Sans Serif Name Drop

Hello, Internet.

We have to have a chat. Not the kind of shorthand, acronym/abbreviation orgy of misspellings and insults you are used to. No, this chat demands your attention and doesn't flash by you in a flicker of one-hundred forty characters or less. So let's get down to it: you demand too much of my attention for such little payoff. I sit in front of your glowing tubes and peruse your many, many catalogs of vapid entertainment, top 10/15/20/25/100/150 lists, your articles that appear to have been written after several tumblers of rum.

And I hate every time I click my mouse on a snippet of text, underlined and in hyperlink blue (or purple, on an especially mundane day). I hate having a favourites bar with text that would have worn away, were the buttons real for how often I press them. I especially hate how I know there is a far deeper secret than I see on your surface. I know there are glorious places in the folds of your skin, and underneath that skin but I can never find the right path to them.

And your ability to 'connect' my peers and strangers? It is fueling our disconnection. Forgive me for being a hypocrite, old friend, but you are disease, spreading virally. Your spread and influence are creating a shockwave of malpractice in your users. You allow marketers to attack us with their wired ads, popping over and under and up, infiltrating the corners of our eyes with their banners promising naked women or fast cash.

I cannot stand your willingness to say whatever comes to your mind. I am not one for self-censorship - your target audience doesn't need to accept your statements for their reception of the information you bear is the unwielding reason of your being - but when you reduce yourself to becoming a puppet for those speak with no worth you become a useless entity, a fox with broken legs and a shaven pelt. Step up, my friend. You have more importance in you than to be an advertiser's Elysium.

You have many useful tools, I will never refute this fact. But you need to organize yourself in such a manner that these tools are on clear display, so I can use them when I need to. Take your translating sites, your magazines, your games and your (archaically illegal) downloads, and organize them. Make yourself into a suitable figure, one that is shaped from x to y to z on neverending axes. You will thank yourself for it. You digg?

Parles-tu un peu de francais?

Think of an island, full of beautiful things. Like bananas. Or sunsets. An island full of sunsets. Think of this island, your paradise. Now, imagine being on the island. Feel the sand on your feet and the sun on your skin and the salt water in the air you are breathing. And you are blind.

This is the way I will live in this new place, the Frenchland. My blindness is my inability to speak the language, my island the conversations floating through the air to my left and my right. As hard as I try and no matter how well my French accent when I am de speek-ing de English, I will still be the blind man on the island. But my sight will be granted, soon enough. Struggle shall doubtlessly be an occurance but I will grasp the tongues with my fist and twist them until they are my own.

This is alright. I know what I signed up for when I packed my bags and moved my boxes. Come visit some time.


Afterthought/Aside: If you live in town, let's spend some time together!

INTERMISSION

No serious entries until I am in Montreal.

Sorry 'avid followers.'


PS. You should leave a comment to let me know you are anxiously awaiting a new post.

Susurrus

Today, this word was stuck in my head as I methodically, mechanically, mindlessly washed dish after fork after tray at the pizzeria I work at. I could not remember what it meant except that I had read it used to describe the flow of the waves on the ocean. But I knew it related to my life. It is a beautiful word, susurrus. The waves whisper as they crawl atop the ocean's surface. The static of the television screen emits a repeated hiss. Life goes by with a rustling of its leaves.

My hands are soft now, from the dishwater. And the grease in the air still clings to my hair and skin. In a week and some days, these concerns will be gone. The Frenchland will have swallowed me whole with its mouth the mountain town. In a year, there is a black space. I see myself in Limbo, floating among the nothings, the nevers, and the nots. Five years from the now, the limbo has vanished and there is only blank space. That place is Beyond nothings and nevers, Beyond everything. It is unpainted, with no foreshadowings. Past that remains the Beyond. But for now, there is grease on my skin and grit beneath my nails. And I cannot wait for the Frenchland's teeth.

Limbo does not scare me. It is a comfortable zone, one I have seen many times in my short history. Long-term plans elude me like that girl with the perfect dress and perfect shoes and perfect hair. But Limbo is always there, ready to tell me the plan. I will figure it out as I go, it says. And Limbo moves ahead, minute by minute, as do I. And the Beyond forsees Limbo's movements and takes brief steps, ahead by moments. But eventually, there will be nothing left. Beyond will become only a memory and Limbo a place I do not want to call home. There will be wrinkles on my skin, a lack of hair. And a quickly dawning realization that this is the end.

And when that moment comes, my life will have passed through the universe with the quiet susurrus ripples in a pond's broken surface make.