I want to have this conversation with you, but I can't.
I want to have this conversation with you, but I can't.
When I say you, I mean each & every one of you who might read this,
save a few with whom I can
(have this conversation with you)
When I was a child, I wanted to have this conversation with the world.
I wanted to know intimately the hearts & minds of every
stranger I passed on the street,
male and female,
young and old, & this wanting was a kind of pain
at the beauty I could see inherent in every person,
so often locked up & hidden even from themselves,
an ache like intensely missing someone I'd yet to meet.
There is always what one means to communicate, & what one actually communicates.
It seems to me that communication in virtual reality tends to be abstracted:
ideas of ideas, thoughts of thoughts, mirrors facing mirrors unto infinity,
shadows casting shadows.
You can read between the lines in my turns of phrase,
my choices of words, what I do not say,
the patterns, the timing,
but all you'll find are more shadows.
Face-to-face, vis-a-vis, though,
what's given away in the weight of the voice, a gesture of the hand,
a tightening of the throat, the subtle changes in body chemistry,
where your eyes look as you are talking, what makes you laugh suddenly
or fall silent, all this enhances
(& sometimes directly contradicts)
what is spoken, adds complexity and depth,
more & more so with history & familiarity.
I want to have this conversation with you, but I can't.
Most of my generation is only just recently getting used to a medium
I've been swimming in since I was a child, getting to 'know' each other
through exchanging parcels of words. I don't mean to minimize, but I have
more of a perspective on this than most; I've been through it & through it & through it.
Seems like everybody is texting now & I have to wonder
how long it will be until it won't seem at all crass to send
the most emotional of messages via text...
..."Yr mother just passed away"...
... "I love you" (said for the very first time) ...
Love is a word we could talk about.
We could run a concordancer on it. That's a linguist's tool,
(& a word I love, simply for itself: concordancer)
a program to sift through corpora (that means bodies, but
in this context: bodies of collected text) & it would tell us
the words the word love most frequently occur hand in hand with:
'you'
'i'
'me'
'my'
'true'
'real'
'don't'
I want to have this conversation (and others) with you, but I can't.
No, I--
I want to walk down a wooded, late-autumn path with you, swaddled
in scarves with the exposed parts of our faces flushed,
talking with you, our voices raised over the the crackling of leaves underfoot,
pausing to catch our breaths as without meaning to
we've started walking faster to warm ourselves.
I want to sit in the tall back booth of a dimly lit bar with you, voices
low & intent in whiskey honesty while the bartender cries "last call",
passing our only remaining cigarette back & forth between us.
I want to drive down a lazy Sunday road with you, sharing
half-thoughts as they spring to mind & sharing the silences too.
I want to know you & not only the words you formulate for me to unpack,
& not to deceive myself that one is equal to the other;
I want not to hide from you, nor for you to hide from me.
I want to have this conversation with you, but I can't.
There's no time in the world for me to have this conversation face-to-face with all of you,
(that is, even if you wanted to have this conversation with me)
not without spreading myself too thin for any one to be worthwhile,
& we can't have this conversation in email or instant messenger
or internet relay chat or social network status updates or blog comments
or vlogs or video chat. We can have other conversations there but
not this one.
& since I can't have this conversation with you, I'll wish for this instead:
I wish for you to have
(or continue to have)
this conversation with somebody who will have this conversation with you,
vis-a-vis,
& i wish that you will not hide from him or her
& i wish that that somebody will not hide from you.
When I say you, I mean each & every one of you who might read this,
save a few with whom I can
(have this conversation with you)
When I was a child, I wanted to have this conversation with the world.
I wanted to know intimately the hearts & minds of every
stranger I passed on the street,
male and female,
young and old, & this wanting was a kind of pain
at the beauty I could see inherent in every person,
so often locked up & hidden even from themselves,
an ache like intensely missing someone I'd yet to meet.
There is always what one means to communicate, & what one actually communicates.
It seems to me that communication in virtual reality tends to be abstracted:
ideas of ideas, thoughts of thoughts, mirrors facing mirrors unto infinity,
shadows casting shadows.
You can read between the lines in my turns of phrase,
my choices of words, what I do not say,
the patterns, the timing,
but all you'll find are more shadows.
Face-to-face, vis-a-vis, though,
what's given away in the weight of the voice, a gesture of the hand,
a tightening of the throat, the subtle changes in body chemistry,
where your eyes look as you are talking, what makes you laugh suddenly
or fall silent, all this enhances
(& sometimes directly contradicts)
what is spoken, adds complexity and depth,
more & more so with history & familiarity.
I want to have this conversation with you, but I can't.
Most of my generation is only just recently getting used to a medium
I've been swimming in since I was a child, getting to 'know' each other
through exchanging parcels of words. I don't mean to minimize, but I have
more of a perspective on this than most; I've been through it & through it & through it.
Seems like everybody is texting now & I have to wonder
how long it will be until it won't seem at all crass to send
the most emotional of messages via text...
..."Yr mother just passed away"...
... "I love you" (said for the very first time) ...
Love is a word we could talk about.
We could run a concordancer on it. That's a linguist's tool,
(& a word I love, simply for itself: concordancer)
a program to sift through corpora (that means bodies, but
in this context: bodies of collected text) & it would tell us
the words the word love most frequently occur hand in hand with:
'you'
'i'
'me'
'my'
'true'
'real'
'don't'
I want to have this conversation (and others) with you, but I can't.
No, I--
I want to walk down a wooded, late-autumn path with you, swaddled
in scarves with the exposed parts of our faces flushed,
talking with you, our voices raised over the the crackling of leaves underfoot,
pausing to catch our breaths as without meaning to
we've started walking faster to warm ourselves.
I want to sit in the tall back booth of a dimly lit bar with you, voices
low & intent in whiskey honesty while the bartender cries "last call",
passing our only remaining cigarette back & forth between us.
I want to drive down a lazy Sunday road with you, sharing
half-thoughts as they spring to mind & sharing the silences too.
I want to know you & not only the words you formulate for me to unpack,
& not to deceive myself that one is equal to the other;
I want not to hide from you, nor for you to hide from me.
I want to have this conversation with you, but I can't.
There's no time in the world for me to have this conversation face-to-face with all of you,
(that is, even if you wanted to have this conversation with me)
not without spreading myself too thin for any one to be worthwhile,
& we can't have this conversation in email or instant messenger
or internet relay chat or social network status updates or blog comments
or vlogs or video chat. We can have other conversations there but
not this one.
& since I can't have this conversation with you, I'll wish for this instead:
I wish for you to have
(or continue to have)
this conversation with somebody who will have this conversation with you,
vis-a-vis,
& i wish that you will not hide from him or her
& i wish that that somebody will not hide from you.