#89

Well, one more ellipsis round our mother star, people. Pat yourselves on the back.

Of course, this is a daily thing; every day the one-year anniversary of the last time we made it one, or ten, or two hundred and forty days of hurling nonstop through the aether, at the mercy of poorly-understood forces for a twenty-four hour period. Still. Stayed up till midnight and drank a champagne flute full of lime-flavored sparkling water, in thanks for three hundred and sixty-five days without Ragnarok, Cthulu, or instant and unexplained total oblivion, and may God grant us three hundred and sixty-five more before I have to stay up till midnight to strengthen a ward for another year.

Saw a video this morning of a huge firework landing on a penthouse fireworks party, taken from a nearby, taller building. The internet allows for me the very worst of myself.

*

However, it also lets me look at stuff like this for as long as I need to. For a little while. Every age has its private pleasures and personal agonies, which people past and future could only ever guess at, misremember, or never think about or guess at. The internet has already changed so much, I can't guarantee anything. Someday the internet might be a place where you can't look at a single picture for free, or type whatever comes into your brain into a text field. Someday you might do your typing with your neurons alone. Someday the internet will no longer be a world wide web but you will have to jack into area-governed, locally-dominated  Nodes, "tiny" local hyperserver clusters running megaclouds which guard their own precious sets closely, but allow nomadic traffic in order to harvest fresh data and build up viral immunizations.

Indeed, I think it probable that one day, most of us will be no more than nomadic traffic; wandering dollars, rootless spirits. The very few, genetically-enhanced neo-persons in gilded cages of wealth and permanence so powerful and entrenched they are unto a glittering pantheon of anti-angels, immortal and ultramaterial, the whole wide world an unimportant, barely diverting game depending on their incomprehensible whims.

*

Things to enjoy while we have them: Earth, air, water, and trees. A blue sky we can look at and stand under with a clean wind in our hair. Looking with our eyes into other people's eyes and seeing recognition, feeling recognition. Words spoken gently with a voice. The feel of a friendly animal's fur, feathers, chitin, scales, slime layer, or skin under our hands. Walking in the woods. Public art, freely available art, access to all manner of media with unprecedented ease and in unprecedented volume for an unprecedented many. Laughing at jokes. Eating real food, grown in soil, prepared by hand. Life-giving rain, clouds, and moisture. Biodiversity. The present lack of total war, multiplicity of wars notwithstanding. The present lack of catastrophic plagues. Money in your pocket and a semblance of freedom, if you're real lucky. A chance to get some, if you're not so much.

Finally, there's always worse luck out there.

*

Cool. Let's have an interesting year. Let's see what we can make of it.


--JL

#14

My keyboard started working again! No idea why. I didn't do anything about it except pop the battery out and pop it back in, which did nothing. I would listlessly open the laptop, bring up the on-screen keyboard, poke around, look at some websites, and close it again. I did this a little while ago, and lo, everything was as it was in the before-time, when the elk were plentiful, and a hunter had his pride.

So, good fortune has laid its gentle hand upon my wrack'd brow, and I am thankful that I have lived to see it be so once more. One more day is shrouded in its winding sheet, and one more mote of grace to give thanks for. I've always been lucky in that particular way; effortlessly escaping previous bad luck, life a constant storm with a bumper crop of silver linings. Just enough to keep the twinkle in the eye.


--JL