Date: Autumn, 1995. Physical place(s): Northwestern University, Evanston IL; UVA, Charlottesville VA. Ethereal location: alt.angst, Usenet.
The year I ventured past my comfort zone into cyberspace.
Free internet access and an email address were complimentary perks associated with my acceptance into one of the nation's top colleges, the moment I registered as a freshman in 1993. This was back in the days when dialup AOL charged by the hour. Back then, I was a neo-Luddite -- opposed to technology on sheer principle, out of a visceral mistrust of power: a consequence of my parents' miscalculations raising me. It took me two full years of spiraling despair to achieve the desperate courage to apply for my email address. To seek out new life, new civilizations. To boldly go...
Split infinitives aside, eventually I decided that being aggressively alone did not necessarily constitute a virtue. I tuned in, turned on... but felt no obligation to drop out. I did, however, find myself connecting with a VERY weird group of people.
I'd known, from early childhood, that I was irrevocably weird. My mother was bipolar, my father was an abusive drunk. My brother has heard the voice of GOD telling him to kill his son. Schizophrenia is poorly understood by humanity generally, but I suspect (as a skeptic) that it is an extreme version of our innate ability to recognize patterns, coupled with a yearning for meaning which is rooted in the fact that our consciousness is an emergent phenomenon. We all want to believe we are real, that we have meaning independent of anything we ourselves create.
So. In 1995 I signed up. I sought out the other weirdos. I found alt.angst.
I shared my story, for the first time ever. I crafted poetry that still blinds me with its truth. I told the truth, despite every instinct telling me I shouldn't. Couldn't. I was so deep in despair, I didn't see anything else. Lies were so utterly worthless; I knew that, whether or not I knew anything.
Cromwell came to me as a savior. He came to me in pain and sorrow, a victim of the American South and its Puritanical worldview. He came to me as a soulmate, as a light in August, as William Faulkner and Walker Percy. I shared hours and hours of expensive phone-time with this young man, David Bjorlin, who convinced himself I was the semi-schizo heroine of The Second Coming.
What a letdown. What a disappointment! For him. When I spent my father's borrowed money to meet him in 1996. I was 5 foot 9, and a size 14.
It took me more than a decade to realize that being too short is the equivalent, in males, of being too fat in a woman. All I saw was his all-too-explicable rejection. It never registered for me when David Perry told me that Cromwell told him, "She was bigger than me, what can I say?" All I could register was that I was wrong. Unfit.
I'm posting this, ostensibly, as a cautionary tale. Against seeking soulmates in cyberspace. People are weak. They are shallow, not by inclination, but by design. The design of the ruling class.
None of us deserve to be pawns in class warfare!
It IS possible to elude. To avoid. To circumvent! The paradigm. It is possible to reject those who seek to program you. But you'll never achieve that following the path of Cromwell. Truth is messy. It's complex. It's not an ideology. It's the fucking reality behind your perception, and there are (potentially) as many perceptions as there are perceivers. JUDGE YOUR FELLOW HUMANS AT YOUR PERIL.
The year I ventured past my comfort zone into cyberspace.
Free internet access and an email address were complimentary perks associated with my acceptance into one of the nation's top colleges, the moment I registered as a freshman in 1993. This was back in the days when dialup AOL charged by the hour. Back then, I was a neo-Luddite -- opposed to technology on sheer principle, out of a visceral mistrust of power: a consequence of my parents' miscalculations raising me. It took me two full years of spiraling despair to achieve the desperate courage to apply for my email address. To seek out new life, new civilizations. To boldly go...
Split infinitives aside, eventually I decided that being aggressively alone did not necessarily constitute a virtue. I tuned in, turned on... but felt no obligation to drop out. I did, however, find myself connecting with a VERY weird group of people.
I'd known, from early childhood, that I was irrevocably weird. My mother was bipolar, my father was an abusive drunk. My brother has heard the voice of GOD telling him to kill his son. Schizophrenia is poorly understood by humanity generally, but I suspect (as a skeptic) that it is an extreme version of our innate ability to recognize patterns, coupled with a yearning for meaning which is rooted in the fact that our consciousness is an emergent phenomenon. We all want to believe we are real, that we have meaning independent of anything we ourselves create.
So. In 1995 I signed up. I sought out the other weirdos. I found alt.angst.
I shared my story, for the first time ever. I crafted poetry that still blinds me with its truth. I told the truth, despite every instinct telling me I shouldn't. Couldn't. I was so deep in despair, I didn't see anything else. Lies were so utterly worthless; I knew that, whether or not I knew anything.
Cromwell came to me as a savior. He came to me in pain and sorrow, a victim of the American South and its Puritanical worldview. He came to me as a soulmate, as a light in August, as William Faulkner and Walker Percy. I shared hours and hours of expensive phone-time with this young man, David Bjorlin, who convinced himself I was the semi-schizo heroine of The Second Coming.
What a letdown. What a disappointment! For him. When I spent my father's borrowed money to meet him in 1996. I was 5 foot 9, and a size 14.
It took me more than a decade to realize that being too short is the equivalent, in males, of being too fat in a woman. All I saw was his all-too-explicable rejection. It never registered for me when David Perry told me that Cromwell told him, "She was bigger than me, what can I say?" All I could register was that I was wrong. Unfit.
I'm posting this, ostensibly, as a cautionary tale. Against seeking soulmates in cyberspace. People are weak. They are shallow, not by inclination, but by design. The design of the ruling class.
None of us deserve to be pawns in class warfare!
It IS possible to elude. To avoid. To circumvent! The paradigm. It is possible to reject those who seek to program you. But you'll never achieve that following the path of Cromwell. Truth is messy. It's complex. It's not an ideology. It's the fucking reality behind your perception, and there are (potentially) as many perceptions as there are perceivers. JUDGE YOUR FELLOW HUMANS AT YOUR PERIL.
