and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

After spending what started out as a grueling battle of apartment-sans-internet, things are finally back to normal - or at least my email is accessible from my bed again - and while this feels good in some ways, I spent Sunday evening trying to figure out what exactly it was I used to do with all the freedom that is online-connectivity. Surfing the highways and byways of the big bad innernector used to seem so.. comfortable. Last night, however, I was just sort of confused. Like a junky after months of being clean I was presented with my drug again and, of course, a conversation was presented in my head. It went something like this:

hi, I'm back. You can surf me now.

Uhh. yeah. for what?

for everything. for useless human interest news stories, for loads of porn, for stock quotes and for stupid little tetris clones with which to waste away what little time you have on this earth.

Super. You make a real swell argument. Sign me up.

you don't have to like me, but you know you're going to do me anyway. it's a beautiful little form of escapism. turn your eyes towards the glow of the screen and away goes your messy bedroom, away goes the filthy bathroom, your piles of laundry melt into the ether, your broken friendships and soulless mates fade into black while internet radio soothes your broken self.

If you say so.. but what if I've had enough? What if I want to retreat back to a time when four channels of tv was all that connected me to the outside world - 4pm scooby doo re-runs, 7pm Magnum P.I. and occassionally, Nova on PBS? What if I've finally accepted what I always knew, that interacting with this medium is like swimming through sewage looking for a few floating jems? What if I just don't wanna..

i told you that i don't require you to like me. i'm not in love with you. i don't have feelings. i'm not a living being. i'm just here to absorb you and, whether you like it or not, i will do just that. nevermind the lackluster broadband in north america. never mind the outages or the page-loading delays. nevermind that the sun (or rain or snow) is right outside your window waiting, ready to be experienced. get wet once and you've done it all.. but you can never do all of the innernector, all of me.

there is a secret that i sometimes see, on the back of my eyelids that i cannot explain, which describes how i'm feeling all the time and that secret self knows, sadly (it cries in it's sleep) that you can't do it all, you can't see the tops of mt. everest and sail the seas of south asia and hike the pacific crest and ride bareback through the andes and fly a solo around-the-world record-breaking flight and scuba-dive to the bottom of the mariana trench and make millions at the craps tables in monaco and bang all the chicks that your chick-detector ever even considered banging (the detector that fires before the realism sensor kicks in and tells the detector that it's full of shit and that chick is a really really bad idea).

it's a melancholy fruit we find our food rations consist of but it's what we're given regardless. you take the lemons and do your best to mix up lemonade, you take the good with the bad and make it better, but to give in, give up, walk away.. it's just not a choice we're programmed to take. it's ingrained in us as an evil choice, walking away from life in the corporal sense, so why should it be any different to walk away from our minds or souls.

fine. have it your way. you'll be back

And surely, I will.. time and again, to mix it up and keep things flowing, change directions and try new things. Stagnation creates inflexibility and tightness; I've had about all the tightness I care to have. I'd prefer to remain agile and limber, loose and ready. After all, not every chick delivered through the detector is rejected by the sensor, and I got life to live.