Writing about online living feels tacky for some reason, even though it might be the only thing we have left in common.
While I wasn’t paying attention, my life became gamified into metrics and streaks.
These blurry days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve stand outside of time.
Sunset: 6:32pm. Moon: Waning crescent. A damp Monday with dull grey air and internet outages.
As I write this, a hurricane is approaching the eastern seaboard, which captures the general mood for the past eighteen months: the waiting-and-seeing.
To erase the “I” and stand outside of time, writing like a ghost.
“You’re looking at the future: people translated as data.” This line from Max Headroom holds up thirty-five years later.
Tonight I’m craving the kerchunk of a rewind button and the ritual of scotch-taping the edge of a cassette
And what is my intuition telling me? My first thought is to turn down the volume on the world so I can hear.
For years I would reach for my telephone the moment I woke up, groping for it with a junkie sense of need.
Sometimes my mind lands on a jittery thought: screens have become our reality and the physical world simply exists to serve their needs.
This morning I came across a stray photograph from my mother’s things, and something about it looks like a scene from a dream.
The silence was stunning. It had presence and weight that nearly muted the birds and the steady beat of three choppers in the sky.
There should be a clinical term for the sensation of wanting to look at my phone while looking at my phone.
There’s a blush of dopamine, an uncoiling of the nerves: the smudged memory of doing arts and crafts in a classroom while a storm beats against the windows.
