Retractatus
by J.D. Connor
The thing about a retractable belt stanchion, in an airport, in a movie theater, in a shopping mall, is that it isn’t stopping anyone. You can go under, over, and around. You can just unhook the thing and defeat it. The retractable belt stanchion works because everyone agrees to let it work. Still, it’s a meaningful incentive: not a metal barricade, but not a line painted on the ground either.
As a child I discovered that there were two principal companies in this marketplace, but more than that there were two philosophies, two ways of dividing the world. There was Beltrac, and there was Tensabarrier.
If you wanted to emphasize what the thing was, you called it Beltrac, because the track was made of a belt that could link one stanchion to another. If you wanted to emphasize what the thing did, you called it Tensabarrier, because the barrier was made of tension. Being and Doing. Existence and Essence.
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