To see the world in a grain of

I find these in my apartment every once and a while.I assumed they come in via my shoes. But before that? And then I noticed some in the bottom of my backpack. Hmmm. For some reason this made me think of those silica gel desiccant packets. I’ve never knowingly opened one of these packets before. When I was a kid I certainly would have opened one to discover what this miracle moisture-absorbing material looked like. The packets instruct us not to eat them, not to not open them. As a kid, I liked to take things apart. As if this would somehow explain the processes therein. I remember cutting open golf balls, for instance, peeling off the pockmarked skin, and then unwinding the long rubber band surrounded the inner rubber ball, which had some kind of liquid in it. You could hear this liquid moving around. We told each other that this was radioactive and never dared drain it. Cold War entertainment. Are golf balls still made the same way? My parents had golf clubs in which the “woods” were actually made of wood. Today they seem to be made of titanium, which can’t be an improvement for planet earth. Silica gel is a form of silicon dioxide and seems to be mostly non-toxic. Still, I wouldn’t recommend eating it.