Title (i)
I marvel at how many amiable people there seem to be in the world. I get a taste of them from le interweb. I marvel because I wonder how, with all these Means of Connectivity, designed so that one can SHARE with friends, never be isolated, it is still so possible (more possible even? Impossible to say, I’m idealising the unlived past) to be so achingly alone. So desperately.
Ah the cliche. Surrouded by water, but not a drop to drink - the greater torture of seeing what you cannot / do not have.
There are so many ways to access people ‘just like you’. Same sense of humour, same interests, same views (is it on some level actually more depressing to know for sure that you are so unoriginal? Everyone comes across the same, everyone links to the same viral videos, everyone comments on the same events, says the same things, with slight alterations in phrasing, thinking the same thoughts - what’s the point in you, if there are so many carbon copies of your early-20s-free-range-chicken-liberal mindset? Just a question) But you don’t KNOW these people, do you? You couldn’t call them, when the cloud settles over you, the cloud that makes everything you see through it look grey, cold (it is impossible to predict, but it comes, and stays a while, and leaves, but will come again, always).
Surrounded by people, but not them, not really, by their bodies, their fleshy armour, their shaved and tanned and plucked outer-shield, ready for public presentation, giving away nothing. Or surrounded by their image, their projected idealised electronic selves, an even better, less approachable version of the physical presence (what’s the point in physical presence now, when there are so many alternatives? It is now possible for a hermit recluse living in a cave to have more friends than I do. Interesting). There is no way in, except through words (damnable limited frustrating meaningless / meaning-FULL words), or friendship, but friendship is a difficult thing. Acquaintances are my personal forte. That I can do. Light chatter, a few laughs, drunken tomfoolery - what is it worth?
These ’friendships’ embody the age we live in - they have the depth of a computer screen. So many people liked and disliked (can I say ‘liked’ now, without Facebook popping into your head? It is worrying, destroying) over such simple little events, their fate decided in my eyes. And why not? Who cares? Snap judgements are a necessary part of life in the age of accessibility, the age of liberalism gone mad, we’re-all-the-same-let’s-all-communicate-online(-but-not-really). It is only my opinion of a person, and there are so many others to take their place, in my world of acquaintances who I barely know really but can use to socialise with, so as not to appear alone. It is safer to reject a person - so they cannot do it first, figure out that you have nothing to offer but uncomfortable truth - you piss and shit and have red marks on your body that cannot be seen under your clothes and you cry sometimes alone at home, and they’ll know, and they won’t want to know. Another layer of bedrock over my body’s cave.
Who are you really? Lord knows.
So many potential relationships - people to turn to in times of need, and to comfort in times of strength - washed away by the onslaught of bodies, by the mass of PROFILES, of too many options. People who, on those awful grey days, would know, and come, and sit and talk, or not talk. But you know none of them. You really only know about three people in the world, (and that is stretching it, that is your outlook on a good day, usually it would be one) who aren’t related to you, and even then, you often communicate in ‘nothings’ - chit chat, surface matter, like those insects that float on water - too light to penetrate.
I write this as though I am open to suggestions, to new people, to friendship, to honest uncomfortable true friendship, and perhaps I am (I like to think I am, but I like to think a lot of things about myself that clearly aren’t true). But perhaps I’m not really. I am a bitch in many almost imperceptible ways (and, it goes without saying, in many perceptible ones too, but those are the less dangerous ways).
We are all both so kind, so open, and yet so incredibly cruel, and closed, and unwilling to allow those who we do not deem worthy, in. Ha, like we have any knowledge of what is worthy - but we hoard the idea that there is some form of social cast. People have always had categories, and now, since we are breaking down those imposed by society, those unspoken, unacknowledged ones of our own are growing stronger, and firmer in their places, like great big tree roots reaching deeper into the fissures of our brains. The inherent cruelty of our own subconscious selves makes solving this impossible (not that I ever proposed solving anything - let it burn and watch the flames grow higher, that’s my motto), but it also makes self-pity, which is so delicious, very possible, so perhaps in a way we have it good. Unsolvable.
