I returned to the good ole USA from Bhutan about a week ago. I’m bemoaning the pressures of civilized modern life in the wake of my ten day experience in such a remote undeveloped place. I mean raw undeveloped life is all well and good when you’re cruising by on a spiffy rented mountain bike with a bunch of other world travelers and a knowledgeable guide but I’m sure it’s a lot different when that’s your reality day in and day out, when farming is your entire method of subsistence. It was pretty fantastic, I’m not gonna lie. I do feel like at least partially, I didn’t earn my way through this trip, like I didn’t quite run the full gamut of what life is like there. But I suppose that’s only to be expected when you spend a measly ten days in a place. Everyone was so friendly and upbeat although I’m sure that’s also partly because I was a foreigner and the treatment would have been different if I didn’t appear so obviously non-indigenous.

The whole thing really kind of flew by actually and I have a little trouble distinguishing any one day from another. I attribute that to the fact that the tour company who hosted me was interested in showing me a good time and wanted my experience to be as seamless as possible. Furthermore, I’m sure that the aim of the tourism industry in Bhutan was to make my experience as pleasant as possible so that I would return with a glowing “review” to all the people who asked me about it.

In some ways, it wasn’t all that different from any place you go these days. In other words, lots of people on cell phones, lots of construction, a subtle pervasive sense of alienation. That’s not entirely accurate. Actually, as a matter of fact, that’s one of the things I felt was most dissimilar to my day to day: that sense of alienation. Most people I ran into and most things I did all felt very connected, resonant almost: resonant with a national identity that knows nothing, or next to nothing, of modern-day alienation.

It’s my opinion that the homogeneous architecture and dress code of the country give its people a certain solidarity, a cohesiveness of consciousness that America, in all its melting pot messiness of buildings, dress, cultures, and what have you, just doesn’t have. That’s not to say that this lack of consciousness cohesion is a bad thing, its just that its so different. What is it like? What’s a good analogy?? hmmmmm Perhaps its like the family unit which is so dependent on some degree of homogeneity in thought, dress, and purpose to survive. That doesn’t seem quite right. Say you’ve spent a long time learning an operating system of some kind. Everywhere you go in the system, if you know it well, you have at least a vague idea of what’s going on. If you’re using an application, editing a document, writing a program, watching a video, playing a game, you always have the menu bar or task bar at the bottom or top of the screen to remind you that you’re in… I don’t know Windows, or Mac OS X, or Unix, or whatever. Essentially, what I’m saying is the similarity of dress and uniformity of the architecture, to my mind, makes it harder to get lost in Bhutan, physically and, more importantly, spiritually. Especially spiritually.

Bhutan, as you may or may not know, is an entirely Bhuddist country. I assume that doesn’t mean that other religions are off limits or banned or whatever but it does mean that there are underlying common assumptions about “what your soul looks like” for lack of a better phrase.

I’m reaching a little bit here but what I’m saying is I guess it’s just sort of harder to go off the deep end in any way in Bhutan, maybe not impossible, just much harder. And by “go off the deep end,” yes, I do mean running amok in a shopping mall with an AK-47. But I also mean that it’s harder to feel that sense of spiritual isolation and depravity and abysmal loneliness that it is so pervasive in enormous modern cities. If isolation and depravity is your thing though, I’m not knocking it, just saying a sense of spiritual fellowship exists elsewhere in the world and its kinda neat.

I took this in a place called Phobjika or Gangtey Valley. It’s an amazing place. It’s extremely rural, full of farms and mud and cows but it’s unbelievably peaceful and it feels kinda like the land before time or something, it’s just so devoid of any kind modern sensibility. Also very pollution free. 🙂

Oh, by the way. I found this symbol on a few doors to monasteries which I was very “excited” about. It’s called an ouroboros though an ordinary ouroboros only has one head I think. I like this symbol because it has symbolism on its own but is also found in my favorite adventure game series: Broken Sword. If you like adventure games, this one is not to be missed. I’ve played a lot of them, and this series is one of the best as far as I’m concerned. I only wish they made some more of the sequels for mac OS X.

More to come on my travels in Bhutan but for now I just wanna commend Grasshopper Adventures for, by and large, a really good time. The whole thing was kinda pricey truth be told but I’m really glad I went. It was fun. Not as fun as it could have been I think if I hadn’t have had to go through customs a million times and made to feel like terrorist everytime I walk through metal detector. Whatever. Oh just one more thing I’ve gotta get off my chest: the whole taking off your shoes thing? One guy hides bombs in his shoes and the whole world has to take off their shoes for the rest of eternity? Who, honestly, is going to try that twice? It’s like hey, this tree got hit by lightning once, let’s put up a whole house made of lightning rods around it so that doesn’t happen again. Sheesh.

Wait, I’m not done. Let me fill you in on the background of the trip before I go any further. Originally, I came up with the idea for this trip when an email from my alma mater popped into my inbox one day. I never pay these things much attention but for some reason, I decided to read the whole thing all the way through, or at least scroll all the way through it. And what do you know? At the bottom, I found this advertisement which said the following: “Bhutan: an intimate journey through the last Himalayan Kingdom.” The trip was advertised for alumni and I just knew I wanted to go to this place. I just knew it. Like when you know something really deep down that you want. I’ve felt this kind of urge a few times in my life. Once was actually when I was applying to colleges out of high school, one other time (I forget what it was, I think it had somethig to do with sports) and then this. Anyway, I proposed the idea to my sister and she told me it would be composed entirely of “empty-nesters” as she put it, people in their 60’s and 70’s whose kids have left for college or just life. So she talked me out of it and I decided to go with this group called Grasshopper Adventures which ended up being a pretty good idea (plus it was cheaper than my Alma Mater’s trip). The main difference was that my College’s trip was on foot and the Grasshopper trip was by bike mostly. I ended up enjoying the bike trip a lot, more I think than I would have enjoyed just walking around. I trained, I thought about it a lot, and I prepared myself mentally. When the trip rolled around, I was ready.

That’s it for now, I’m outta steam. Catch ya later.

I’m planning to take a trip this fall to Bhutan, a small, mysterious country in the Himalayas. I’m nervous about it. But I’m also really looking forward to it. I haven’t been outside the boundaries of the United States for about 9 years. I am aware that some people have never been outside the United States in their entire lifetimes and would go if they could so I feel very fortunate to have an opportunity like this.

About 10 years ago, I set off from the good ole’ USA on a trip to Japan. I had just finished college and was really looking forward to earning money and seeing a little bit of the world in the process. I went with the intention of teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) and spending a year in Japan, a country which had always fascinated me. Things did not go smoothly upon my arrival however. I had some clashes with the management of a corporation I was working for and the other people teaching ESL in my immediate vicinity, once I got started on my assignment, didn’t like my “style.” To be perfectly honest, I think I was unprepared for the challenges Japan presented as a place to live and a place to work. That was part of it. I also think, somehow, my arrival was simply badly timed. Obama had just become president, the global economy took a dump, and the “goldrush era” of teaching English in Japan (which was pretty big in the 80’s as I understand it) was pretty much over. I’m not blaming anybody for what happened to me in Japan mind you, I’m just saying that I did not go to Japan at the most opportune of times and anyone can tell you, everything is timing. So… Long story short, I lost my job and ended up living in a house for foreigners in some obscure Tokyo neighborhood called Motohasunuma for a few months before I called it quits and went home to regroup.

For me, this was Asia: Part I in my life story. It was exhilarating while it lasted but it didn’t go very well. I met some interesting people, had some good times and I got to see Japan first hand. I didn’t rack up any debt while I was there and I didn’t arouse the ire of the Yakuza or wind up with some international criminal record hanging over my head either. I didn’t exactly make the best impression on my students and co-teachers while teaching English but things certainly could have been worse. All in all, I’d say I did not make a mess. I didn’t succeed exactly but I didn’t make a mess. It was disappointing.

After Japan, I went straight to South Korea. While living in Tokyo in the foreigner house, I applied for several other English teaching jobs and got one in South Korea. They said they needed something called an apostille (which I still don’t really understand what the hell that is) which had to be obtained from my home country in order to go abroad and teach in South Korea. So I went home and got this thing and went back to Asia in a few months. Well, pretty much what happened in Japan, kind of happened all over again in South Korea. I had some personality conflicts with management and with my co-teachers and I didn’t manage to hang on to the job I found while living in Japan. Again, I don’t think it was entirely my fault: I think some of the reasons things went badly in Japan hold true for what happened in South Korea: ie Obama, the world economy, the burst bubble of English teaching. But mostly perhaps I was still just kind of pissed off and unruly and couldn’t keep my head on straight and blew up at my boss/colleague inappropriately. I then found another job teaching English totally by accident and did that for a while until I lost that as well for reasons also unclear to me (my boss said “We cannot have you here.” Don’t know what that meant). I actually got into a fight with some guys from Florida and Canada respectively which I won’t go into depth about here but that was another facet of my Asia experience which wasn’t so hot. Finally, I called it quits in South Korea and went back to the USA again where I’ve been ever since.

Truthfully, I feel as though I never quite came back from Asia at all, I mean not entirely. Like when I took off on that first flight to Japan about 10 years ago, I started on a journey that I haven’t been able to end of my own volition and have been on ever since. What I’m saying is its somehow not like: I went to Japan, came home, went to South Korea, and came home and have been home since then. It’s more like: I went to Japan and then just started traipsing all over the world. It’s not like I didn’t want to go home: I did. I just think I kinda got lost and haven’t been able to find my way back. Physically, geographically, yes, I came back to my home state and started going about the business of life the best I knew how. But spiritually, mentally, emotionally, I’ve been drifting… My body is back in the good Ole’ USA but my soul… I don’t know where that is really.

Getting back to Bhutan… Since coming back home (in body if not in spirit), I have made every effort possible to get my life on track. I’ve been meditating, doing lots and lots of strenuous physical exercise, getting a Master’s degree, attending mental health groups, reading, educating myself on my own time, and staying away from drugs and booze. As a side note: I’ve been celibate for about 9 years believe it or not. I’m puzzled as to why this is. I think its because I blame my lack of success in Japan and Korea, at least partially, on two female teachers who were there the same time I was and made my life somewhat difficult.

I don’t want to get my hopes up but I am pinning quite a few of them onto this trip to Bhutan. To me, this trip represents my third try at independence: from my family, from my country, from my past, from my financial woes, from all sorts of things really. After years of bad experiences, unsuccessful endeavors that lead nowhere, and endless conflicts with other people whom I’ve tried to get close to: this trip is my plan for fixing the loose wire so to speak. Let me say more about that.

I see my personal reality as rather like a machine with lots of mechanisms and wires: all of which, when correctly connected, and functioning as they should, produce an experience of the world which more or less aligns with my expectations of how the world should look, what it should do, where my place in it is, and what can reasonably be expected from other people who live in it. It is my opinion that there is one (maybe several) wire or tube which has been hooked up to the wrong input or the wrong output and is producing some very funny, aberrant images, scenarios, and situations. I think of this wire like a live electrical cable which has been severed from its protective tubing and is jerking and writhing with electricity, spraying sparks in every direction and is always dangerously close to some body of water. And in my day to day, I come across it occasionally, sitting there, in its unrestrained state, menacingly challenging me to do something about it. But right now, I can’t touch it. I know it will get the better of me, I know I don’t have the tools or the self-confidence to wrestle it to the ground and cut its power. I also know that there are men working on and around it, some of whom consistently tell me that it has been fixed, that there’s nothing to worry about anymore, that I can get back to my life anytime I want. These men are lying: they haven’t fixed it even though they say they have but sometimes, when I call them on it and tell them I want to take care of it myself, or that they need to fix it for real, they tell me I’m not allowed to touch it, hands off, official personnel only, that’s ridiculous, of course its been fixed, go on about your business sonny. And I look at the wire, sparking furiously next to their grinning faces as they tell me its all better.

It is hard to explain, but for me, Bhutan represents an opportunity to gear up, arm myself with the appropriate tools, read up on any and everything that might tell me how to fix something like this, and then just deal with it.

It’s tough because this trip is quite a ways off at this point in time and the wire is just sitting there everyday I wake up, creating a mess, cramping my style, getting in my way, and frustrating my attempts to proceed normally with work, life, family, friends, fun, and so forth.

This analogy is not ideal as a matter of fact. My problem(s) is not as simple as a severed sparking wire from a telephone pole or something like that but you get the idea… I mean, imagine living in a neighborhood with a downed power cable that simply never gets fixed, that just lies there day after day in the middle of the street creating the occasional shower of sparks, reminding you that life simply will not return to normal (if there is such a thing) no matter how much you want it to.

So to sum up, I traveled a lot when I was younger and after I got out of college and I’ve been eagerly anticipating doing it again, this time more well-prepared.

I feel like writing a movie review so here goes. Last night, when my day had ended, I watched “Edge of Tomorrow” by way of my DVD.com subscription service. I love this service and Netflix, the online streaming movie service, simply does not compare as far I’m concerned. You can’t get obscure movies and the process of selecting a movie, renting, having it for a short period of time, and then giving it back is entirely absent from the Netflix experience which is one of the things I like best about absorbing new material (or simply things I haven’t seen before). Anyway, the movie.

To be honest, I’ve seen better alien flicks. But that’s not what made it a good movie, the genre I mean. This film had traces of movies from across the gamut of films gone by: Aliens, Independence Day, Groundhog Day, The Matrix, Vanilla Sky, to name a few. It was a good movie for several reasons.

1) It didn’t put the star on a pedestal. Tom cruise’s character basically had to surrender any claim to privilege or entitlement right from the get-go and his growing humility throughout the movie is very palpable. Very similar to Groundhog Day in that initially, before their (Bill Murray and Tom Cruise) time loops get going, they are egomaniacs and feel superior to everyone around them but as the film progresses, they shed this sense of superiority and are all the more likable for it.

2) In a way that is difficult to explain, it seems to me that there was somehow a very well-defined and useful sense of space and distance between the filmmakers and the people being filmed. I think that nowadays it is not uncommon for the filmmakers and the people being filmed to get mixed up with each other and for the world of the filmmaker to overrun the world of the people on camera or vice versa. This film to me seemed to have a good sense of balance between the filmers and the filmees. I surmise that this is Doug Liman’s doing. I’ve seen a few of his previous films and, in particular, the movie “Go” also has this nice sense of balance between filmmaker and subject.

3) Say what you want about Tom Cruise but I think he has demonstrated remarkable staying power in a world that sees people come and go like nobody’s business. The man knows how to be on camera and he knows his job. I admit, I still find him compelling after all this time. He doesn’t seem to be clinging to his laurels or trying to pass himself off as a hip old-timer from the 80’s in these 20teens. Tom Cruise really is an OG movie star if you ask me and watching his movies, it’s not hard to tell why he’s still popular. He really puts himself into his performances and it shows.

4) To call this film unsentimental would be a huge understatement. The way it deals with killing the star over and over and over again is a testament to how not-squeamish (for lack of a better word) the filmmakers were about making this movie. Speaking personally, I thought the scene where he rolls under the Army Truck and gets literally run over was pretty disgusting despite the fact that the camera doesn’t show any blood or guts. I suppose one is supposed to take William Cage’s repeated deaths with a grain of salt but I found them a little disturbing. Nevertheless, the willingness, on the part of the filmmakers, to repeatedly depict the star’s death is a courageous kind of moviemaking in my opinion.

5) The pacing. This is the best part of the movie if you ask me. I never found myself yawning or wondering when it was going be over. It did not get caught up in boring dialogue, stupid plot points, or anything else that might have slowed it down. If anything, it moved too fast. But give me a movie that moves too fast over a movie that moves too slowly any day. This movie really moved right along. I could’ve seen it going in another direction fairly easily: like getting into Major William Cage’s head a little bit, maybe have him bemoaning his state of affairs, breaking down one of those interminable and endless days and doing a Johnny Mnemonic: “I want ROOOOOM SERVICE!!!” But it didn’t. You don’t see Tom Cruise freaking out and being bitchy or angry or self-involved, you just see his relentless pursuit of conquest. And he does conquer eventually and his final victory over the alien scum really is very satisfying. Especially when you see that big alien blob inhale the Major’s grenades.

6) The action. Some of the action sequences in this movie were very well done. They weren’t superb like some action movies (the first that comes to my mind is Face-off) but they were good. A Sci-Fi action movie must have good action to be a good movie and some of the scenes really were terrific. They were sort of few and far between actually, those intensely satisfying action sequences but it’s a tough toss-up between too much action (which makes a movie seem low-brow) and not enough (which makes a movie [or can make a movie] seem cerebral). I think a particularly good scene was in the farmhouse when the helicopter takes off and the Major gets driven through a brick wall on top of a car. That one sticks out in my mind. I also think this is Doug Liman’s doing, he did “The Bourne Identity” which was a truly stellar action flick and he knows action movies.

7) Last but not least: Emily Blunt. She really impressed me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her on screen before this movie. She had a very reserved, tough quality but not overly aggressive or butch by any means. In fact, if this movie had any failings, I would say that it did not put enough focus on her. In my opinion, she was right on par with Ellen Ripley from Alien in being a bossy, sexy, action Sci-Fi space babe. LOL. But seriously, I think she was very good in this role (if a little one-dimensional) and her presence really cemented its being a hit for Tom Cruise. I think without her, the movie wouldn’t have flown.

So “Edge of Tomorrow” stands out among other movies of its day to me because it has something that others don’t, a certain cohesive gel that so many (almost all) movies that have come out in the 20teens just don’t have for some reason. New movies are all basically like old movies more or less: they have some cool special effects, star studded casts, interesting clever dialogue, and million dollar budgets but to me, they all seem like they’re missing something key (like peak 37 in Medicine Man) that causes them to just fall flat when you really come right down to it. In my opinion, this movie had that thing (at least a little bit of it) that all the movies coming out these days don’t have. Go check it out. 🙂

On May 10th, 18 days ago, I had my first ever surgical procedure. 16 years ago, I was a typical college student: I took a good amount of drugs, I drank semi-regularly, I socialized a lot, and I loved everything about college. Once, while riding my bike near my dorm, having just tightened the brakes, I applied a tad too much pressure and went catapulting over the handle bars trying to stop. I landed hard on my right big toe and it broke. I was seeing someone (very casually) at the time and I called her to ask if she would accompany me to the hospital. She agreed. I went, they fixed me right up with a splint and some crutches and told me not to put too much weight on it. Then I went back to my dorm and slept with my little friend. Well, long story short, I did not exactly heed my doctor’s advice and ripped the splint off as soon as the pain went away and ended up causing the damaged bone of my right big toe to heal imperfectly leaving me with a deformity. It wasn’t exactly debilitating, I could still walk ok, it just looked odd. Essentially, I gave it no further thought for the next 16 years. Then, all of a sudden, I bought a new pair of tennis shoes for the purpose of getting back out on the courts to play a little in a league I joined (just for kicks) and my toe started hurting. It rubbed noticeably against the inside of that new shoe and I began thinking about possibly getting it fixed.

When I thought about having surgery, a light went on in my brain and I immediately started comparing the possibility of my having surgery with Frances McDormand’s character’s situation in “Burn After Reading.” In case you haven’t seen it, Frances McDormand works at a gym in Washington DC called Hard Bodies and she wants to have liposuction but can’t afford it. She finds a classified government document and attempts to use it as leverage in extorting money from the government by threatening to give it to the Russian embassy in order to pay for her operation. Now, granted, my situation is nothing like this one really but I do work for the government as a federal employee and I did want to have an operation that I didn’t have the money for. Well, fortunately for me, my insurance seems to have covered it judging from the fact that I haven’t received a bill yet. Fingers crossed. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I was actually somewhat surprised at how smoothly the process of having an idea, investigating it, and then implementing it went. I expected to run into a lot more difficulty than I did. Basically, I called my PCP, asked about getting an x-ray, was informed about a walk-in clinic where I could do that, went there, got the x-ray, made an appointment with a specialist, who referred me another specialist, and that person agreed to take me right in to surgery in a few days.

Well, I had the surgery almost 3 weeks ago today and I’ve been staying with my parents since then. They have been doing my grocery shopping for me and preparing my meals. I was not exactly comfortable with this arrangement because I tend to like doing everything for myself as much as I can but I’ve just had to adapt seeing as how I can’t drive if I want my foot to heal.

The past few weeks have been a strange sort of experience. I haven’t been able to drive anywhere or even leave the house of my own volition. Trapped in the same space as my parents for weeks on end. This sort of thing wasn’t so bad when I was younger or even when I had things to occupy myself with like steady work or friends or school or whatever but I haven’t had that this time around. It has been a little like time travel. I spent a lot of time growing up in this house and I don’t come here much anymore except on certain occasions. I mean, I still visit it but I don’t spend any substantial amount of time here. Having spent almost 3 weeks in this house has been, again, strange. It has made me a little nostalgic for my teens when I lived here full time. Not much but a little.

It has given me some perspective on city life in general that I missed when I used to live here because back then, city life was alien to me. It makes city life seem frazzled and hectic in ways I didn’t even perceive before I got this long break of sorts in which to just do nothing.

The cast is coming off tomorrow supposedly and then I’ll be free to go to back to my lonely, frazzled urban life and get back to being ignored and hung up on by every Tom, Dick, and Harry I encounter in the course of my job. I’m not excited. I’m glad the cast is coming off though. My mother called it being in foot jail. She has a lot of funny little phrases like that in her repertoire.

The surgical site seems to be healing up ok. I just recently had another appointment with my doctor during which she removed the post-operative shoe (as they called it) and gave me the go ahead to drive a car.

Going through the pre-surgery procedures at the hospital was not a pleasant experience. I had to wear a hospital Johnny (you know those things that tie in the back and show your ass if your not wearing anything underneath it?) and sit in some chair on an IV for an hour or two before they took me into the operating room. It was very unnerving. For some reason, the hospital gave me the distinct impression of being understaffed, almost abandoned in a way. It possessed a quality I can’t quite describe, like a door swinging open and shut on a single hinge.

Still the surgery seems to have come off without a hitch. Time will tell though if the surgery really did come out ok as my foot takes its time healing up and becoming flexible again.

So it’s technically fixed now, though I won’t know with absolute certainty for another few weeks. Basically, it seems as though I was able to fix (at least partially) a mistake a made 16 years ago with not a lot of hassle. And its something that may have been impacting my quality of life these last 16 years without my knowledge. Here’s to modern medicine, may it always be affordable and efficient.

When you are surfing the web, what do you think to yourself when you click on a link that says “here”? Something? Nothing? Chances are, if you are like most people, your brain sends a nerve impulse down your muscle fibers to your index finger and that finger depresses your mouse button and… that’s it. Some arcane, unintelligible system of 1’s and 0’s and electricity and wires and cables and god knows what else changes the appearance of your computer screen and you.. what? You arrive at “here” wherever the hell that is.

To tell you the truth, I’m not quite sure why I find this so fascinating but I really do. I think of it kind of like the word “here” in the English language was sort of instantly upgraded when the world wide web came into existence. All of a sudden, millions and millions of webpages all over the world displayed these little boxes and phrases saying “Click here” or “do it here” or “go here” or “email me here” or something similar. But the web is forgiving in many ways with its convenient little “back” button. So, if you “go here” and then you change your mind or you realize you don’t want to “go here,” you just click the back button and you’re not “here” anymore. Magic. Right?

You get magically whisked this and that way until you have no clue where the hell you are anymore. Now, when this sort of thing first came out, I’m sure people didn’t really take it too seriously or they didn’t think that when they “clicked here,” they would be doing anything of great significance.

Now I might be going out on a limb here but I’m tempted to say that all this “here” business on the world wide web has interfered with “here” in the real world. Once we became accustomed to this “going here” and “clicking here” and the effortlessness of doing so, our sense of place in the physical plane of existence became shrunken and diminished with disuse.

I mean, imagine how many signs back in the day in America read stuff like “Eat here,” “Shop here,” “Park here,” etc. There are many signs all over the place that still say stuff like that. Somehow, the internet managed to undercut all those old signs with “here” in them. It managed to push them to the margins of our consciousness when once they occupied the forefront and thus to propel some of the places which they represented into disrepair. To my mind, this accounts, at least partially, for the financial crisis of 2008. The shops and stores and places of business with their “heres” in the real world were overtaken by online “heres” and the world’s only known business model up till that point in time (brick and mortar businesses where goods and services are rendered for payments made) crashed.

But I actually feel like I’m getting off topic a little bit. The purpose of this post is to identify a strange phenomenon unique to internet travel and the word “here.” I seek to ask the question, what has this process (the identifying a word in question [here], using a pointer [or finger] to select it, click on it, and be transported in some way) has done to our understanding of and the reality of the word “here.” In other words, Where is “here?” What is “here?” Is there in fact, something unusual about this particular word in the English language that makes it uniquely suited to use in the world wide web? When we see the word “here” on street signs and in roadways and other things like that in the world around us, do we react to it differently now that it is so often used as a linking word in the web?

Essentially, what I am most interested in is the actual act of being “transported” if you will using a link on the world wide web that says, “Click here.” Basically, I think this sort of transportation is impossible to detect using any of the physical or mental senses. If you are being taken somewhere in a car, on a plane, a boat, a vehicle of some kind, you feel the motion underneath you, you know you are moving, going somewhere, you can usually tell (although it is easiest when the initial shift occurs, when the vehicle you happen to be in first begins to move, after that first moment, it becomes more difficult). When the web “does its thing” and takes you to some new page, new website, there is utterly no way of “sensing” that you are being transported somewhere. Which further begs the question: ARE YOU actually going somewhere? Are you “here?” Are you going “here?” Or is this “here” absolutely nowhere? And every new here we see online is just another nowhere that actually doesn’t really exist?

Logically, it seems to me that to go from point A to point B, there must be some way of discerning that displacement is occurring: that you are leaving A and traveling to B. So the web must be like this musn’t it? When you “Click here,” you must be leaving some different “here” for the “here” you are clicking on and if that is so, there must be some way of “sensing” that you are departing the current “here” and going to the new “here” in the link saying “click here.” Some way. Perhaps reserved only for a select few who know how.

But it stands to reason that sensing this kind of movement from online “here” to “here,” should be intuitive and not esoteric. After all, any Joe Blow can tell when a car is moving or standing still, when a plane is flying or on the ground, when a boat is afloat upon the sea or at rest. There are always telltale signs: the sound of an engine, the motion of the sea, the increased pressure in your ears on an airplane, etc. So is there some sort of similar telltale sign for knowing when you are moving from website to website? From place to place online? From “here” to “here”? From “here” to “there?”

Of course, there is always the chance that “here” in the online sense simply can’t be compared to “here” in the physical universe. And that there is no parallel for using our senses to discern when we are at rest or in motion in the real world versus hopping from online address to online address.

Winding down, online travel strikes me as inherently different from travel in the real world. Essentially, when you go from place to place on the web, the only way you can tell that anything has changed is with your eyes and ears. You can’t touch, smell, or taste anything in the world wide web. When you go from place to place in the real world, you can see, hear, touch, smell, and taste that things are different (in theory). The food is different in the South than it is in the North (taste). The weather is hotter near the equator than at the poles (touch). Smell seems like sort of useless sense to me actually these days, I mean who the hell knows how to distinguish anything by its smell other than perfumes and colognes and beauty products and so forth. My point is, the web is limited to sight and sound at this point in time so that’s all you can use to determine where you are in the world wide web and that’s inherently limiting. I mean, you could dig around in somebody’s code and look for email addresses or names or bits of telltale code or something but theoretically, if you wanted to figure out where you were in the physical universe, there would be many more things at your disposal to do so than if you were trying to figure out what website you were on when you didn’t know already.

So “here” in the world wide web is composed only of sights and sounds. “Here” in the physical universe is composed of sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and touches (sensations). I look forward to a time when “click here” will take me to a “place” I can not only hear and see but smell, taste, and touch. Wouldn’t that be something? 😉

Finally, I think use of the internet has taught many of us to view webpages we are accessing and information technology we are using as disconnected from any kind of tangible reality. In other words, this may perhaps have taught many of us to see ourselves, our worlds, our family, our friends, as similarly disconnected from any kind of tangible reality. But this simply is not the case. Everything we access online and everywhere we “go” on the web has some root in reality, if only very minor. We would be wise to respect these fragile roots and ties to the real world while we make our merry way through the world wide web.