At some point the world got way too slick. iPhones, flat-screen TVs, Teslas, Scandinavian furniture, glass skyscrapers, techno music. Everything is smooth, streamlined, silken to the touch and soothing to the senses. Today’s manufactured objects tend to be seamless and symmetrical, polished to a tastefully burnished sheen. And in the process, rendered soulless.

Left behind in this process of superannuation are the ungainly things of life. Things like newspapers, printed books, rakes, 35-millimeter film, vinyl records, wood pencils, antique furniture, Victorian architecture and representational art, to name a few. All fading (except as collectibles or in the hands of small bands of nostalgia-loving enthusiasts), and in danger of being drummed out of existence. Many formerly treasured and useful things have been digitized, plasticized or exorcised.

I know, I know – this is the predictable rant of an aged person. A fuddy-duddy. An old fart. Fair enough. But I’m not a complete Luddite. I’m writing this on my laptop computer, I own a smartphone and I read books on my Kindle. I like a lot of modern art and enjoy streaming movies. But something tangible, tactile and true – some important element of being human – is being systematically drained from the world of things.

I guess the apotheosis of this trend will be our total integration with artificial intelligence. In the book “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow,” Yuval Noah Harari’s sequel to the popular “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,” the author predicts that future humans are likely to be an entirely new species, part flesh and blood and part supercomputer. Harari suspects this new breed of “human” will be as different, and as unrecognizable, as Neanderthals are to us today.

In that world, “humans” (or whatever they call themselves) could well be immortal, with an endless array of replaceable body parts, like a constantly rebuilt Mercedes Benz. I’m glad I won’t be around to see the day.

As to-my-dying-day Sapiens, I continue to enjoy the intoxicatingly acrid smell of a sharpened pencil, the blister-producing grip on my wood-handled rake, the rattle of newspaper pages, the striated grain and ugly knots of a banged-up sideboard, the heft of an SLR 35mm camera, the crackles and pops of a vinyl recording, the crooked angles and odd shapes of a collapsing barn. All things unmodern and, by today’s standards, ungainly. Nothing slick, smooth or polished about them.

But all those ungainly things have something their smooth looking and operating modern-day replacements lack. A soul. That some inanimate objects are imbued with spirit – well, that’s a very animistic perspective. But it’s one held by many ancient cultures and some religions. I lived in Japan and witnessed numerous Shinto rituals. Shintoism revolves around a belief in the “kami,” supernatural entities believed to inhabit physical things, and I like to think these spiritual creatures are discriminating in their choice of residence.

If you can believe that rocks, trees and clouds have their own unique, animating spirit, then why not my ungainly No. 2 yellow pencil?

Steven Price is a Kennebunkport resident. He can be reached at sprice1953@gmail.com.

Comments are not available on this story.