3rd February 2004 - "The internet is evil. It’s like the real world on amphetamines. It’s the world of the mind, distilled and fortified, heated and served up straight to your door. Trouble is…the mind is terribly sick, and it’s the sickness that emerges through the net. The Taoists said that too much rich colour spoils the eyes. The trouble that (y)our wise ancestors recognised in the minds functioning in this world is multiplied a hundred times in the internet: rarefied, condensed, and delivered under high pressure.
Looking at one page is a whole day spent in the market place. Following a single link is just too much. And then there’s the mindset.
The internet is the world of the mind, and we approach it armed with the mindset of desire, intention, and attachment to some goal. Only with steadfastness and discrimination can the internet be successfully navigated. That world is too intense to take the equivalent of an aimless stroll along its boulevards. That world has no thoroughfares, only produce and advertisement.
What happens to the hapless one who enters this world with an opened and relaxed mindframe? He simply cannot maintain such a state of mind. One cannot follow a link without intending\desiring to follow. If there is no desire to look and pursue, then there is no real motivation to follow links. If there is no motivation to follow links, then there is only stagnation. One might as well disconnect, go outside and stretch.
The internet is analogous to the underworld of old. And one does not enter the underworld unless there is hope of finding and rescuing Persephone. What fool would enter the darkness and coldness of hell without purpose? Tourists, demons, sophists, lovers of knowledge for its own sake…..philosophers. Dipping their toes in a cold ocean full of strange and sickening creatures.
Enter that net with caution and trepidation. Outfit yourself as though for battle or a perilous task. Tie your headband over your forhead, your symbol of strength emblazoned on your brow. Strap a razor-sharp sword to your belt, and take a belt of sake from a fragile porcelain cup.
Now take a deep breath and go fast…..the air and the ground are poisonous here. Do not leave the path! Do not take photographs! do not buy postcards or souvenirs....get out fast. disconnect yourself from that poison, that slime. perform cleansing rituals with cold water."
8th January 2004 - You know you've come of age when: you go to a New Year's Party and notice how young everyone there is;
Your musical tastes are laughed at but you still defend them;
You see a friend you love like a kid brother and a girl you had a crush on for years start snorting their future up their nose; not in large Al Pacino snowstacks, but pussy, feeble, snail trails, desperate to look experienced as they nervously take their virginal hit;
You've separated yourself from the youth. You realise their lives are increasingly less defined by the trials they overcome but by the excesses they indulge in. Like there's a new sport in town and it's called 'extreme partying';
And the music, the lights, the now-goddamn-ubiquitous projector, the conversations, constantly re-render everything anew in passé hues that only a good alcohol soak can wash down;
You see drinks ordered that would have gotten you beaten up in your day;
But you're not in your day. You're in their night.
And you leave early, because there's things you have to do tomorrow.