Islands in the stream of consciousness

One of the mixed blessings of social networks such as Facebook is the way it includes you in the random stream of consciousness of persons you have not really spent time with for years, maybe for the better part of a decade. It can be a more satisfying form of conversation than the old fashioned face to face method. Be honest. How many times have you rehearsed a conversation in your mind ad nauseum, only to have all your careful strategies dismantling with the other person's first response, and you leave, after half an hour, feeling vaguely cheated, feeling your mind is still unspoken. Well, no more. Most of us have fiercely embraced the practice of thought broadcasting, probably with a secret so-there-now-they-know warming our hearts.

Earlier this week, a woman whom I've seen only once briefly in the past ten years, asked in her status line: does love have an expiry date? And that got me thinking...

I once read about a British couple who kept a 29-year old meat pie in the back of their freezer... because they bought it from the place they met just before it closed down... obviously the meat pie had long ago ceased becoming useful as food, but it had transcended into something completely different for them. Just like society institutionalized the messy madness of spirituality and mysticism and called it religion, it claimed the insane chaos of love and called it marriage...

In our ever-changing universe, everything changes our world and by extention, us, because we are ourselves the change flowing through our universe.

Audiences

A few weeks ago, I ran into someone I used to know from my days of playing in an all-girl metal band, and after we exchanged updates on musical activity or non-activity, gossiped a little about who made it, who didn't and why, I asked how he defines success. His answer: 'Success is an audience." Do I agree? Well, by that definition, nearly everybody should all be hugely successful, because thanks to social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter, we do all have our audience, whenever we want it. Some of us do not even realize how watched we really are. But, celebrity culture can be the most fickle of beasts. It does not like things to stay static. There has to be movement. Whatever is up there, must come down to keep its entertainment value. And the fallen still attract the ferociously hungry attention of all manner of vultures. So I amend. In my opinion, success is applause. At least I hope it is. And I hope that, whoever you are, if you are reading this, you may know the warmth of a few moments of genuinely heartfelt applause.

(And thank you Sean Mercer, for the thoughts you shared and the thoughts you ignited. It was good to see you again.)