I gain social acceptance from the net.

I have come to realize that I set up profiles across the internet, with definitely personal information on them, as a substitute for real social interactions. I look for easy ways to satisfy social cravings and I find them in these sites. It is too hot here.

I do not like these sites. I don't like the idea of ceding my individuality to a search algorithm. I am getting more and more disenfranchised by technology, by the money I spend on it, and most importantly, the time I waste with it.

It has no real importance to me. I went camping and I was satisfied and able to cope with being deprived of music, of the internet, of porn, of everything that defines our modern life. Something that can fade away that easily cannot really mean anything. Our modern life is pornography. We watch people define our lives, living idealized lives passed off as reality, aspiring to be higher and more beautiful and more powerful at the next moment than we are now. We aspire for irrelevant things.

When I am rich, I used to ask myself, what more would I buy? A yacht? More music? Friends?

People often repeat that "money can't buy happiness" but they're wrong. Money buys happiness because we define our happiness through it. We gladly trade time for money, as though it were a worthwhile thing to do. We call it honor, as if such a thing existed today. There is no honor in the lives we lead. Honor is, and always has been, a way of making people do stupid things for reasons that lack sufficient impetus otherwise. My father calls showing up to work on time "honorable". It is not. I am going to college to get a good job, spin off the yarn of my life wrapping myself around a corporate spool, with my social life taking a backseat simply because it's secondary to money. That is not honor. That is stupidity.

Our modern life is pornography because we get off on what we position ourselves to be. When we watch porn we put ourselves in the scene somewhere, the mirror neurons firing, exciting us. When we see advertisements for clothing we put ourselves in the clothes, in the skin of the model, appearing beautiful. We watch shows where the characters lead idealized lives, their problems transient over the course of thirty minutes, with advertising thrown in. We train ourselves to think of the world in terms of thirty minutes, expecting our problems and the problems around us to be solved at some point in the future to ensure continuity of the present. Waves of advertisements surround us at every waking moment, their twisted psychological games attacking us without any real prejudice. The world around us is so cynical, so completely two-faced and shallow, that it gives you no option but to go along with it. To do elsewise means rejecting everything, because you cannot reject part of this insanity without being forced to give up everything.

So the real question is this: red pill or blue pill? Do we continue this clearly freakish mock-up of a life, happily oblivious to the concepts of depth, or do we declare war on the whole goddamned thing? How do you declare war on humanity, on stupidity? Can you work from the inside out? We buy into it every single day.

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And count every beautiful thing we can see.

What a beautiful face
I have found in this place
That is circling all round the sun
What a beautiful dream
That could flash on the screen
In a blink of an eye and be gone from me
Soft and sweet
Let me hold it close and keep it here with me

And one day we will die
And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea
But for now we are young
Let us lay in the sun
And count every beautiful thing we can see
Love to be
In the arms of all I'm keeping here with me

What a curious life we have found here tonight
There is music that sounds from the street
There are lights in the clouds
Anne's ghost all around
Hear her voice as it's rolling and ringing through me
Soft and sweet
How the notes all bend and reach above the trees

Now how I remember you
How I would push my fingers through
Your mouth to make those muscles move
That made your voice so smooth and sweet
And now we keep where we don't know
All secrets sleep in winter clothes
With one you loved so long ago
Now he don't even know his name

What a beautiful face
I have found in this place
That is circling all round the sun
And when we meet on a cloud
I'll be laughing out loud
I'll be laughing with everyone I see
Can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all

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I have no idea.

It's late at night and the fan is roaring, battling the heat left over from the scorching day. The light shines bright clear light across the flowered wallpaper, merciless against the little nooks and corners where shadows hide. Outside of the torn shades the night is deep and dark; the moon has set for the night and the sun is still making its way, rising thousands of miles away somewhere in the middle of America.
In my little noon-day room the breeze blows without direction, throwing papers I've carefully scattered across the bed without prejudice. I'm sitting cross-legged in the middle of the large flowered comforter, my computer next to me; I'm watching the large red LED display of the clock closely, turning the digits over in my head to see if they make letters. I string together the letters I recognize, filling in vowels here and there, seeing if there's a message for me in the procession of minutes.

Time and tide abide no man, says Sir Walter Scott, and I can see the minutes disappearing into oblivion while I sit here and breathe. There is nothing to it, nothing at all; it's no longer even breath I'm drawing, just air, stale and hot.

Eighteen hours, thirty-two minutes ago I am waking up. The sun is shining in my eyes through the hole in the shades. The house is hot and quiet and still, and the first thing I think is that a bomb must have just gone off. When I step out my door I smell the dust in the sunlight from the kitchen, the peculiar smell that moves around houses when all the people have gone. I smell grass clippings and dirt through the window, and across the street my neighbor waves to me as he pushes his gas mower across the dying lawn. He goes through the motions ever week, over a lawn that he can't water, vengefully bifurcating the weeds that have the tenacity to grow higher than his dying ground cover. He's even more pathetic than I am, standing here in my boxers, unshaven and unemployed and wondering why this house smells like dust and abandonment.

I stare at him for a moment as he resumes his mourning and I pick up the phone. I hear a dial-tone, a surprise for some reason, and my fingers move across the number pad of their own accord, calling Jason through sheer force of habit. I don't want to talk to him, I don't want to hear his voice again, but the phone is ringing once, then twice, and three times, and I hang up. I'm shaking a little. I pick up the phone again and call my mother.

The phone rings once, and then a polite voice tells me that I've reached the retirement home, and I should dial the room number for the person I want to call. I dial Mom's number, 221, and it pauses. I'm sorry, the voice says, and I think detect a note of regret in the clear, young, feminine voice. But that room is currently unoccupied. If you think you've dialed in error, please enter the number again. It goes silent in my ear and the cold familiarity puts its hand on my shoulder, passing through into my lungs. I draw a shaky breath. How did I forget again? It's been three months now. The voice starts talking again, repeating the message, and I hang up forcefully, slamming the phone against the wall. It takes me a minute or two to get my bearings, and I look around me. The kitchen is spotless, just like the dining room. What had I been doing last night, cleaning? Where was Jason? I picked up one of the plates in the cabinet, running my fingers along the gold filigree around the edge, the clear white porcelain of the surface sliding under my fingers. This wasn't mine. I have never seen this before, this intricate gold knotwork inlaid into this beautiful, effervescently light dinnerware. My plates are from Ikea or Costco. I look around me, making sure this is still my kitchen, my house, and suddenly I can't remember. I don't know if this is my counter or not; or if I've ever run my hands under this sink, carelessly rinsing off my cheap, non-porcelain dishware. I open the cabinets and gleaming white shines back at me; all my plates are gone, replaced by these white monstrosities.

I look out the bay window into the house across the street. My neighbor is wrapping up his lawnmower, putting the cord away, the cord to his electric mower. I've never seen him do that before; I always assumed it was gas. The phone rings.

Suddenly I'm stricken with fear. I wonder wildly if I'm somehow in somebody else's house, if I've killed the occupants, or if they'll walk out of their bedrooms and scream and I'll run. The phone rings again. I don't know if I should pick it up- I don't remember having the phone on the wall, but I don't remember it anywhere else either- I reach for it and hesitate. The ringing is driving me crazy; it must be the ringing, because I'm not insane, I don't have amnesia, and this isn't Hollywood where the protagonist suddenly has his memory erased. I can't decide what to do; what if I pick it up and the person recognizes me without me recognizing them? I've seen this movie before. Am I being hunted? Do I know anything? What did I see? Where did I go?

I pick up the phone, staring at it, slowly putting it up to my ear, almost cringing. It takes me more effort than I've ever known to say "Hello?"
There's a click on the other end, and an Indian man answers, freakishly enthusiastically: "Hello sir! I am calling with AT&T and I would like to know if you're satisfied with your phone service!" I can't answer, the wind feels like it's been knocked out of me. "Sir? We have excellent long distance rates, and complementary international calls after 9 or on weekends!" I put the phone back, slowly, carefully, still hearing the lilting accent jabbering away, and sit on the chair by the kitchen table. I'm shaking so hard I feel as though I might fall apart, and then I start laughing.

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