Eyes are not the true gateway to the soul, internet history is.
And why do crickets in America chirp to the same tempo as crickets in Asia?
I divvy my day into hours spent on a specific task or skill. I smoke six times a day and a smoke break usually lasts for ten minuets. So, I smoke cigarettes to total about an hour a day. 365 hours a year. I have been smoking for three years give or take so if it takes 10,000 hours to become a master I need about 24 more years or 8905 more hours before I can wear that honored badge. I can proudly say I practice guitar more than I smoke cigarettes, on average two hours a day, I am not a master yet and I am too lazy to do the math. Reading for at least an hour and a half is paramount, an hour of learning another language, an hour an a half watching a film in the language I wish to learn, and writing. Writing is not a time measured quantity but a number of words a day, 500. All the while I do these tasks, day in and day out, I think inward and project a meticulously curated front. I put on a mask.
Back to the crickets. How long have the crickets of the world chirped the same tune? Same pitch, same rhythm. I notice this because their love-songs are synonymous, at least for me, with a lack of sleep. When I moves to Asia I though I was escaping their drone, but alas, my hope was for not! Maybe they followed me here. Fucking crickets.
There is a popular joke on the internet. A man is about to undergo a life threatening operation. He looks to his best friends who holds his hands at his bedside and says:
“If I die, delete my browser history.”
It is not what we do in the shadows, it is what we do on the internet. There is a very interesting theory, I forgot who came up with it, but it is very cheeky and disturbing. When we run over bicycle commuters in a stolen sports car or steal granny’s purse while playing video games such as Grand Theft Auto we are actually more of ourselves in game than we are in reality. When we are around people we put on a mask. When we play the game we unconsciously unmask ourselves and let the inner beast within us run amok. To me, the internet is another such medium that we consume and navigate maskless. There was an article, or should I say picture, about a political savant running for congress. Using social media and bible quotes he was cultivating massive support among the caste of white Americans that would die defending “Family Values”. He tweeted some screen grab of his internet browser, never a good move. Open for the world to see were tabs open to amateur pornography. The touchy feely stuff and in his defense it could have been much, much, worse. It could have been gay porn, but hey, maybe that day he was just lucky. Anyway, case in point. Just another conservative politician using the flaming torch of "Family Values" to burn down the basic civil rights of groups they don't understand while wearing a huge fucking mask and watching touchy feely amateur porn at the office.
My mask is all the things I do every day and I don’t think I could ever take it off. I don’t play video games and I look to the internet as an informational tool and utility. Truthfully, if I ever went maskless the first thing I would is burn down the forest behind my apartment to kill every last fucking cricket, GTA style. But if I died doing it, please, delete my browser history.