NOTE: I wrote the following diary entry a few days ago, but before I had time to publish it or even read it over, I was called away from The Good Life (the life of experimental writing) by The Bad Life (the life of regular normal tedious responsibilities). What happened is that the snow began to melt outside our house; and we live at the base of a giant hill, known alternately as Chocorua and Mont Blanc, in Thief River Falls, Minnesota. So our native haunt got the bright idea that maybe it’d be fun to change its season. But here’s what I say: You shouldn’t just change your season like a damsel changes her dress, willy-nilly, without clearly informing your neighbors that you plan to do so; because people need time to PREPARE for such scary change. And all change is scary; that’s why I love art that is wild & weird, because wildness & weirdness in actual life can kill you (or worse: it can even make you stronger), whereas wildness & weirdness in ART are equally scary but not nearly as lethal: so wild & weird art appeals to my inmost core, which hungers after pan-harmonia (universal harmony): it’s an attempt to digest mentally the aspects of reality that mortal selves cannot digest physically. So, anyway, while the snow was melting, the sky also began to rain, thus these two sources of water ventured right up to the foundation of our house and hugged it. (We just bought this house last autumn.) So it’s like when a deer-tick falls in love with your foreleg: you hate to have to break the news to the creature, but our relationship must end. It was exactly like that: for the snow-melt and the rainwater came dashing up, licking, caressing and eventually penetrating our house’s fundament. This resulted in what is called “seepage”. My first instinct was to call it “flooding”; but then I was told by a water-damage expert that one should only use the term flood when one encounters standing water fully covering one’s floor; OR in the case that God tries to exterminate all life by drowning the planet, yet a single family escapes alive & inbreeds everything back to epidemic levels [Genesis 6-9]. Whereas seepage is when you detect only minor puddles & “fingers” of water creeping hither & yon. That’s what we have. So I was required to square this tribulation before publishing the text below. But the tribulation has yet to be squared altogether (“the worst is not / So long as we can say ‘This is the worst’,” as Edgar always sez in the play King Lear), because, as I sit here typing this self·intropology [intro + apology to oneself], the water is still seeping successfully thru our foundation; however, the situation is vaguely under control now, as I’ve implemented a bi-momently regiment of squeegee-mopping, which seems to be keeping the aqua-forces at bay.
Are we cool? Cool. Then, without further ado, here’s my now-stale blog post:
Dear diary,
Am I the only soul who hates the Internet? Am I the only one who feels repulsed by the online world?
Yesterday I seriously contemplated permanently deleting all my accounts on social media, when I switched on my computer and saw that the monopoly search engine’s logo had been tricked down to celebrate the anniversary of the inception of the World Wide Web. (Incidentally, who’s the spider?) Our current age’s nightmare: this electronic yoke that we all must bow under because no economy is allowed to aid its own people.
For none of us would engage with each other thru computer screens IF we weren’t coerced to do so by the fact that everyone’s always unavailable in real life: due to an ingenious combo of bullshit jobs, debt, and wage-slavery.
And then I made the mistake of reading a bunch of microblog posts that all were heaping praise upon this torment. “Just think how DISCONNECTED we'd all be, if it weren't for the Internet!” (etc....)
I’m just saying: This place sucks. If ever there were a thing that deserved the term “necessary evil”, this is it.
(Think how wise we might be, if it weren’t for the Ninny-net. It CONNECTS people only the way that manacles do. Have you ever seen the super-villain of a teleplay tie two heroes back-to-back, in wooden chairs, with hempen rope? That’s your connection.)
So ya got Google & Facebook & Amazon & Apple & Microsoft…
(Now I feel like a recipient of the annual Best Blogger Award during my acceptance speech, cuz I’m afraid that I’ll forget to include someone special in my long list of fuck-yous — like when you name a billion grips but forget to mention the iron fist: God.)
So ya got Google Facebook Amazon Apple Microsoft and Monsieur Yahweh. I wish that these were all just names of horses, and that I owned them all; cuz I’d sell them to Hollywood in the old studio era, back when they were making tons of Westerns. My point is that then I could expect all this ex-property of mine to be abused, for the sake of filmed action sequences; yet I would not be required to participate in the immorality directly.
See? I learned a thing or two from watching the rich. You just get all the poor folk to fight your World Wars for you.
But people gush about how wonderful the Internet is: “How lucky we are to have such high-speed communication!” Yes, but at what price? Cuz now that everything’s FAST, it’s insufferably SHALLOW. I prefer the days when the exchange of ideas was slower and deeper. (A killer flood as opposed to basement seepage.)
Chapter II
In which the author turns around & begins to see the light
Maybe I’m wrong, tho. Maybe I should try to embrace this online environment. Maybe I’m like that guy from that movie that I just watched, who came back from the Second World War without any hands, cuz his hands got blown off in battle, and they put two hooks at the end of each of his arms. Not just one hook per arm, mind you, but two hooks apiece: so they were kinda like pincers, which were tolerably movable, so he could pick up objects & pull the triggers on firearms (his favorite hobby was shooting at paper targets, out in his shed); he just couldn’t quite operate oval door knobs. And he had a sweetheart who was his fiancee: but, after his return from the war, he tended to avoid her: he would address her only reservedly, as he assumed that she was repulsed by his new condition, whereas she was actually, inwardly, totally still in love with him.
So I Bryan am like the guy with the hook hands, and the online community is like my wife-to-be; and I’m assuming that the online community dislikes me because I’m so different from all the other fellas (in this analogy, the war that I returned from would be my time spent poring over the School of the Ages: classic literature, art, etc...), whereas the online community actually is a wholesome gal whose heart remains true to me alone; and, at the end of our film, I will use my hooks to slide the wedding ring on her finger.
Alright, so I guess the Internet ain’t so bad after all. And bloody, brutal warfare ain’t bad either: for it helped me learn how to value human relationships.
But I gotta admit, altho I’m happy when anyone becomes a pacifist for any reason, it bugs me a little that so many anti-war veterans needed to go out and officially participate in the organized violence before they could comprehend that such acts are undistinguished. I myself never needed to join the U.S. Army or the U.S. Marines or the U.S. Air Force or the U.S. Navy (or Google or Yahweh) and throw a grenade at some young lover, in order to learn the dirt-low value of such acts. I already knew intuitively that peace is superior, the same way I know that this drip-painting needs more turpentine.
Chapter Last
In which the hack just throws in the towel
Enter ye in at the strait gate. For wide is the gate & broad is the way that leadeth to destruction; and many there be which go in thereat: but strait is the gate & narrow is the way which leadeth unto life; and few there be that find it. (Matthew 7:13-14)
Maybe I shouldn’t compare war to art, tho. Maybe my contention that pacifism stems from intuition will lure potential peacemakers off the straight-and-narrow, cuz they’ll assume that, since they weren’t conceived with such a sense of decency, they might as well just follow Christ to the cross.
Who knows. Who cares.
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