internet & real world location observations

On instagram there is a note feature that functions as a status of sorts. Only about three people I follow use it. A strange artist I used to have a crush on, someone I met through a friend once a decade ago. A girl I went to high school with posted this after the election:

It is a fun if scantily used addition to the current online ether. It has the potential to be cool, a modest callback to social media of yore where people would post honestly online. A social media I miss, like when your friend’s older sister would post a paragraphs-long Facebook status ranting about how her boyfriend cheated on her. Social media now is simultaneously neutered and bizarrely unfiltered.

The unfiltered aspect of the internet is currently in a frenzy after the identification of the alleged united healthcare ceo shooter. He is from Maryland, where I am from, so there are mutuals and friends of friends who went to prom with him or studied abroad with his sister or or or. It feels odd to be made aware of his humanness in a sea of tweets showing his goodreads account, analyzing his apparently puzzling politics, or posting his thirst traps.

In a perfect mix of unfiltered but fun there is a woman I follow who I used to know. She tells fortunes with her snake and I live for her posts, made from an empty and odd feeling mansion in the Ozarks. When I met her in person initially I got a very mid psychic reading from her and her snake. The same night my friend got a reading from her that she found to be impactful. I prefer her as a chaotic virtual oracle.

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There are interesting things happening in real life, too. 

A bit ago I was writing with a friend in a large atrium. Behind us was an animated middle aged man wearing a bowtie telling a story. He was earnestly and abundantly using the term “come at me bro” a phrase I have not heard since 2012 and have certainly not heard uttered by any person over the age of 14. 

Earlier in the day, at a cafe with the same friend, a mother called to her son, 3ish. His name? Wolfgang. There is a current phenomenon where people are beginning to name their children in the same bizarre and pretentious way that A-list celebrities name their children. I support it. We have enough emilys and matts and williams. I myself have had a list of children’s names since I was a child, somewhat unique but not in the vein of Wolfgang.

We talked about Joni Mitchell’s Hejira for album club— an album that alludes to both the white lines of the open road and of her cocaine addiction. The album itself is all over the place, meditative but lacking traditional song structure, like morning pages if they were sung with instrumental. 

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When my brain feels rotten from the internet or real world strangeness I return to things of the earth– bonfires for warmth, the primal feeling, the way the smell lingers on your hair in the days following, a balm for the cold. 

Composting, too, brings joy through seeing my scraps become food for the garden. Via her astrology app Chani Nicholas often communicates about the importance of energetic composting. She speaks of taking unwanted bits and transforming them into something useful. The way I envision it is as if someone is combing through the brain with a rake, taking old experiences and lessons and turning them over. The process itself is uncomfortable but only so it can make way for the new.

Love,

Caitlin