Poles

You get to a place where you feel like everything exists in a bubble. Everything is kind of cordoned off, set up like a soundstage to give the distinct impression of an environment without actually being one at all. You sit there, hearing the music, seeing the lights, but you're not really a part of it. A spectator seat to a closed party. Everything happening as it would if you weren't there; seemingly nothing changing because you are.

Is this why it seems like I prefer text-based enclosures? Is that why I'm drawn to colored rooms, myspaces, and evil incobots? Is it that ..even with the anonymity, there has to be some sort of intellectual connection? No matter how pointless or lame it may end up being, the transactions are paid with words, with forethought, with some part of yourself?

       Is it because even when you don't say anything, you still have to speak?

And yet, even with all that, it's still somehow hollow. It's like you can sense the plasticwrap on the furniture, see the pretense and shadows all around. Even if the excitement is in the way that you have to work to make it seem real, there's never any escaping the fact that it's not.

       Caught between polarities, I drove into the night.

Unfortunatley, now that I'm here, it seems like I've ended up right back where I started from.

The system starts to play some techo-hyped up cover of one of my favorite Depeche Mode songs, and a girl that looks like someone I used to know starts to spin slowly -- one hand on brass, the other on her hip. She's got this look on her face, this way of smiling without being happy, of staring at people without really looking at them.

       There's so much to say,
       ...but it's like there's no one to say it to, you know?


I spend some more time trying to guess who the artist doing the song is, taking down my drink in absent sips. Then I leave a tip for the waitress, walk out the door, and go back home.