I woke up at three in the morning the other night with a pen still in my hand and my face on my notebook, which read:
I’ve got a penis in my
pants
it’s mine
it’s my penis
in my pants
It makes sense that I fell asleep in the middle of writing that poem. I don’t think I was about to uncover some transcendental clarity. Then again, who knows. Maybe I was on the verge of something groundbreaking. It seems like it would have been awfully far away though considering the start of the poem…
Last night I was thinking about… well a few things. The internet, of course. I think about the internet a lot, particularly conversational dynamics on the internet. Last night, specifically, I was thinking about how it’s easier to be vulnerable in a one-on-one conversation with somebody online. When you meet someone in real life, it generally takes a long time before you have a real conversation with that person about something vulnerable.
Online, however, I sometimes find myself in deep conversations with strangers very quickly. So, naturally I thought to myself: Why? WHY!? JESUS GOD LORD MOTHER OF SWEET PEA SOUP WHY!? Well, I’ll tell you why. Just kidding, I don’t know why. I don’t know anything. What am I? Who am I? Who put this table here? Wait. I think I know something that might be close to why.
I think it basically relates to the same thing I’ve been thinking and talking about all the time, which is how our unconscious probably doesn’t know we are talking to another person when we’re talking online because they aren’t physically there, so we might feel like we’re just talking instead of talking to another person and that makes it easier. I’ve mostly been thinking about the downside of this, but maybe this is an upside? You can make a connection with somebody more quickly because of the level of detachment? That sounds antithetical and that it shouldn’t make sense. Because are you really making a connection or are you just venting your shit onto somebody’s phone space because you don’t have anyone else to talk to?
I dated a girl I met online once. We had perceived chemistry but not actual chemistry. We could talk about anything to each other on our phones but in person, meh. Maybe we didn’t leave ourselves anything to talk about. Maybe she just sucked. Maybe I just suck. Maybe the world is actually a giant potato. Ooh I wrote a poem about that once. Hold on let me find it.
Okay so this poem isn’t about the world being a potato, apparently. It’s about the world revolving around a potato. Important distinction.
Could you imagine if the world
revolved around a potato
a starch so dense
it carried the weight
of all of us
we would have baked dreams
and scalloped thoughts
mashed relationships
a fried wedding
in the heart of France…
Anyways, the point is, talking to people online is weird. Everything about it is different from a normal conversation. I’ve found it to be much easier if I already know the person. If it’s one of my good friends, they know how I speak in person and what my sense of humor is so it’s much easier for them to put a voice to the words. If I don’t know the person, it’s much easier for them to assume I’m being serious when I’m being sarcastic or something like that. It essentially becomes a hot bed for miscommunication until you figure out how to communicate, which takes time.
Okay bye.
You are not in any way unusual or abnormal. Perhaps a bad dancer but that is also normal.
What an interesting piece!! Thanks for sharing this!
And thanks for reading!