The End of Irony pt 2

2/27/07: NEW VERSION. I ditched the orange plant. I added part 6, the conclusion, a major tone change, I want to know how it works. I want to know if it is clear that the subject has changed each paragraph, even when the pronoun remains the same. If you have a second, read the first part, too, to get a sense of the overall piece and let me know if you see any cohesion or arc here. I'm really insecure about using this as a conclusion, and I think I might very well change it completely. Also, you are in it, how's that? I know you're busy, though.

[I did a bit more writing on the piece below. I don't care whether you read the previous bit first or not. The last few paragraphs are too disconnected from each other; hopefully more writing will bring them together. I'll update this post with new versions as they are created. I'm in the middle of my process, just when I most crave your thoughts.]

4.

"in their Deserts of moss¹, quiet,
They² prepare precious panels³
Where the city4
Will paint false skies."
--Rimbaud, Une Saison en Enfer

4The becoming collective that I must do: the becoming one that we must do, the becoming god that our holy writs prevent, the becoming citizen that allows us to live outside a prison, the process makes us lust after pixels, this is why we bare our souls and breasts to hyperspace; in the end, if we cannot be human inside our skin, then we will be outside, in the empty data points flung into rivers of light, the internet, into which I spill'd my seed once and again, so that I may become you, all of you. Will this collective always remain the elite, always dreaming delusions of universality? Our greedy fingers have reached past the mirror, seeking flesh to caress or contests to win, and my hand is stuck, behind the mirror.

² “They” were the carpenters, the cablerunners, streetpavers, I.T. nerds. The age of the union has given way to the collective dream, the great promise of syndicalism behind us. When all pleasure lies at the end of my fingertips, why do I still need to eat? ³Raw information needs a material to be projected upon, that material is still manufactured, somewhere. Taiwan, I presume.

¹It is a desert, the real, inhabited by screens, where each stares across their own projected world, thinking only of the self. Networks formed at a glance, friendships declared so loosely, and flesh will never be violated. No blood; semen the only liquid spilled to stain this earthly portal, and the screen wipes itself with the delete key.

5.
The dark glance of paranoia has fallen across my computer screen. I have always used my real name on the internet, because I like my name. But can we show our name to the demons of society, in an age when the most vulnerable asset is your identity? The only answer to this, is do not try to stem the tide of idenitity theft (no computercriminal is going to enjoy prison), but rather to renounce our identities. At first, an easy step, a username change. Soon, we will have no choice, because our names have melded with eachother in hyperspace; soon, we will each assume many virtual names; any may usurp the original. The death of the subject is upon us! Break the mirrors that formed us! Perhaps it will be a painful step for the mallgoers to feel the death of their ego, and prophets and profits will be made in the process. Or perhaps it will be easy. I was always partial to revolution, so I imagine it.

Of all that I have held in my palms, lithe humanity is the most fleeting. Or, at least, so it ought to be. Skin unknown to foreign touch, colonized instantly, brought into unceasing labor for a glance off dark flesh. At once, my skin knows its duty, and its allegiance lies not with me; I, who gave it life, nurtured it through its sensitive years with hot water and dermatological punishment, its duty lies not with me. It was not made for itself, it was made to plug itself into a vast network of flesh, for reasons far beyond simple reproduction.

It is only an envelope to contain a reservoir of fluid, entrails. Which at the slightest puncture will reveal itself, all over the floor. Which at the slightest pleasure, will manufacture itself all over the sheets. I am wet, soaked through and inbetween. But electrons must stay dry to remain in my control; lightning must be dried to be used.

6.
The first email he had ever sent, he sent to me, to ask for a friend on the outside. Just someone to have a beer with. He left prison after thirty years, stuck in Pink Floyd days. He left prison with a manuscript; five hundred pages, completely unpublishable-I never had the heart to tell him that. The vastness must have swallowed him; I’ve heard nothing.

Bengal’s state government is selling peasant land to multinational corporations, under the guise of a “special economic zone.” They are one of the last governments to do so; they have been communist for thirty years, and have valued peasant rights above all else. The peasants have no choice but to reassert themselves, this time as guerrillas.

She still hallucinates every day, despicably. They are not of her. But the medication helps her not care. She will continue to create.

I cannot suppress my rage against myself. I cannot fill my void. I spend hours looking online for the direction, which fuels only my paranoia. I long for my feet underneath my body, carrying me on.

While we wage a global war against opiates, burning entire crops, hospitals are running out of morphine.

She spends every minute trying to integrate herself into an economy that can never understand her. She leaves a void in my bed, she slowly fades into abstraction.

We must give aid to Ethiopia; Africa’s second most populous and poor country cannot feed itself. But the government routinely imprisons and tortures dissenters, mostly teachers. How can we support this, with our dollars? But when Islamists in Somolia threaten the entire continent with the very extremism our America is pitted against, who else can we rely on to suppress them?

He used to be a painter, but rehab cured him of that. Colorful messes that covered the earth. Now he is back to survival, because life is too long to be lived in simple moments of ecstasy punctuated with self-loathing. His absence is still palpable, two years later.