Wonder Woman and Fountain Pens

Today, a new iOS update rolled out, and I dutifully upgraded my Apple products.  As the screen returned to functionality on my iPad, I was greeted with the colorful Art Deco Wonder Woman graphic I have on it just now for my lock screen wallpaper.  I put in my passcode, and the home screen full of icons floating above an image of a vintage fountain pen collection filled the screen.  I sort of laughed to myself, thinking, "And now you know everything that's important there is to know about me by looking at those two pictures."

It was a joke, but as I turned it over in my mind, I started thinking about how much truth there is to it.  The things we choose to decorate the things we use every day probably say an incredible amount about what goes on behind the closed doors of our psyches.

I started thinking of the images on my other devices:  the shot of the Old Place at sunset on my iPhone, the READ MORE owl graphic I made into a sticker on the outside of my Kindle, the Jailhouse Rock Elvis currently dancing his way across this wallpaper of this computer.  If you pay attention to the little glimpses of what people decorate with, you can learn something about what they value.

Case in point:  every parent or grandparent who has their children's faces plastered on every single one of those places.  Every pet owner who has ever used his or her dog or cat in a profile picture or as screensaver shot (I've done both, btw.)  Every sentimental soul who has his or her true love as the first thing they see when they activate their phone....

I change out the images I see on my various devices quite frequently, but I think most of them would speak to a listening eye (heh).  Wonder Woman?  She shows up a lot.  I think I have at least three different backgrounds with her in it.  You can find the blog post about why I think she's so super awesome and how long that's been going on.  I guess probably everybody has one superhero kicking around in the upstairs, whether they festoon their surroundings with him/her or not.

The fountain pens?  Now that I think about it, I have at least two vintage advertising images of them in addition to the photo of the collection mentioned earlier.  They represent my love of old-fashioned, graceful, and functional things.  They show my love for writing.  They speak to my love of things that last.

Now that this has occurred to me, I will undoubtedly be trying to collect scraps of information about others around me from it.  It's sort of a puzzle, and I have a hard time escaping the lure of those.  I will also probably wonder what it says about me when I switch to the bright orange graphic of a little black cat with librarian glasses on.  Hmm.  Maybe I better not over-analyze too much.  Sometimes, maybe a picture is just a picture is just a picture....