remember warmth

It happens so fast, even when machines keep you breathing beyond your allotted breaths. The moments race by and the tubes and wires and dripping morphine infiltrate and sedate cold flesh. The sci-fi scene obliterates romantic sentiments of death. This is no Marat. This is no General Wolfe. 

This is an uncle made mecha by modern medicine. This is an uncle that, just a week and half ago called you out of the blue to spend time with him in a provident moment of unknown finality. An uncle that spoke of the world, and the beauty of Mexico, and how he got lost in the chaos of Columbia when Pablo Escobar was killed, and how he crashed the wedding of a wine importer's daughter in England. 

And this is an uncle who also spoke of death in that final visit. An uncle who missed the already departed, but said he wasn't ready to go. 

And you are shocked because you think just because someone says they're not ready to go, they won't. Then you realize that none of it matters and you cling on to those last precious minutes together because that was your gift of closure. That was the end of your good memories. Because who wants to hold on to that pitiful hospital imagery? I cling to the warm words that conjured Cancun breezes and dolphin seas. I cling on with all that death has left in its cool swift grey wake.

Fall in Love with Pixels?

The totality of the internet's dominance is overwhelming. There seems to be a blog dedicated to just about everything. Well almost. And in the over saturated world of bloggers and platforms, people fall in love with pixels, become addicted to endless scrolling, to beautiful flesh and elusive dreams.

But why are we infatuated with things that often only exist on out computer screens? Or as a result of digital technology? As humans, we continuously seek happiness in its many forms, but is happiness really measured in the amount of likes you get on a post? The number of comments, shares, reblogs?

Why do we have such a fascination with the public documentation of our lives, e.g. the "pics or it didn't happen" mentality, which leads us to post pictures and posts about even the most mundane of our daily activities? Does it provide a sense of validation, or make it feel like we've accomplished something grander than it is? Why are we so into looking and and being looked at online? What happened to just living and having fun in the moment?

And why do we seem to get so much enjoyment from looking into the highly curated and subjective version of other people's lives? Does that pretty boy or girl you follow have something of importance to share, or are they just using their looks or material possessions to feel better about themselves when someone pays attention to them? In this day and age I'd say people champion swag over brains, style over substance. And I can't say I'm not guilty of feeling some of these things. But I've just been thinking about it more and have been seriously considering the consequences in getting too caught up in the fantasy world of the internet and social networking?

I fear negative repercussions of the disconnect from reality that the internet creates.  To me, the internet is the end of normal, human to human interaction, to letter writing, books, and all manner of print media, all the things that took time and thus had more value. What do we value these days? The outlook's pretty bleak.

On a brighter note, I'm listening Zapp and Roger's "Computer Love" as I'm writing this and they definitely predicted what would happen!