It’s All Around Me

You know the scenes, partway through Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where Richard Dreyfuss cannot stop seeing the Devil’s Tower shape wherever he goes? In his mashed potatoes, in his doodles, and eventually in the giant heap of dirt and rubbish that he constructs, maniacally, in his living room?

In the past year, the white Polaroid frame has been my Devil’s Tower: ever-present, as if it’s taking over my brain. It appeared before me in a shop window not long ago:

Display window at Gucci on Madison Avenue, fall 2011.

And just today, my colleague and friend Jillian pinged me, having discovered the Polaboy. It’s a giant lightbox, illuminated with LEDs and propped against the wall, and it looks like… well, here it is. I’d happily own one.

The Polaboy (image via polaboy.de).

If you discover me hiking to the site of Dr. Land’s Osborn Street laboratory in Cambridge to make contact with the mothership, please tell my family it was something I had to do.