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We, the People and How We Live

6 Jan

My life cannot be lesser than what I know.  Yet, as the cliché goes, or wisdom, the more you know the more you understand how much you don’t know.  While that is true, that secondary knowledge can be a stop-plug, a barrier that prevents people from taking action.  A catalyst to the plea, “but what can I do, I am just one person.”

This is the plea that people, including myself, whisper to themselves as they move through their lives.  It is the one that allows us to ignore the fact that we’ve been at War since 2003, the one that allows us to ignore our overexerted finite resources, it is the one that doesn’t want to read about the fiscal cliff; it is the hopeless, helpless cry that makes us asleep to our society’s truths.

It is overwhelming.  Our nation’s structures have been laid on a broken foundation, a belief in the infinite, and fostered in the spirit of the individual, not the collective.  People are subconsciously afraid of the collective because Communism/Socialism has tainted the word; however, in a globalized age, I believe the word Collective should represent Community.

Social and political structures should serve, nourish and support the communities that they upload.  It is ever-obvious that the roots of our economic, social and political systems are poisoned, drawing from short-sighted wells of greed and commerce, stepping on the faces of the common-man who is enslaved with debt to maintain.

With broken fingers and broken backs they are put in chairs and fed entertainment, mind-numbing television shows based on a false reality, virtual friends and a device that can fill any empty space with angry birds.

There is no real spirit of change.  Even the Occupy movement didn’t stand for anything, only what it is against, and when an entire movement’s momentum is an opposition force what will it push against when it achieves its goals?

I call for an awakening to the problems that plague our society.  I believe that it is not an external problem but an internal one.  Our spirits are taught to glory in individualism, nationalism and to distract ourselves from problems, instead of solve them; that winning has replaced compromise.

“What is a democracy without compromise?” a government of people that tries to squash one another and rule individually through commerce or an imposed corporatacracy.  This is what we are, or have been becoming for longer than most care to admit.  It is a betrayal of the way in which the United States began.

A group of people (yes only men) sat in room and wrote documents that have withstood the test of Civil War and time.  Every citizen of the United States should be able to refer to the Constitution and Bill of Rights without a second thought; that when our nation is lost these documents should be our return.

With that I’d like to quote the Constitution’s opening words because these ideals are what our nation should stand on, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for common defense, promote general Welfare, and secure the Blessing of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

It is We, it is Union, it is Welfare, Liberty and Posterity, so let’s wake up and revisit what those words mean and how to live them.

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Maybe The Mayans Were Right…

30 Oct

It’s quiet in my office this morning, and my inbox is full of emails titled ‘Today,’ as many of our New Jersey and New York colleagues write to let us San Franciscans know they are ok.  I am grateful for these messages and for texts from friends, reassuring me the same, but I can’t help but have a heavy heart today.

It’s not just the underwater photos of FDR, or the broken carousels of Cony Island, but the larger issues that our country and world face.

Too long we have denied climate change and what that means; too long we have been divided over many things, and with the approaching election I fear that these divisions will just get deeper, as our economy continues to stutter, I worry that our scars will just get uglier.

When I look backwards into our history what has come before is not reassuring.  In many ways today mirrors both the 1850s and the 1930s, a lethal combination; however, we have the added weight of a changing ecological system, and one might say that mirrors the beginning of the ice age – ours just has more heat.

It is a frightening trifecta, and even more so because natural disasters remind us how little control and power we have in our lives.

We do so much to distract ourselves from this innate truth, nature is the ultimate ruler.  We create ideologies and political systems trying to control each other, trying to bring order into an inherently chaotic and random universe, so what is more shocking than the symbol of money and power on it’s knees and under water?

What I hope for is that yesterday’s damage will remind people of how all divisions melt away when we are faced with challenges that are greater than us; that we need to reach out toward one another, not vote against each other, or condemn one another for our viewpoints.

We all begin and end the same way, so way we are so cruel to each other in the middle, why do we point fingers at one another’s stories?  These superficial divides are created by us, and we, as a person, and as a society, grant and take away power.

I’ll always remember thinking, back in the seventh grade, that the most popular girl in school was only that because we believed, we, my classmates created this myth, so why envy her?  If we didn’t like it then we didn’t have to believe.

Let’s stop being thirteen year old girls, and start by cultivating a more forgiving, loving and realistic view of the environment that we live in today.  Let’s join together and accept these fleeting, often meaningless journeys that we call life reach out and find more joyous and healthy ways to live.

Let’s not wait for natural disasters to remind us how much we need each other, how shallow our divides really are, and how we need to be one another’s friend because nature never will be.

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An Ode To College Drinking

28 Sep

We drank because we were happy because we were confused.  We drank because we got an A, or because it was football season.  We drank because we didn’t know what we wanted to do with our lives, but we knew what we wanted to drink.

We drank because it was Friday and that’s what you did on Fridays, we drank because it was fun.  We drank because our boyfriends didn’t love us; we drank for courage, for the hope of meeting someone.

We drank because it was snowing, it was Christmas or Thanksgiving and so we drank to celebrate.  We drank because it was time to graduate; we drank because we were going to get paid.  We drank because we were scared, and alcohol was always there to remind us of what we shared together, we drank to forget.

We drank for the memories of drinking; we drank because we’d never have this again.  We drank because we were turning one year older and now we were allowed to.  We drank to welcome one another to each other, we drank for community.  We drank because it was over, we drank to new beginnings.

We drank in the dark by the fire, we drank for Sunday brunch.  We drank because we were free to drink whenever we wanted to; we drank because we thought that’s what we were supposed to do.

We drank so that we’d have an excuse; we drank to take off our clothes.  We drank because we were going dancing; we drank because we didn’t want the night to end.  We drank because this was the only time in our lives that we could drink like this, we drank because it was the only time in our lives we were publicly permitted to.

We drank because it was cheap because we were sitting by the pool because that band was playing and we drank to enjoy them.  We drank because someone got engaged, because someone was going away, we drank because it was there.

We drank because we failed because drinking was the solution. We drank to be funny, we drank to fall down.  We drank to stand up on bars and hang from the lights strung up on the ceiling, we drank to get caught.

We drank to see if we could have one more, we drank because we had nothing to do the next day.  We drank because we had too many choices; we drank because we were overwhelmed.  We drank because we really weren’t sure of anything except drinking.

We drank because we were young because it was simple because we could do it with anyone at any time and find a reason for it.  We drank for whatever we were in that moment; we drank for what we were never going to be and what we might have.  We drank for expectation, for hope, for the whole of life that was cheering us on, saying, “yes, please, another one.”

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Why I Think Art & God Have A Lot In Common

18 Sep

If there is such a thing as a soul, an intangible gathering of energy that lives on no matter the body (young, old, male, female) then I believe Art is the way it lets itself be known, compelling our bodies to create the inarticulate – whether with paint, clay, words or music.  Our ability to create objects that hold no purpose, other than to sit and be stared and wondered at, is what makes us human, as opposed to all other beings.

No other animal expresses itself through color or uses instruments to create harmony.  To me, this is our humanity: our compassion, our communal connection that weaves us together as people, and at times, I worry that art is no longer valued as it should be; that we will forsake ourselves because it is not logical, solves no problems and has no answers.

It just IS; Art is an is, yet it is an Is because as people we just exist, we don’t understand; we deep down long to know our purpose, but it is forever unknown to us, so on some level we will always be unknown to ourselves.

Art opens up our inner doors, and at times artists only intuit what they’re striving to express, and if asked, “Why?” some would say, “just because,” or as Monet famously responded, “I am trying to paint the air,” or, “I am trying to take what I know is all around me yet cannot see.”

Does that even make sense; that a living, breathing mammal chose to spend their life focused on a task that has nothing to do with their survival?

I believe that this is our gift; that it can elevate us to expand beyond our own selfish ego and pin-pointed, center-of-ourselves universe perspective.  This is why Art must be honored because all gifts are made up of honor and responsibility.

No other animals are offered such luxurious choices (to creation & expression), and while I’m not posing that other animals cannot have souls, maybe we are the only species lucky enough to be gifted with a purpose that is more than just survival.

However, I believe that if we do not honor our gifts, then a price will be paid, and (at times) I believe it is already being paid.  How many people are happy with the way the world is set up now; with constant communication coming from every corner, filling up all the silences that are a natural part of life?

How many people can connect with their soul in this current noise?  And to those who say, “But this is progress,” I say, “You are a fool not to acknowledge progression’s shadow,” for all light-bearing things cast them.

We, as humans, are so caught up in our own structures and systems that we forget what is divine within us, and I use divine consciously because Art requires the same devotion as God, to have faith in the illogical, to an activity that cannot be explained, but one that provides comfort, evokes emotion and breaks us out of our language, which is structure itself.

For what else is God-like, present yet unseen, sitting at the bottom of us, asking to be worshipped, asking to be honored and heard? What else helps us forgive ourselves for our humanity’s imperfections, what else can live on, telling our stories, speaking to others, representing us once we are gone?

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How I Learned The True Meaning of the C-Word

12 Sep

Someone recently told me that compassion was something that I could work on, and I thought, “what?! I am an expert in this.  I do Yoga.  I am good at forgiving”

After the conversation, I looked up the definition of compassion, to make sure that I was correct about the opinion that I had of myself, which was that I was a compassionate expert, and I came across this: sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.

“Of course I want to alleviate others’ suffering,” I thought, “I am reading Giving 2.0 so that I can decide how to best volunteer and help others.”

However, the definition and conversation stayed with me, floating in the back of my mind as I went throughout my days.  I began to become acutely aware of how I interacted with others, as well as that inner voice inside my head; the one that we all have that pushes us forward, constantly telling us how we should be.

I saw myself not only being very hard on others, but also myself.  I realized that I was more judgmental and evil to myself than anyone else, and that this stopped me from having compassion toward other people.  I had an unseen fist in my mind, gripping onto old anger, current stresses, and all the ways that I felt shame and disappointment.

During this time I was got laryngitis, and while some would think that was just a coincidence, I wasn’t that surprised that it struck me.

I spent days, alone in my room, berating myself for the evil person that I truly was; for all the mistakes I had made; for all the shame I felt over my depression; for every single wrong choice I had made in my life.

And it was here that I began to cry, to almost everyone (much to my embarrassment) and that’s when people started to surprise me: friends forgave me, co-workers understood me and still believed in my work, and my Mom unexpectedly responded to me needing to borrow money with, “that’s ok, I understand.  I know how hard it is on good days.  You’re a great daughter.”

So then I sobbed to myself, at the end of a very bad day, with guilt because in my heart I knew that so many other peoples’ problems were bigger than mine, but I couldn’t help it.  I turned in on myself, and saw my own suffering, saw how I often created it, saw that I had more weaknesses than I would care to admit.

Saw that I was still hurting over a lot of tough stuff that happened to me in the past, and more importantly saw that I never found myself good enough for my own self; that this often created my own reality.

Then I began to forgive myself, without even being conscious of it, I started to say, “I’m sorry,” again and again, and my heart began to open to my own imperfect humanity.

I had been told that, “we are so much more than our own and others definitions,” but at times it is near impossible to get outside of your own language; impossible to break impression you didn’t know you possessed.

What I’ve learned is not that we all suffer, I knew that already, but that to truly be compassionate, or to begin practicing compassion, one must become alive to the personal sufferings within.  These are difficult to see because they are the ones that are cloaked in shame, hidden deep so that we don’t have to feel their pain.

It is an excavation process, so that there’s room in the heart to possess an empathetic understanding toward all people because you know that their spirits are so much greater than that imperfect humanity you both share – and to be forgiving toward those who are trapped in their own sufferings.

Compassion is important even to those that are cruel because they’re the ones that have to live with their own self and actions – that is the ultimate punishment, they don’t need us to punish them (though that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in jails, boundaries are important too).

We have a choice, as people, to contribute to our inner pain, or to face it and help others carry theirs.  It doesn’t have to be grandioso gestures, or a lifetime of giving, but just space in the heart for all the messy, beautiful, imperfect beings that are encountered throughout life.

I believe this is a lifetime practice – all of my revelations won’t immediately turn me into the most compassionate person that anyone has ever encountered, but I am committed to beginning with myself; to see myself as I am, and to work on being my own true friend, so that I can give the same to others.

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Labor Day Weekend!

3 Sep

Right now I’m in hot and sticky Austin, sitting in a coffee shop, catching up on a few things before I make my way back to the West Coast.

These past few weeks have been full of travel, work and the unfortunate case of laryngitis and the flu, which has impacted my blogging frequency.  However, I’m grateful for this moment of quiet because when I do not blog I miss it.

I didn’t expect to enjoy blogging so much.  This might seem surprising for those who are familiar with my love of writing, but blogging always seemed like having a public, personal diary.  I secretly laughed at those who publicly broadcasted their private thoughts.

Now that I’m one of these people, I can understand the compulsion to share; to have a platform to stand upon, even in the digital.  Especially for me, a writer, I have found the discipline or knowledge that I need to produce content keeps my creative wheels greased, and my writing has been the better for it.

Though the purpose of this post is to share what I’ve taken in over the past two weeks, in a very personal kind of way J:

1)      Being sick as an adult is not nearly as much fun as being sick as a child.  Not that one should ever desire to be ill, but staying home from school with a juice box and your Mom’s chicken soup is something to be desired.   Dragging yourself out of the house to buy your own chicken soup, and then having to work from home when you’d rather be napping is something to avoid.

2)      I love Palm Springs and the Parker Hotel.  I would recommend it to any couple who wants to and can afford to take a luxurious and romantic weekend getaway.

3)      One great thing about having a bunch of friends getting married is going to places that you’d never choose to visit; there is a lot of our large country to see.

4)      Austin reminds me of a Southwestern San Francisco with a bit of LA sprawl, and people actually wear cowboy boots out to the bars; something I might adopt.

5)      Having your car die in the middle of the desert is not as bad as one would think; this is the age of the cell phone.  However, those don’t save you from the awkwardness of having to go to the bathroom behind a cactus.

6)      Everyone with a car needs to be a member of Triple A, seriously.

7)      Time management is absolutely one of the most challenging aspects of life; that and discipline.

8)      My bank account cannot handle all of this traveling, but I don’t regret a minute of it.

Alright, more lofty thoughts for later – hope that all who reads this had a very nice Labor Day weekend!

Are You Doing What You Thought You Would Be Doing in Life?

20 Aug

Today I had a moment where I recognized myself as the person that I always believed I could be.  I was sitting at a table with 20 other people and I was telling them how they could promote their book, all eyes were on me.

If you had told me this would be my future when I was 8 or 11, my response would’ve been, “of course.”  If you had told me this when I was 20, 21, I would’ve answered the exact same way, but if you had whispered this into the ear of my 23 year old self I would’ve given you a blank stare and a, “yea right,” laugh.

Something happened to me when I graduated college.  Maybe it was moving back home, maybe it was the realization that I had never put one thought into, “what I wanted to be when I grew up,” which now seems ludicrous, but I completely lost that inner compass that had faith in me.

This didn’t happen overnight, it was slow erosion, grain by grain my self-confidence went to the wind, shape-shifting, struggling to fit the cube that I was supposed to enjoy sitting in.  I hated this cube, I wondered, “This is what I was working toward?”

I know I’m not alone in this experience; that young adults all across the States are working 80 hours a week, are going Excel-blind, are entering data and questioning the future that they had been told to want; that they had been sold.

Many of these people burn-out at 25, myself included, and feel demoralized by their efforts.  For me, it was continuous failure.  At my first internship the woman that I admired betrayed me, and I said the wrong thing at a departmental meeting and received a horrible review.  This followed me for the next three years of my career.

I felt defined by this review.  Each day at my first, adult fulltime job I strove to be better than my beginnings, and while these efforts paid off, led to my next job in a whole new city, I basically had a breakdown in the office and then got cut in the third round of layoffs – it was 2009.

At that point I felt completely disconnected to the competent, confident professional that I had been becoming, my review was right, it seemed I, “didn’t understand diversity,” or really what life was asking me to be, and I knew even then I was not alone.

Being smart doesn’t always help you professionally.  This is a lie that you’re told in school, “that it is good to be smart,” and it is good to be smart, but not the complex, critical thinking kind of smart, but the smart that knows to darken circle A on the multiple choice exam, meaning basic common sense.

I had spent my entire life delving into the nuances of literature, not color coding spreadsheets and filing.  While simple, it was new to me and extremely tedious, especially so because I wasn’t exactly sure what I was working toward.

Recently, I read an article by a young woman who questioned why so many people in Ivies automatically went into i-banking or managerial consulting.  Mainly it was because they were told this would, “help launch their career,” and for, “the money,” but their dreams were becoming playrights, green planning and opening up restaurants.

Not investing other peoples’ money or telling them how to do their job, which personally I think is ridiculous because how many 22 year olds are really qualified to do that?  It’s just no one else wants to travel five days out of the week.

I get starting at the bottom, I get tough love and challenge, but why do we as a society spend so little time helping our children, teens and young adults find their own personal path?  Why don’t we encourage gap years and better provide different professional environments while still in school?

More importantly, why don’t we teach all three age groups to value finding their own path because that’s really the basis of most choices, “what’s important to me and how do I make that happen?” and I’m not so naïve to think money isn’t important.  It is, but what is money soaked in unhappiness and confusion?  It’s the power to fill the gap with the material, which does stimulate the economy but can also bring more debt.

And not just financial debt, but human debt: Don’t we want to be healthy?  Isn’t the whole idea of procreating hopeful; that we can create beings that can be better than ourselves and therefore better the quality of life for all?

Yes, the beings might not know what they want to do, or they might think they know and then be sorely disappointed but if we don’t restructure our world the 21, 22 and the 23 year olds of the world will continually be asked to hand over youth’s dream in exchange for a paycheck, and who else believes themselves to be invincible enough to achieve anything?

However, even in our sickened world all hope is not lost.  It is possible to buy the dysfunctional product, inhale it, spit it back up, lie down for a year and get up renewed.  Then suddenly you can be standing in front of 20 people in the encasing you always thought you would inhabit, encouraging them, and telling them what to do so that they can be heard.

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Can The Truth Be Written?

17 Aug

I haven’t written a blog in over two weeks.  I’ve really missed blogging, but I’ve been avoiding it.  I am overwhelmed with all of the thoughts, feelings and perceptions I cannot write about; they are too personal.

Not to me, but to other people.  I know if these people came across my blog they wouldn’t be pleased to read all of my thoughts and realizations.  They might even be hurt.

This is something that I continually struggle with.  As a writer, I want to share my truth.   As a friend, girlfriend or family member, I want to protect those that I love.  It’s a delicate balance that feels stifling.  My unsaid words get stuck in my throat, and at times I find my mind encircling itself, and so I end up silent.

Yet, don’t I believe in, “the truth”?  Don’t I constantly encourage others to express theirs?  Isn’t staying silent a crime in certain situations?  Why should I sacrifice my truth?  Shouldn’t those who love me believe in mine?

“Yes,” I think, “yes, they should believe,” but the truth is the truth isn’t always necessary or right; that there is a time and place for things and it isn’t always in a public forum.

I know this dilemma isn’t going to go away, it’s going to follow me as I continue to blog and write.  Already people that I love have been hurt by my words, and it made me regret every single one I put down; that is until my inner-artist said, “no, it’s what you believe,” and so I stood by them.

My stance did not take away the desire to provide the antidote to the pain that they caused; my stance never will.   Yet, I will still stand by what I choose to share, unless I whole-heartedly believe that my words should have been kept in the closet, though we all know that most people aren’t happy there.

I know one day I might be my own sacrifice.   If I ever write for a large publication the comments section will flay me, and I will be torn by whatever cruelty comes my way, but that won’t stop me either because I know all truths sear.

The truth, the real truth, whatever it may be for anyone who’s out there is entirely personal and therefore divisive.   It is both mean and generous, both judgmental and understanding; the truth wears the face of everyone; both sides of our own masks, in darkness and in light.

When mine rears its beautiful ugliness, I hope it does so because it must, and not because it just wants to.

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Showing Up To Write

1 Aug

There are times when I’m overcome with the urge to write, and a trapdoor opens up in my mind, and I fall through it; the words are waiting for me.  If I don’t grasp them in that exact moment then they dissolve, and I’m left with the desire to tell what was there.

Lately I’ve been wanting to write a book, and friends say, “why don’t you just write the next Hunger Games,” or I read about young woman securing million dollar publishing deals, and I think, “yea, why don’t I just do that?,” but the truth is I cannot control what I say, I don’t chose it; it just flows out of me.

Ray Bradbury sat in an attic in Northern California with a family below and tried to scribble stuff down.  He only had an hour or two a day because he was too busy trying support his family by lumbering, or being a night-watchmen, or taking his two fingers and picking fruit for an entire summer.  In his mid-thirties he was still unpublished and he wrote, “telling my Dad I wanted to be a writer was like telling him I wanted to be a plastic surgeon,” and no one in Bradbury’s family had attended school past the eighth grade.

I recently read an essay by Bradbury, so that’s how I know all of these things, but I needed to hear them.  I lament in my own mind for my own personal lack of language; for all the words that won’t come when I call them, and I start to feel a bit sorry for myself, I start to feel like there is nothing for me to say.

This is a common creative problem, and I know I’m not special, but I am the center of my own universe (and let’s be honest, we all are because everything we comprehend emanates from our own point of view), and the problem feels special to me.

Then I learn that Henry Miller, in his 40s was writing in a borrowed room, “Where any minute the chair he is sitting on may be taken out from under him.”

Bradbury wrote that, and he said, “Until recently this state of affairs persisted in my own life,” and I think I can relate, but then not in the same way because I was never that threadbare, yet all creatives need a space to create; that is a must.

But it is more than just space it is the fortitude to show up and sit no matter the circumstance and trust that the words will come; trust is a tricky thing because it asks us to trust it and we never really did in the first place, but it won’t reward us otherwise.

It was freeing to read Bradbury; to learn that he turned to short fiction because that was all the space he had.

I find in my own life that I am stretched with the busyness that has infected 98.7% of people, being pulled in different directions with messages and communication; with interruptions that close those invisible creative doors in our minds.  I sit down to write the book that I tell myself to and the clanging in my brain won’t stop, so nothing comes, but after reading Bradbury I realize it doesn’t have to.

I don’t have to write a novel, in fact, I believe the age of the great novel is dissipating (though it breaks my heart) because there is less space for it; people don’t have hours of time to give and there is so much competition for just plain attention.  Like all I must work within my limits, despite my occasional lack of faith, discipline and all other self-obstacles.

Bradbury sat in a tiny room above his family, he stole his time and still nothing came, but it didn’t stop him from showing up; from putting his pen to paper and to patiently wait for the story that got him published in Esquire, and when it arrived nothing was ever the same.

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The Definition of Google

25 Jul

(wanted to share this piece I wrote in ’06, two months out of college, because I think it still rings true)

A google used to mean a word of infinite possibilities. It was the childhood answer to a number contest. It was the Phantom Toolbooth’s answer to the end all be all of addition. It was the silencer with a symbol that told us we could never add to find the right answer. Now it is the name of a website, and, in my opinion, an appropriate name to this new era we are surfing into.

We can http://www.google.com a million gateways to endless amounts of any information we might need to know. Here is the site that can answer all of our questions. We can find sex, common loneliness, song lyrics, bank statements, and our college roomate’s new address. This wireless site links us to one another, or to those who have internet access. What does one do with all this information in front of them? How can we be satisfied with any answer when we know in .01 seconds we can find a dozen other answers?

This problem echoes throughout every aspect of our postmodern lives. Richard Powers, a brilliant author, stated that we as people “tend to feel more overwhelmed than unhappy.” Unhappiness can be solved because another possibility awaits us with the next click. People are now transient and forever dissatisfied. Today people switch careers almost as often as other’s change their hair color. We can easily remake ourselves but at the same time anyone can track our trail. Anyone who once owned a cell phone, used a computer, or had a bank account can never completely leave an old self, an old life behind.

We can inherit each others’ past lives and claim them as our own. Every time our boss gives us a blackberry, or each time we use another computer, we are mirroring millions of variations of the same theme that haunts us. Then a letter is changed, another chord is struck, and we feel ourselves unraveling into another story. Somehow we are continuously narrating the future, while dragging the past behind us. These two oppositions of past and future leave us in the purgatory of the present.

As I stand at the crossroads of my own life, I join the vast amounts of those who are in awe of all our options: Where should I move? What career should I pick? Who should I spend the rest of my life with? Even, “what kind of person do I want to be,” can lead to an answer that equals Google; inside each person and choice live a million unlived lives that are pure fantasy.

At one point in time, those lives might have been implied but weren’t at your fingertips, standing right in front of you (or beneath/next/across/down the street from you). Many of these unlived lives weren’t within our grasp because of uncontrollable factors that dictated choice and possibility. In the literary sense, people were working within some imposed structure. Now we are not functioning between two immobile binaries, but walking along the seam of meaningless meaning. What once seemed liberating is now a blur of overwhelming dissatisfaction. The structure has exploded, and we are left with Google.

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