Wednesday 22 December 2004

Pic of the day: I know I've used this before, but it has better picture quality now. "I'm OK even if I'm alone" - screenshot from the anime Narue no Sekai, now available in the USA under the name "The World of Narue".

Isolated

I had not at all expected how alone I would feel without my DSL. Actually pretty much without Internet access at all, as the dial-up is slow, expensive and unreliable (and only available from my laptop).

All the things I had thought I would do sometime instead of being on the Net ... I only did a very few of them, mostly those that just require staring blankly ahead of me. Luckily this includes watching anime, of which I still have a backlog of unwatched episodes, albeit much less than before my Maxtor harddisk crashed.

***

I wonder if this is what happens to people who retire. For decades they have counted first the years, then the months and finally the days till they could get off the threadmill and begin to live. And then they sit there, staring at the wall (usually with a TV interpositioned between eyes and wall, but basically the same thing). And they wonder, is this my life? (Unless they have plenty of money, in which case they travel all over the world looking for the happiness they think they deserve.)

Except my job is not my life. Internet is. Actually, it isn't so much that I need it. It is mostly the knowing that I cannot get there even if I want. I guess it is kinda like the husbands who don't notice their wife until she leaves. Then suddenly they notice very much.

Of course, I don't actually have a wife and never had. I never even had a girlfriend, not really. It isn't true that all you need is love. All you need is food, clothes, stuff like that. The meaning of life is to not be dead. That which does not kill us, lets us live to fight another day.

That's not to say that I am a stranger to love. I am pretty sure my parents loved me, although they would never have admitted it to my face. But they sure acted like it, caring more about me than about themselves. Luckily they did not need to do this for long. At 15 I left home, and I soon stopped being an expense to them.

So perhaps I did not get as much education as other whites of my IQ. So what? They earn more money than I, but then they spend even more. After they have paid their tribute to their capitalist lords, the difference is quite a bit smaller. Voluntary taxes to the crownless kings of our age. But more about that another day, God willing.

***

Went to work today, but that is hardly a social arena for me. They are good people, for humans, but it still rankles that after my passing I shall be remembered as one of them. It hardly feels that way now. Even though they are close enough to touch (not that I would normally do that), I could not possibly reach their soul, or they mine. There is a gap fastened between them and us. I just don't know which side I am on, the right or the left.