I’M NOT SURE what day this is off of social media. I have cheated though, with some Instagram posts. Instagram is less addictive and menacing than Facebook, but it also peddles illusions of beautiful people doing wonderful things in beautiful places, and everyone is just so happy! This feeds a kind of collective narcissism. When you have been off the stuff a while and then revisit these images of people posing themselves for both self gratification and the amusement of others, it all looks so absurd and stupid. “A photo of me doing something on the internet.” This is what 21st Century life has been reduced to. I wish I could write more about my life, or rather my rich inner life. There are just things I can barely tell anyone, and even my psychologist isn’t always fair game. Who is watching? Who is reading? I did see a very beautiful woman one day in front of the Orthodox church on Mäe Street. The kind of beauty one could lose oneself in, the kind I rather need, that gateway to an abundance of fertile, Mediterranean love. I am not one of these Northmen who see beauty and love in hard work and stark landscapes. My kind of love is a Roman orgy of the senses. For me why bother being alive if you cannot enjoy the fruits of paradise? I saw this woman again last night at an event in town. This was a warm and reassuring moment, for I do not know what her name is or anything about her, nor am I tempted to look. But she does exist. That was what was most reassuring about it. It all wasn’t a dream or my imagination. Still I am haunted by the social media vortex. It’s not just the arguments online, it’s the information that gets carried offline into private discourse, people repeating things they have seen or read. It is going to take a much longer time to detox from this. Away, away, away. That is my dream. Last night, I turned my data off as I was walking. I thought, where was I in 2001? I had no phone, I only used the internet at a computer lounge at my school. In the year 1998, before I went to college, I did not use the internet at all. I went away for a week or so to Nantucket with my family, and I had no connection to the world via that route. I spent my time digging through a used records store or just people watching. That is where I want to go. Not back in time. A resumption of time. To skip over this part, leave everyone else lost floating in deep digital space. Away, away, away. Away.
north! 