throwaway days.

My mom pulled out some picture the other month, this baby snap. I looked real small, breakable. I remember being that kid. Those chubby cheeks, the sort old ladies yanked as they pleased. I was blonde then too. Chipper looking, at least compared to the sodden brown-haired boy I’ve since become. I stole the photo off to my bedroom that night, kept it inside a history book on ancient Rome. Page twenty-two, before the death of Julius Caesar. I sometimes pull it out before going to bed, stare at it, think through everything he’d have to go through to get to me. You don’t know shit before adult teeth and armpit hair; it’s life seen from the center of a pram, staring up at chins, ever ready for that spoonful of mashed food. Maybe I was just happy knowing things were simpler before I grew sixty-odd inches, before the notches my dad carved into the wall racked up like a ladder into manhood. Things haven’t been easy for me, what with my parents always moving around. This latest place is the worst yet—some rotten town in the middle of nowhere, and my fourth school in three years. There’s this American kid in my class, Tom, and the first thing he shouts when he sees me, “Guys! Check out the new kid, buck-teeth! And what a god damn noggin!” Swell, new town, same crap.
…

the commoditization of friendship.

“Technology has established it as a luxury, rather than a disorder, that we do not as often have to deal with the physicality of people—to watch and be watched as facial expressions and body language unfold in reaction to words. Instead, we stare at phones and bring our laptops to bed. We give ourselves anxiety trying to decipher the tone of a text or the meaning of a tweet’s punctuation. Some relationships thrive online, only to be dismantled by awkwardness over dinner. Technology encourages us to be bold, but traditional social interaction leave us feeling awkward. The physical equivalent of ignoring a Gchat is to stare at someone blankly after they’ve said “Hello,” then walk away. It would be incredibly inappropriate to do the latter, but is perfectly acceptable to do the former. In the physical world, we can’t snap our fingers and disappear, but on the Internet, we are invisible until we declare ourselves otherwise.”

An excerpt from the essay, “Surfing Alone: Is Digital Technology Destroying Relationships?” by Liz Colville.

…

Show me a burgeoning woman, bursting with flesh from tank tops and jeans, and I’ll show you male anxiety caked in social fears. The physicality of people is frightening, the expectation that wears on a face as it awaits an immediate response. There are learned nuances that underscore physical interaction, some that serve as red flags, others that have us reeling in the other—and all are behaviors built by trial and error. Some through watching the frown a girl might endow to eyes on her chest, and others from the twitching hands of a nervy man. Today we have a generation exposed to social technologies from a young age; a generation sheltered from the nuances of social grace—playing up the behaviors described in Colville’s article. This is a population that has had a significant portion of its social interaction committed online. Where “technology encourages us to be bold” it also influences how we interact in a physical setting—particularly when those boundaries are ever more blurred, with any array of digital devices tethering us to our internet at all times. It’s a changed etiquette we find imposed on our physical interactions; and one that, to date, has been largely unquestioned. We’re only ever jolted from this norm when hanging out within someone from another age, sitting down with a parent who finds our repeated infringements with a phone to be wholly untenable. But as we age, we impose and it spreads.

The example the author offers is of someone blocking a friend on GChat, happy that this action is as implied in person as it is with a right-click. We commit these actions to people without care for the expression that wears on their face. The author states, “Technology encourages us to be bold, but traditional social interaction leaves us feeling awkward.” Where I contest this point, is that I believe this awkwardness no longer negates the so-called “bold” behavior. The internet of five, six years ago was less integrated with one’s social life—the interactions therein were mostly anonymous, spent on browsing web sites, or contributing to bulletin boards. These bolder personalities were set against an unknown backdrop, actions thrown into the black hole of human despair. Now, however, most everyone we socialize with exists in our physical space (think to social networking, email, instant messaging, etc.). So whilst we are aware of the awkwardness that our actions impose, we’re less likely to refrain from committing them. These have become well practiced behaviors—”I blocked her once, ran into her in a cafe, realized I didn’t care”. Call it what you wish, desensitization, the break of youth.

Or maybe that boldness, the willingness to bring into play these inappropriate behaviors is symptomatic of the commodification of friendship by social networks. It’s an oft-described trait of the modern age that we’re a distracted sort, jumping from one activity to the next. And it’s become somewhat true of our interactions with people too. Today we have five hundred friends or more on Facebook, and any array of means to get in touch with them. The relative value of a single friend is less within this context—my network can absorb the blow. New media technologies lower barriers and offer up connections on a plate, is it such a stretch to suggest they might be devaluing the depths of true friendship?

there’s a cigarette in my smart phone.

The smart phone is the cigarette of today’s generation. Always in hand, occupying a nervous moment, allowing us to escape the inevitable chatter of friends. I can think to times spent sitting in a bar with two of my closest female friends, each clasping a drink with the left hand, clicking through online landscapes with the right; content to remain silent, devoid of eye contact, sipping beer. I could bother to lift my chin and ask each to describe their day, find out why their boyfriends ditched their asses and left them with me—but I already know. Cynthia had some array of twitter updates rolling in through the hours of 1 and 4pm, and Rachel was emailing me on and off for the remainder of the day. No, we’d rather sit in silence and reach out to everyone else we’ve ever known. This is the essence of life today. Lived in and around the physical domain; experienced through the ends of our fingers on phones. Where the cigarette once occupied the void, pulling the person from their crowd with each inhale, now sits the harassment of data in the air. It’s the great irony of the social networking age, that as we become ever more connected, we become less physically present.

It’s interesting to consider the changed place of cigarettes within society. Once the bastion of social interaction, where the fuse centered on the man with the packet, or the girl with the light. Today they’ve become a social stigma, and an ill-considered attribute to any person. I remember my dad being a big smoker, and I can’t really think to a childhood photo that doesn’t have him shirtless with a fag draped from his lips. He’d smile, snap, converse, and cater to dinner; all the while that shifty white stick remained still, firmly planted. He’d have smoking friends too, these pals that would come over for dinner. At some point he’d whip out a box of Camels and light up, the packet passed hurriedly around the table, each man gruffly exclaiming, “Ah Brendan! You’re a gentleman and a scholar you are!” There’d be little talk once the light hit the tip. Silent reflection, and these passive faces that sat back in satisfaction as the smoke sucked in. Then at some point, years later, the teacher with a socialist agenda had the kids raise their hands in class, “If daddy’s been smoking around you, let me know!” Two months down and daddy’s sitting outside during smoking time, puffing away defiantly behind the glass doors—throwing his kids that knowing glare. But mom’s in on it too, pregnant for the fourth time, and reading articles about the dangers of second-hand smoke. Tells the dad this won’t do, “Not near our kids, not outside, not anywhere on this land. You’ve got to quit.” So dad finds himself in a bar, puffing away with society’s driftwood, making friends through shared misery and cold beer. This ain’t so bad, he thinks to himself. But the hand of political intervention slaps it from his mouth, tells him to step outside and exhale, “but not within fifteen feet of the premises, dear sir.” Dad’s upset, thinks his time might finally be up; he’s ready for the patch, or whatever fad the television slaps on. But what’s this? Attractive women, short skirts, and a social phenomenon the newspapers call, “smirting?” Flirting outside of bars while you smoke—“Ingenious”, he roars!

Luckily for my dad, today’s smokers weren’t pushed beyond the pavement. They remain outside, though a little more shifty in appearance, with social pressures having picked off the finest from their litter. For most of us however, the cigarette is obsolete, and smart phones now occupy that hand. Between breaths they sit stacked on a table in much the same way we’d leave cigarette packs, serving as a simple illustration of character. Back then the simplicity of boy meets girl began with a shared puff, the space between them illuminated with smoke and discovery, en route to flesh-on-flesh. In bars today that dynamic is familiar, but different. Now we have Bob looking at Jill, throwing a knowing glance between her iPhone and eyes, before adding, “I switched last month too. It’s just a better user-experience, isn’t it?” Jill smiles back, happy that Bob noticed her recent change of habit, and thinks this man might be worth a stalk. Pausing, she picks up her new purchase and checks through his profile on Facebook and Twitter. She’s pleased to discover he’s twenty-six and a Pisces, and that he works for a corporate think-tank and quotes Ayn Rand. Flicking through his photos she curls her mouth at the idea of his threatening lips and deep-set eyes, happily noting the lack of alcohol fueled endeavors so often the display of boys her own age. Feeling neglected, Bob pulls out his own phone and searches the internet for dear Jill—smiling as he stumbles across her picture from a party the night prior, happily noting how much better she looks online. Bob thinks he might be in with a solid shot till he stumbles upon her collection of “Summer pictures 2009!” There’s a God awful series with this man, Jimmy Rod; Harvard, MBA, and socialite twat. Good looking too, he reckons. Bob decides to forefit and run.

Where the cigarette made the holder seem aloof, the smart phone serves to sever their inclusion entirely. Leaving them to day-dream by way of status updates and conversation threading; every so often returning to the present to pull down some snapshot or textual treat. Cigarette smoke may have been an unfavourable imposition, but at least the person blowing it in your face would make eye-contact.

smile.

Hey Marseilles – Goodbye Versailles.
…

“It’s a photograph. Or a series of photographs, I should say. Think of a relationship, think of its entirety, but illustrated with three simple shots: the before, during, and after. The first is easy, dreamy as they come–as it is when two people meet. You know what I mean, the over exposed light, a delicate lens glare that weaves across the scene. They’re at some random party, never met before, both lavished by the hand of the hosts open bottle. He and she, your average boy and girl; he and she, and everyone’s looking at them thinking the same thing. A random camera snaps. The beginnings, captured. And in the photograph they’re looking at each other, eyes affixed. They look happy, consumed with curiosity, that fearless intrigue. And there’s all this space between them, and they want nothing more than to flesh it out, dig in till they discover everything there is to know about the other. Dig till there’s no space at all. Flesh on flesh. It’s absolute possibility, bliss. You look at it now and think wow, there’s nothing that could ever cause that to split.

“Then comes the bit between: the relationship. This is when you’re in it, where your life is the measure of two toothbrushes in a sink and foreign underwear across the floor. And it has its beauty, the intimacy of a shared meal, a familiar body with its head on your lap. You’re running your hands through that hair thinking, “man, ain’t she the sweet.” But this picture skips on the ethereal glare, and the colours are a little drawn out. You’ve got a half smile and she’s rolling eyes. It’s still good, right. But it’s real, heavy, hard. And there’s this back-story that sets itself against the happy coupling, it hints at the crack, the ending you’ll likely enact. Then the camera’s put down, the moment snapped, and she’s off fucking the ex-boyfriend like you always knew she would.

“But it’s the final picture that’s most telling, after the end. It’s you and she back in a room together, but separate. And all that space between you is back, filled to the brim with everything that pushed you apart. All the fights, the delicate touch of her fingers on your back. The way she’d dance unhindered when you were near, forever insisting that there was something about you that had her in a twirl. The lying whims, the ways she’d disappear for days and more. The slapping fits that ended with her on the floor and you crying, “Whore!” The final picture is the one you remember most; it’s the one that shows the two people for what they were. The whole, their truth, unearthed.”

an island, indeed.

No man is an island, entire of itself
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main
if a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were
any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
it tolls for thee.
…
John Donne.

it was all fiction

It’s what she liked most about you. Your feckless abandon. That you might take her hand and head in turn, thrash about her body with a bloody spite. Stop and take her stare, her head locked to your hand by a fist of hair, waits. She remembers that well.

It’s what she liked most about you. It’s what she liked. Never the scuppered stance, the back you’d long since put out — a butchered erection, shoulders shot and arms left flailing by your sides. She tells me you remind her of her father, the same build, that loping gait, a cigarette ever dangling from open lips.

It’s what she liked most about you. It’s what she liked, left.

(Stepping back I circle the scene, the moment’s props falling from my grip, her voice distant, broken).

Remember how she told you she was empty in any way you were near; she moved the set. Showed you everything lost.

(And yes of course I remember, I was there. But she’s not being fair, throwing out the beginnings, our softly spoken sheen. Doesn’t she remember the playgrounds and swings, how she’d flit about in the dark, slip and scream in silence, song?).

Remember how she’d dance through your days, throwing her body about whatever space held her frame?

(I’ll never forget, I say).

It’s what she liked most about you. It’s what she left.
…

the tallest woman in paris, you know.

I’m the tallest woman in Paris, you know. These stupefying legs that steady my frame, tethered poles that tie my intent to earth. They’ll step and squash and scurry the path, the world makes haste as I draw near. I’m the rhyme that children dance inside, the giant the stalk and beans that fork. I’m the chanting roar of a fiefdom scorned. No woman stands near. Their hair, heads that skirt beneath my day, I sometimes wonder how they’d fare with a single hand across their walk – to watch them tumble and run, bounding across the land like an apple basket, upturned. Anything I’ve seen to want, I take. My hands have the measure of a day, know the push and pull of love, lust. Know the folkloric spell I instill, abhor. I’m the tallest woman in Paris, you know. And I have a man, a measure of muscle, jaw and a tenor’s roar. And with him alone I know my place, I take his side and shirk my height. And with him alone I walk the streets, and will my feet into the airy step that smells of grace, and watch with glee the still embrace my disappearance brings. His is the shadow in which I melt, the tallest woman in Paris, content.
…

left, london.

Richard and I talk in threes. He tells me the world down south is nothing but flat, that his lungs look solid. He tells me he’s never been happier. I listen, I always listen — taking my head up and down, the agreement that appends to a thoughtful frown. It’s been five years now, five years since he split the coup and fled in circles. Another of those types the paper chronicled, “Young, fit and blown to bits. Flees”. I remember the day he disappeared, it started with a seat. Empty, lacking personality — as any seat might do without an imprint. The noise that usually spat from its cushioned heat petered out, nothing but the faint train of trouble, the odd exclaim from a co-worker as to his whereabouts. It didn’t end there, you felt it when you pushed through the turning doors to the street, on the stairs to tube that echoed on your feet. On the platform too, still amidst the rush of rats and race, you felt it when the line ran by, your face flickering across the reflection of paneled windows. And that was it, he was gone. Him off skirting about on foreign soil. Loosely engaged with the pursuit of his worldly whiff, the wake of serendipity. There was a postcard once, some mention of a dirt tracker town in the south of China. Attached a club flyer, our man with his face in a state of searing fear, mouth agape and tongue lashing lips — “party like the irish! lush club, 12/9 20h00!”

I’ve seen his old bird in passing once or twice, the cold impress of her weathered stare bites like a hush at any thoughts of an uttered word; I think I’d like to say hello, tell her I’m sorry and that I know. That it wasn’t right, the bite of life. I don’t, continue walking, my face furrowing down into the world a wrapped scarf imparts.
…

prose, prowl.

…
The girl I have just left, the girl she may perhaps (I suddenly realize) smell on me, is very pretty, there is no question about that: the acuteness of my pleasure in her is sharpened by the elegance of her tiny body, its manners, its movements. But of this one there is nothing I can say with certainty. There is no link I can define between her womanhood and my desire. I cannot even say for sure that I desire her. All this erotic behavior of mine is indirect: I prowl about her, touching her face, caressing her body, without entering her or finding the urge to do so. I have just come from the bed of a woman for whom, in the year I have known her, I have not for a moment had to interrogate my desire: to desire her has meant to enfold her and enter her, to pierce her surface and stir the quiet of her interior into an ecstatic storm; then to retreat, to subside, to wait for desire to reconstitute itself. But with this woman it is as if there is no interior, only a surface across which I hunt back and forth seeking entry. Is this how her torturers felt hunting their secret, whatever they thought it was? For the first time I feel a dry pity for them: how natural a mistake to believe that you can burn or tear or hack your way into the secret body of another! The girl lies in my bed, but there is no good reason why it should be a bed. I behave in some ways like a lover — I undress her, I bathe her, I stroke her, I sleep beside her — but I might equally well tie her to a chair and beat her, it would be no less intimate.
…
An excerpt from the Coetzee novella, Waiting for the Barbarians.

samantha in the sedan.

California treads lightly on my weathered neck; the brushed colour that leaves me the envy of my emigrant clique. Samantha sits still on the deck, hands on the lap of her summer dress. Some floral arrangement that tucks and thrills at various hems and dips. She’d just sort of shown up two days prior, politely rapping at my window, calling out my name as I muddled with papers and meandered for the door. I hadn’t seen the girl in years, left that vision to a childhood scorned. Remembered the ending well. Goodbye, she blurted, reaching for the car door, throwing some racket of letters to my lap. Read them over and over, “My dear boy — you’re the ineloquent man who was meant for much, much more”; and so it went with paragraphs, pages. I’d suspected it borrowed text, pulled down from pages of a better thought. Where she had felt a connection, I’d felt only an erection. The extent of our romance confined to the front seats of my father’s 1990 Toyota Station-wagon. I’d sit across from her thinking virgin foreclosure, an intent scuppered by the raise of a parking brake between our two seats. My teenage years hadn’t yet fathomed the obstacles presented by car sex. Adjacent seats, reach, cramping feet. Instead, we sold hours to the mesh and mould of tongues, my hands grappling with the upper reaches of her knees, afraid to forage beyond, into the flesh of thighs and legs; special consideration given to the imaginative promise of breasts under fleece. I had once made an uncertain dash for groin, only to have her pull back in tears, blubbering on about love and dreams. After that I resigned myself to a sexless romance, content to whimper and moan as she stuck a tongue in my ear. There were no dates, no tepid trips to triumph over respective bedrooms, no public walks where we’d meet an acquaintance and awkwardly introduce the other as, “friend.” We existed only within the confines of a four door sedan. Things with Samantha ended when I moved to Ireland, stuck a stamp on my future and flew the coup. We hadn’t spoken since, save for a letter I’d received a few months after bailing — creatively constructed into a barrage of uniquely crafted curses. “I hate you,” compiled and collected into pages of differing colours and cursive.
…