look inside — a space we construct, yet have so little control over — the relationship is mutual. The fridge light watches us. It watches us dancing around the kitchen, our red-eyed hunger munching cold leftovers, us rationing the last of our birthday cake, before closing the door, still hungry. Even when we’d rather stay in the dark, the fridge light turns on us. Our hunger never goes unseen. Maybe that’s what makes a freezer kinder — its lightlessness grants us permission to keep forgetting our stores, only to find they’re freezer burnt when finally retrieved.
Nothing happens in the fridge, that’s the whole point. Because of that, the fridge has to be a mirror to the stuff around it. So yes, this is an issue about the little light inside your refrigerator. It’s also, quite clearly, not.
Go ahead. Open it. This time, you might find something new.
Catch it: it’s running,
Cipher