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After The Rainstorm
An ex-lover long ago told me this dream she had about her ex-lover, up on a balcony talking about me, saying--he doesn't talk anymore, as in permanently. As if it mattered, as if it matters. In the context that would be my ex-lover's I guess that dream would mean something more or less simple like I wasn't communicating all that well with her, which in the end, along with a couple of other mechanical issues, is what ended us. And please, not to imply there is anything simple about the ex-lover.

As a sophomore in high school exercising my right to teenage rebellion I would go entire single days determined not to express myself vocally. I thought so much of what was being said by all of us students and teachers was so much noise pollution and at the time I guess I was against it.

Then somewhere somehow shortly after or before I dropped out of The University of Texas, twice (it was too sweet to do just once), I got turned on to the relatively quiet pitter patter of the computer keyboard and I thought this could be me. I had never really loved the clacking typewriter. Then ten years passed and another ten and who cares because it's a long distance race life is, and to those of us who get nipped in the bud, pity, but not so consequential to the overall history of mankind.

Then came mass market Internet and quiet self-indulgence became a thing to embrace by all of us quiet self-indulgent types. We could express ourselves literally, theoretically, to the entire world. In anyway we wished. We don't anymore type or write on paper and send off in envelopes. Which for me is a good thing because the time it would take to lick and seal and address and stamp and physically handle and move a missive to a mailbox would be time I customarily used to reconsider how completely unnecessary it all was. Like water seeking its own level I would be verbosity seeking silence. All this I say and think before--clicking and sending. The regrets I suffer because of this sending I now deal with as expeditiously as possible, figuring, right or wrong, if it hurts, it can't be all bad.
- jimlouis 3-14-2003 3:19 pm [link] [add a comment]