ellipses, you jerks.

...

Typing. It's a satisfying exercise, and most bloggers feel they've had a special day when the click clack doesn't slow or stop. Do you write every day, with your fingers and a utensil? How long do you go without actually speaking to a person. A day? A week?

I will admit, ten-12 years ago, when the internet was young and I was just an against the grain kind of kid, that typing was my preferred choice. I do not say things properly -- always blunt to the point of tears, cruel to the point of kindness, my foot always rammed quite far down my throat. When I am composing, however, I can give my brain time to assemble some of those nice words I know into something even nicer. Something to lift the spirit, brighten the eyes or quicken the pulse. I would rather type to some people I know than speak to them.

But I noticed that typing all of the time was not helping with my social difficulties. I became increasingly impatient with conversations, with people in general. Didn't stop me. I just moved my online activities to online gaming platforms, where everyone had problems talking to other people. My parents tried to make a big, serious deal out of it. They were constantly talking to me about what a problem I was --about how many problems I had. At the time, being on the internet was a prescribed period of time and that often came late in the evening, after other things. My 'nocturnal lifestyle' was a problem. I didn't see what was so great about being alive, at all, during the day.

Being outside never spoke to me, because the outside was never detailed to me as very important. It existed, it was nice to look at, my grandparents had a cottage I was expected to swim by at summertime, and sometimes one sat around in it pre-dinner. The internet, on the other hand, was a place of free thinkers and of new ideas. I never got bored, and was challenged to use my brain daily in poetry and writing forums. I've never had the same exchange again.

Cut to now -- being on the internet never stops. Your avatar hums away on your integrated personality profile where all of your secrets and faces are laid bare. I remember putting your own face to screen was pretty much just not done. Now, we show it all. Sure, we think it's just to people we know personally. The reality is, of course, that faceless humans look at/sort/file/mark for review our personal information all day every day. You google it, instead of reading about it. You link it, instead of talking about it. You pin it, instead of holding it or even doing it.  You tweet it, you twit, as if anyone really cares. It is a 24 hour maelstrom of one upmanship and look at what I'm doings.  Even this opinion is online.

I dare you to go outside today, find a space that has good air/sounds/feeling and just sit there. Sit there and listen to the earth that was here before you and will be here after you are gone. Listen to what it is saying to you, as you are its child. It misses us. And as our empathetic receptors are diminished every day by invisible, electric miasma, as drivers swerve in and out of slow traffic with no regard to the lives going on in other cars, as parents absently smack their children while their faces are glued to personal devices, spouses cry alone at night, though their partners are just a few feet away it becomes increasingly clear that we, the children of the earth, very, very much miss it.

So, sit outside today, and don't bring your phone. Turn your phone off. Turn your computer off. Turn your wireless things off. Just cut the hum, and see if you don't feel just a little bit better. Oh, and if you see anything on the ground that doesn't belong there, for the LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, pick it up and put it in the bin.

xo