...we came in.
It begins, again, formless, featureless, but the potential is there; arcing, reaching, desperate for shape form, frution and definition. Like dendrites reaching across synaptic gaps, probing and receptive, we start this process over and over.
Once upon a time in Adelaide, city of churches, city of fear, city of junkie pubrocking bikies mourning a lost dream and just trying to get by... wait that's not where it started. Or it's where it started but it's not where it begins. I live a world away from where I was born, a world away from where I was going, a world away from where I thought I'd be. Largs Pier never felt so far as the edge of the great prairie.
Geocities? Freeservers? Yahoo Chat, Yahoo Messenger, then ICQ, then AOL, then MSN Messenger, then Flaming Words, then DeviantArt, then the long dark. Such vast, glittering and buzzing constellations of people and online places, then one day you look up and listen hard, and the skies are dark and silent. It's all subtly different, like a slightly tilted frame of a picture you dont recognise, in a room that used to be yours but has nothing of you in it. The house was sold, the new owners stripped it bare and sold it off piecemeal, so the layout is an echo you're familiar with, but the reality is something inherently different.
Remember when that book place just sold books, instead of becoming a global junk store sucking in vast amounts of information? Or that other bookplace, where you could share your life with other techy people before it became a narcissistic hellhole run by an Algorithm channelling its mindless followers down a predetermined path? Remember when it was about people, not profits? When personal connections werent metered or measured, where reaching out was a click of a button?
I write, not well enough, not often enough, in sharp shards that razor through my normal day. It keeps me buzzing along sometimes, sometimes it helps fend off the shadows behind me.
I'm a father, husband, brother, son. I think anarchy is a good thing, but you probably define it differently. I think we can do better, but we're held back by those lucky enough, connected enough, ruthless enough, and stupid enough to rule over us. I think we make mistakes as a species that we desperately need to learn from, but I don't know if we can. I don't think we should stop trying though. For a long time, I was okay with not trying, and not caring, and just subsisting; maybe that's just not enough now.