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GeneralRe: Sewer... Pin
Craig Robbins5-Jul-22 3:31
Craig Robbins5-Jul-22 3:31 
GeneralRe: Sewer... Pin
TNCaver5-Jul-22 3:34
TNCaver5-Jul-22 3:34 
GeneralRe: Sewer... Pin
OriginalGriff5-Jul-22 5:13
mveOriginalGriff5-Jul-22 5:13 
GeneralRe: Sewer... Pin
Craig Robbins5-Jul-22 5:17
Craig Robbins5-Jul-22 5:17 
GeneralRe: Sewer... Pin
PIEBALDconsult5-Jul-22 5:45
mvePIEBALDconsult5-Jul-22 5:45 
GeneralRe: Sewer... Pin
Jacquers5-Jul-22 5:48
Jacquers5-Jul-22 5:48 
GeneralRe: Sewer... Pin
raddevus5-Jul-22 7:48
mvaraddevus5-Jul-22 7:48 
Generalfrom the ghost of bill Pin
BillWoodruff5-Jul-22 0:53
professionalBillWoodruff5-Jul-22 0:53 
published under the CPOPL (CodeProject Open Poetic License)

bill may have run out of eyeball-time for CP, but, evidently, his ghost has not ...

~ All in My Fingertips, Virtual © 2022

I know that I have all of the world's knowledge at my fingertips.

I do not even need to have token anchors at hand for the boat of virtual mind— ideas, hunches, definitions, references, life-preservers, dictionaries or thesauruses.

I just imagine something in the most abstract way possible— perhaps, like the way a child finger-paints— and, while he mushes one spreading fringe of color into another, sees shapes, memories, faces, ebb and flow— which are as real to a mind still on-the-verge-of-divorce-from-wonder— as anything else is— real.

All in my fingertips, virtual.

I am aware I once had a Name, and I know that all I have to do to recall that Name is to simply imagine the colors in its ghost in my fingers. I know that Name had a History associated with it, and that a biological entity once slept, waked, dreamed, moved about, acting as if that Name was a unique object, as if the History connected to the Name possessed some degree of reality, and that the History was as firmly welded to the Name as Time is (or was) wed to that chunk-of-biology's heartbeat, or breathing.

That the History follows-like-a-shadow one-with-the-Name was actually a fiction with no real consistency, constructed haphazardly every time it was remembered by an architect of survival instincts, a contractor who was on drugs most of the time, and a construction crew of the half-blind and half-crazed—

That no longer concerns me.

I could read (should I say re-construct ?) any version of that History I wanted to— if I wanted— to.

But, why would I want to ? Why interrupt the infinite flow of all Names, and all Histories, to piddle around with such puny dramaturgy ?

Why return to the barren-desert-of-Me when I can be in a mountain-top cave creating the words that will give birth to a religion in whose name millions will be slaughtered and enslaved ?

Why hang-out in a numbing simplicity when I can directly experience every subtlety of the universe; why want a kiss when I can experience not only all kisses but every circumstance that surrounded each kiss in a veil of sensual mystery ?

I heard what you just thought ! Yes, I am imagining you as my fingertips draw you as another set of fingers painting my fingers painting your fingers: so I do know everything about you moment-to-moment— including the fact you and I exist only in so far as we are drawing each other.

You thought: "What about other people: about their real lives; their suffering; their joys; what about your connection to other people ?"

Now: look what you just made me do !

Look how all the colors have run together now, and turned into a kind of dark army-khaki-green sludge the color of a bacterial mat floating in a stagnant lightless swamp.

The shapes, the faces, the memories, the dreams, the subtle gradients of iridescent color, the rainbows, the unbearably-radiant-white, the black-as-bottomless-deep—

All: nothing.

My fingers— stiff— is this the rictus of the real, the price paid after virtual's magic does its disappearing act ?

You are no longer here.

I am here in singular moments that have no echoes: wondering at how infinite a uniqueness the word "alone"— is.

~
«The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled» Plutarch

GeneralRe: from the ghost of bill Pin
Greg Utas5-Jul-22 5:53
professionalGreg Utas5-Jul-22 5:53 
GeneralRe: from the ghost of bill Pin
BillWoodruff5-Jul-22 22:58
professionalBillWoodruff5-Jul-22 22:58 
GeneralRe: from the ghost of bill Pin
Greg Utas6-Jul-22 0:45
professionalGreg Utas6-Jul-22 0:45 
Generalservers Pin
Calin Negru4-Jul-22 22:41
Calin Negru4-Jul-22 22:41 
GeneralRe: servers Pin
Richard Deeming4-Jul-22 22:40
mveRichard Deeming4-Jul-22 22:40 
GeneralRe: servers Pin
Calin Negru5-Jul-22 1:54
Calin Negru5-Jul-22 1:54 
GeneralRe: servers Pin
Daniel Pfeffer5-Jul-22 0:15
professionalDaniel Pfeffer5-Jul-22 0:15 
GeneralRe: servers Pin
honey the codewitch5-Jul-22 1:53
mvahoney the codewitch5-Jul-22 1:53 
GeneralRe: servers Pin
Calin Negru5-Jul-22 3:01
Calin Negru5-Jul-22 3:01 
JokeRe: servers Pin
Daniel Pfeffer5-Jul-22 7:34
professionalDaniel Pfeffer5-Jul-22 7:34 
GeneralRe: servers Pin
honey the codewitch5-Jul-22 7:37
mvahoney the codewitch5-Jul-22 7:37 
JokeRe: servers Pin
Daniel Pfeffer5-Jul-22 8:35
professionalDaniel Pfeffer5-Jul-22 8:35 
GeneralRe: servers Pin
honey the codewitch5-Jul-22 8:36
mvahoney the codewitch5-Jul-22 8:36 
GeneralRe: servers Pin
Calin Negru5-Jul-22 10:30
Calin Negru5-Jul-22 10:30 
GeneralRe: servers Pin
Calin Negru5-Jul-22 10:30
Calin Negru5-Jul-22 10:30 
GeneralRe: servers Pin
Maximilien5-Jul-22 3:32
Maximilien5-Jul-22 3:32 
GeneralCCC 05-07-2022 Pin
pkfox4-Jul-22 21:56
professionalpkfox4-Jul-22 21:56 

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