Thinking Through London

In Hyde Park, women wearing burqas sip Starbucks, sport designer sunglasses, carry shopping bags, and peruse tabloid magazines while their children play around them. I am proud of myself for noticing this, for not being afraid of them, for not participating in the xenophobia that I know is as prevalent here as it is back in the US. At least I don’t bristle when I hear languages other than English spoken in public, I reassure myself. Whatever fault or failure I may fail guilty about (not working this summer, not even thinking about work, not reading or writing or knowing enough, not doing anything to help the migrants or the refugees or the poor) - I can always come back to that.

That image will be the first line of the writing that I feel compelled to do about this trip, because that is what you do if you are an English teacher who travels to London in the summer: you write poetry or blog posts about it. You notice things, you put them down. Without judgment, without making any sort of point - not yet, at least. That can come later. Which I am thankful for, because right now I don’t know whether I love or hate the idea that western capitalism seems to be prevailing over religious tradition, because I am skeptical of them both.

Churches are beautiful, though, and I am proud that I can appreciate their beauty despite not believing in God. I can walk into any church or mosque or temple and be the very picture of respect, of deference, of piety. Anyone who saw me could mistake me for a devout believer. I keep my irreverence inside my head: my secret. I am good at keeping secrets.

I think about something an old friend once told me: when she was a child and they told her she would go to hell if she didn’t believe in God, her first instinct was to panic about the idea of hell. Mine would have been to insist, even to myself: but I do believe.

I am in London mostly because of Virginia Woolf - because I want to see the places that Mrs. Dalloway would have seen when she went to buy the flowers, because I long to be as self-aware and thoughtful as one of her characters - but also because of J.K. Rowling and Douglas Adams. I am here because, five years ago, one summer evening driving through my hometown of Derry, New Hampshire, seeing the sunset over a field on Island Pond Road, I was struck by the thought: I can’t die without seeing England. I am here because I needed something to do this summer, something to stave off the boredom and purposelessness that inevitably hits when the school year ends, no matter how much I was looking forward to it.

I am also here to prove to myself and to them (a protean group that includes friends past and present, family members, students, co-workers) that I am the type of person who can just decide to do something and then do it - on my own, without consulting a guidebook or the Internet.

It is my first day here. Tuesday, June 26th. Probably somewhere around 8 PM, although I am deliberately not paying too much attention to the time. My phone is off in my pocket.

In another performance of anti-racism, I decide follow a middle-eastern man and what I assume are his three wives (covered in black, except their eyes) to a Lebanese restaurant. (I was overwhelmed by all the options I had for dinner, anyway, as I always am, because everything looks equally appealing.) This is a story I can tell when I get back. It will make me seem cultured, adventurous, brave. It will impress the people who are already a little impressed that I went in the first place. (I am still amazed that it actually happened, that my game has somehow become real.) And hopefully, it will get them to think: I would never do that.

I think of the myth of “no-go zones” and how, if I believed in them, I could interpret the waiter’s coldness towards me as racial, but I choose to think he is just going through the motions of his job.

I order the chicken and lamb shawarma, and hummus and pita bread, and I think it is some of the best food I have ever eaten. I take a picture of it all to supplement the story. I haven’t eaten all day - not since around nine that morning, sitting on the ground outside Stansted airport, functioning on hardly any sleep (I can’t sleep on a plane, can’t sleep sitting up, not even with a pillow it turns out, and especially not when the guy two seats away won’t shut up about jazz, making me think I really need to finish writing that piece about jazz), when I ate some leftover cereal out of its plastic bag, mixed it with some yogurt and a black iced coffee (Americano, they call it here) - right before calling my bank to try and figure out why I was getting an error message at the ATM and then getting in trouble with the authorities for leaving my luggage unattended for just a couple of seconds while I tried to juggle the phone (which was close to dying) and my train ticket and the little bit of British money I had managed to secure so far - sorting that out, catching the train to central London, navigating the Underground, getting myself to the Victoria stop, stopping at Subway for a bottle of water, dragging my luggage (my bag losing a wheel somewhere along the way) through Hyde Park to the Astor Kensington (chosen because it was near the house where Virginia Woolf lived as a child), finding out I foolishly had reserved it for the wrong night, going down into the kitchen to reserve a couple nights at the other hostel I had considered booking, dragging my stuff back across Hyde Park, thinking well, it certainly is summer here - getting checked in, settling into my bottom bunk in that tiny but immaculate room (they would never stay in a hostel, they would never be this open-to-experience and willing to endure inconvenience) - taking a cold shower, then venturing back out, carrying a couple of books (Call Me By Your Name is one of them, the one I am in the middle of), a notebook, and a pen in the SAU7 bag that must have been a teachers’ appreciation week gift.

The past twenty-four hours have been a whirlwind, a roller-coaster ride, spent in alternating states of stress and exuberance. But that’s exactly what I will want it to have been like. I don’t want everything to have been simple and perfect and easy. I want an interesting experience, a rich one, one that I can look back on and say I did all that. I want to have struggled. The struggle is part of it, which is what "they" (whatever that means) don’t understand.

I eat everything on my plate at the restaurant, including what is clearly meant to be a shared portion of hummus, mixing it all together towards the end of the meal. I like the idea of mixing food together lately. It’s a political statement about multiculturalism, maybe, or a way of identifying with my mother over my father (who likes everything kept separate). And it is part of my social identity to always finish what I order, though I don’t attach any real symbolic significance to that.

I walk back to the hostel, sit in the lounge area, try to make conversation with the other people sitting there. I want to meet interesting people, forge connections, learn random facts about different countries that I can take back with me and always preface with “I heard from this German girl who I met in London . . .” I long for the youth hostel experience. But it becomes clear that it isn’t happening, not tonight. Everybody’s tired, on their phones, or doesn’t speak English.

I go to bed but have trouble sleeping. At one point, I wake up, figuring that it must be close to morning and I can probably justify getting up soon. I check my phone - it’s just after midnight. 

The girl sleeping above me is Chinese.

In the morning, they have breakfast in the kitchen for a one-pound "donation." I drink coffee, eat cereal, and make a couple of pieces of toast with jelly. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday mornings are all identical in this regard. I watch the local news. They talk about the heat wave, the fires in northern England, the World Cup. I talk to a guy from Canada and a girl from Australia one morning. I can name four cities in Australia, which impresses her. 

 I ask another girl, who is reading Norwegian Wood by Murakami, if it’s any good. (I always look to see what books people are reading, but I usually never say anything.) She says it is. I tell her I saw it in a bookstore the other day, and that I’ve read Kafka on the Shore. The truth is I liked it but didn’t love it, but Murakami is trendy and connotes intelligence. 

I write random thoughts, ideas, and impressions in my notebook.

I explore the city. I think the phrase “the Oyster is my world” but mostly I walk. When I do take the bus or the train, I tap the Oyster card against the reader quickly, efficiently, almost like I am bored by it, so that no one will think I am anything but a local. Sometimes I say “excuse me” in a British accent. I imagine myself as Clarissa Dalloway or Septimus Smith or Dirk Gently. Or Bernard from The Waves, who traveled to Rome for ten days and wanted everyone to say “Bernard is in Rome for ten days.”

London is my Rome.

I see other tourists taking pictures - posing for Instagram or Facebook, or taking snapshots of all the Important Places without looking at them, like they’re in a scavenger hunt - and I want to criticize them for it, to mock them. So sometimes I refuse to take any pictures. Last year when I went to Niagara Falls I didn’t take any pictures, deliberately, because it seemed like every image could make just as perfect of a picture as any other, and I wanted to make a statement about living in the moment, living aesthetically. Taking pictures provides the illusion that you can preserve the moment. That you can make something permanent out of something fleeting.

But then again, so does writing about it.

And I do take plenty of pictures, because I am nothing if not inconsistent. Life is about compromise, I say to justify it. It’s about living with the ambiguity of never knowing for sure what the right thing to do is. It’s about being part of the culture and a little bit removed from it at the same time. It’s about humility and not being so uptight and self-righteous all the time. So I take a picture of myself in front of Westminster Abbey, which is beautiful, and post it to Facebook so that everyone can see that I am really here. I am wearing a button-down, short-sleeve orange shirt, which is okay because I have not posted a picture wearing that shirt before. Once you post a picture wearing a shirt, you can’t help but see the picture every time you see the shirt. It changes things, irrevocably.

I  go to the Important Places, because they are the Important Places, and it’s just as worthwhile to have a lackluster experience in an Important Place as it is to have an Important Experience in a insignificant place. An existential crisis at a strip mall or a fast-food restaurant. What matters are the particulars, the specifics. Acknowledge the truth of what your experience was really like.

And so:

I walk through Regent’s Park. I see a bridge over a stream that reminds me of something I could have dreamed as a young child. I try to visit Regent’s College but it’s all fenced in, all locked up. I think of how I could have come here to study abroad junior year, but instead decided to stay at home with my dad after the divorce and keep him company, get a job making sandwiches, go with him to bars where middle-aged women danced to cover bands playing 90's music. I imagine the life I could have had for a couple of months, and know I would have been homesick.

On Primrose Hill, I read the line by William Blake that is carved into the stone. I remember him being mentioned in some British Lit class I took (though whether it was high school or college, I can’t remember) because he wrote about Innocence and Experience, and so, I thought at the time, did I. Tiger, tiger, burning bright. That was featured on some TV show, some crime show. The Mentalist, it might have been. I remember I used it to watch on Tuesday nights after getting home from very long days (Tuesdays were inventory nights at Subway, where I counted every item in the store, my responsibility as assistant manager) and pretend I was all the characters at once.

I visit the Harry Potter gift shop in King’s Cross and want to buy absolutely everything (the really childish part of me even wants a wand), but settle for just a postcard and a pen. I send one picture to my mom, one picture to Peter. I think about how I never went to a midnight premiere for any of the books or the movies, even though I wanted to go so badly and would think about it all day and night. But I wouldn’t ask. I would sit around and hope, pray, wish that someone else would bring it up, would tell me they were bringing me. Because if I asked, then the answer could be no. I have a brief conversation with an American guy about my age, whose girlfriend isn’t into Harry Potter, about the wait between Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix. I mention how I rationed the pages of the former when it came out, only let myself read seventy a day (though sometimes I cheated.) He says he devoured the entire thing in one day. 

Both are signs of love.

I eat lunch at an all-you-can-eat pizza-and-salad-buffet at the second floor of Victoria station, and learn that Anthony Kennedy is retiring from the Supreme Court.

I go to Abbey Road even though I don’t really like the Beatles that much, because it’s so iconic. I see two people nearly get hit by cars while posing for pictures on the crosswalk, which is really just a regular crosswalk. Or it was. Or it could be.

I listen to a Taylor Swift album on the bus to the John Keats house in Hampstead. (The street I grew up on was Shelley, and there was one nearby called Keats. The main road you take to get to our little neighborhood was Hampstead Road.) But Camden is bustling, so I get off there and walk the rest of the way. In the Keats house, I read random lines of his poetry, hoping that one of them will stick, so that I will always remember that I read it in his house. I marvel at the fact that he was younger than me when he died. I need to write something, I think for the millionth time. I wish I was the type of person who could go sit outside for a couple of minutes and come back with “Ode to a Nightingale.”

I take a bus to Islington just because it was mentioned in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I see a bar called “The World’s End” and think about the restaurant at the end of the universe, and how I once wrote a song called “Worlds End,” though without the apostrophe, because it was meant to be a short sentence.

I go into what looks to me like a traditional English pub and order fish and chips and drink beer. There’s a World Cup game on, but where I’ve chosen to sit I can’t see the TV, so I read the Evening Standard instead. I later learn that this pub is part of a chain of identical bars all owned by the same company, which is disappointing but unsurprising.

With two other Americans staying at the hostel, I watch the two episodes of Friends where they go to London. I comment that I haven’t heard anyone actually say “bloody.” They have.

At the end of one long day spent exploring the city alone, I think: “This has been the best day of my life and I will always remember that.”

I go into a gift shop outside Buckingham Palace and imagine what Morrissey would think of it. I pick up a book about the succession of Kings and Queens and try to get it straight in my mind. That fact will be my souvenir, my proof that I was here. I can never remember the order of the kings between Victoria and Elizabeth - does it go Edward, George, Edward, or the other way around? And where does Queen Anne fit into it all? I know it doesn’t matter at all, but I want to know, the same way I have memorized the order of American presidents. I use those facts to make up for not knowing anything substantial about most of them. I have bought into the superficial theory of knowledge that I know the education system encourages (spelling bees, Jeopardy, multiple-choice tests whether standardized or not), which most of the time I fight against.

I sit on the steps outside the hostel one morning before breakfast and write in my notebook. A man comes by, sweeping the streets, and I am struck by a sense of my privilege and wealth. I always feel insecure when I see men working - especially construction workers, and especially when it’s hot out - when I am not. I know that the only reason why I’m not one of them is because I was good at answering multiple-choice questions at school, and I know it's not fair.

I go into four separate bookstores in one day and don’t buy anything at any of them.

I go to Picadilly Circus one night and watch a guy play “Despacito” on cello. I imagine that other audience members think that the instrumentation makes it Serious and Good and Important Music. String instruments are a signifier.

I cross the bridge and see a black woman playing bongos and singing. I give her a pound and then ask if I can record her playing because I want to send it to my mom so that she can show Greg. (We had a conversation not long before we left about how he likes bongos.) She seems to say no, though I can’t really understand her. “It’s not useful,” she says a couple of times, and I move along. I feel really bad about the whole situation, about the idea that I was going to  appropriate her like that. A middle-class white guy exploiting the poor black woman, the oldest story in the world. But at least I asked. At least when she said no I respected it, I reassure myself.

I notice they call it “take away” instead of “take out” and think that this sounds quaint, cute to me. It reminds me of little kids saying “seven take away three” instead of “minus,” like how they will say “times” instead of “multiply.” “You have to times it.” Most of the time, my job, my role is to correct them. But here I can just appreciate the cuteness of it, and that is the nice thing about summer.

I go to the Royal Academy of Music. The woman working there is a bit too eager to perform her role as guide and fount of information and shopkeeper, and that makes me uncomfortable. I learn from a giant timeline on the wall that George IV (the former Regent, under that “dying and despised king” (who wrote that line? I can’t remember, but I do remember from a Jeopardy question that it was during this era that they wouldn’t perform King Lear, and I think about my country’s own tyrannical and addled leader) was a great patron of the arts. I go up to the second floor, where there is an exhibit of old string instruments. I pick up a ukelele hanging on the wall, and play something simple and beautiful, one of those chord progressions that are so close to my heart. I’ve never owned a ukelele myself, but I always play them when they’re around.

As I step outside, there is rap music blaring from a car, and I love the contrast, the juxtaposition of it. The image sets me off on a pleasantly philosophical train of thought. Something about multiculturalism and relativism and comparing “apples to oranges.” I write my insight down, later, on a piece of paper ripped out of the notebook that I got back home at a school fundraiser sponsored by Ford, where you would test-drive a Ford vehicle and then rate your experience one-through-ten, and the local student council would get twenty dollars, and where they had complimentary notebooks and pens. (The first thing I wrote in that notebook was about how I hated Henry Ford, but I liked the idea of a notebook with a personal tie like that.)

In Euston Square, they put out the Evening Standard and people grab copies as they walk by, and this too seems quaint in the way that only city-life can, and I grab one too. As casually as I possibly can, as if I do it every day on my way home from work. The cover announces that opposite-sex couples can now choose civil unions over marriage. I think of that part of some Virginia Woolf book (The Years, maybe, which I make a mental note I need to reread at some point) where the death of some king is announced in the streets.

I don’t go to the British Museum, for two reasons. One: It feels like supporting neo-imperialism. (There is an exhibit, somewhere in the city, on “Splendors of the Sub-Continent,” which makes me think the same thing. It may be at Buckingham Palace.) Two: It is too big and I know I will never see it all, and museums are not set up for human beings anyway. Ender Wiggin felt the same thing when he walked on a planet built by an alien race. I feel the same way when I listen to an algorithm-created playlist. It’s not the same as a mixtape.

I don’t go to Windsor Castle, either, but only because it is too far away. I did love The Crown, after all. Nor do I go to Stonehenge, or Oxford, or half of the other places I had planned to go, because London alone is enough. Hell, Hyde Park is enough for a lifetime, I swear one day walking through it, and actually believe it.

I go to Saint Paul’s Cathedral but I don’t go inside because you have to pay and that makes me think about Martin Luther. Instead, I get a coffee from Starbucks and sit in the yard outside the church and watch the people, and pretend that it means something. (In Starbucks, they are playing a jazz song that I recognize from my jazz days.)

But I do go to the British Library (because libraries are free and public), where I see a bunch of old writing that I will never remember. The Beatles, Shakespeare, Davinci, one of the Brontes, the Gutenberg Bible - all sitting right next to each other. Ripped out of context, placed on display. Everything we take seriously as a culture. Everything that kids will grow up feeling like they are supposed to know better and love better than they really do. (I know one day - if that day has not already arrived - Harry Potter will join them, and that idea makes me feel sad and old. To see something you love become an imposition upon the next generation.)

As I leave that room, I am enlisted in the research of a student at some college or other. We sit across from each other at the library cafe, and I sign a bunch of very formal, official-looking papers, assuring me of my anonymity. I mostly just rant about my problems with museums. She asks me if more context, more narrative would help, and I think no but say maybe. She asks me some questions that I have to answer with a number between one and five. I tell her I plan on visiting Bloomsbury because I love Virginia Woolf.

In Bloomsbury, I find myself wishing that I had a community of artists and creatives and bohemians around me where I live, that I wasn’t a teacher, an authority figure, back in my regular life. I find the statue of Virginia Woolf. I walk around Tavistock Square, where she first conceived of To The Lighthouse. I never find the house where she and Leonard lived in that area, though I do see where John Maynard Keynes lived. It makes me feel like I ought to know more about him and what he believed. All I know is the one-sentence summary: the government should intervene in economics. But maybe that’s enough.

Certainly, my superficial, incomplete, spotty knowledge of things always seems to be enough to get me by. But sometimes I marvel at how I manage to get through life, knowing so little about anything. I can’t even seem to remember the order of the kings and queens (is it sexist to say “kings and queens" rather than "queens and kings," that it sounds more natural that way?) and it was only a couple hours ago that I had it more-or-less straight. I ought to look that up again when I get back.

I lie on the floor of the hostel lounge in a half-performance of idleness and exhaustion, next to a large black guy who seems to be actually sleeping, while everyone else watches some soccer match. I look up the order of monarchs now that I have Wifi. Now I’ve finally got it. Somehow I end up on Facebook, and somehow I end up scrolling through the events section. There are a million different cool-sounding things going on tonight, my last night in London, and I feel like I’ve got to attend them all. Pub crawls, themed parties, live music. I should be drinking; I should be meeting random people; I should be living it up.

But then I check Twitter, too, and I read a bunch of shit that I don’t care about. But the last thing I happen to see are some lyrics from Drake’s new song, I guess, where he talks about this girl he knew who went to Rome and just posted pictures for people back home instead of enjoying it. And I am reminded of how London is Rome for me. And I realize why I am really here: to sit and read books in the park and pretend I am a character in a Virginia Woolf novel. So I go to St. James Park yet again, and as it is getting dark, I read some more of Call Me By Your Name. I half-want someone to start a conversation about it. Or at least I want confirmation that they notice what book I am reading, that other people are as perpetually curious about the literary predilections of strangers as I am.

For dinner, I go to Byron Burgers, because I like Byron and I like burgers, and order something extremely American because I am feeling the tiniest bit homesick. I jot down some miscellaneous thoughts in my notebook, and keep writing even after my food has arrived, and pretend that that says something about me. (I remember when my friends and I were seniors in high school, on our chorus trip to New York City, and we had three hours to spend at the Met and eat lunch, and we swore we were going to spend the whole time looking at art instead of eating, because that was the sort of people we were. Of course, we caved.)

Sunday morning, I check out of the hostel where I have been staying and head to Cambridge. I order a “traditional English breakfast” at a pub (another one of that same ubiquitous chain of them), and read the last couple pages of Call Me By Your Name.

My larger piece of luggage lost a wheel at some point, so I have to alternate between carrying it (it is quite heavy) and dragging it (which tears up the bottom of it.)

The train to Cambridge leaves King's Cross station at 10:41 AM, which is a pleasantly random-sounding time. The people boarding right before me are a red-haired family, and yet again I think of Harry Potter. I get on Twitter and post about it, concluding with a semi-ironic hashtag: #Magicisreal.

2007: A Love Story

      The computer was in the family room, since James’s parents apparently still didn’t trust him to have one in his room, even though every adult he knew regarded him as a “good kid.” Just the right amount of good, too. Not so good that you felt like it was a performance, or a way of making up for something really sinister in his nature. He was the kind of kid who rebelled by riding his bike down the street without a helmet, who made honor roll most quarters (but never high honors), who left clothes lying around his room but did his own laundry whenever he needed to. And all he ever used the computer for - and all he ever would use it for, even if it was in his bedroom - was talking to his friends..

        And his parents were pretty good, too, as far as privacy went. They didn’t peer over his shoulder or try to read his conversations. (Parent over shoulder. “POS.” That was how the news seemed to think kids talked to each other online. James had laughed when he overheard that, floating in from the TV in the kitchen one evening, and then told Hannah about it as soon as she came online. Now it was one of their inside jokes, one of their “things.”) But he knew they caught glimpses - a screenname, a profile, a picture someone sent him - which was why he always instinctively minimized his chat windows whenever one of them walked by. But it would just be so much easier if the computer was in his room. No one else used it, anyway.

      James spent many nights - the hours that passed between the time he told his parents he was going to bed on school nights, around nine or nine-thirty, and the time his adolescent brain was actually ready to sleep - mentally arguing with his mom about this. He had all the logical arguments on his side: more privacy for him, more space in the family room for them, less arguing for the whole family, he needed it for homework anyway, etc. But James’s mom didn’t listen to reason. She still pictured him as a little kid, even though he was practically fifteen now. Even though he was taller than her.

        But at least he had chunks of time like this one. He got home from school at two-fifty (one of the last stops on the bus, because of course they had to live so far from the center of town) and no one else was ever home until at least five. That left one golden sliver of privacy. For another, he had to wait for weekends. After his parents shut off the TV and went to bed, he could stay up until one, two in the morning, talking to whoever happened to be online. Usually Hannah.

      Today, it was two-fifty-seven when James completed his weekday routine - threw his backpack onto his bed, used the bathroom, grabbed a soda from the fridge - and settled into his spot in front of the computer. He logged on, scanned his friends list. Hannah wasn’t on yet. That was good; that meant he could message her when she came online. If she had been on first, it would have been her place to message him, and sometimes she didn’t right away. (Torturous, agonizing minutes for him.) Who was on, though? Sean had an away message up: hw then bed. Added 21 hours ago. Kelly Castleman had been on for eight minutes. James reflexively clicked her profile. The same Fall Out Boy lyric that was in there before, but she had changed the font and color. And Victoria, Hannah’s best friend, had signed on just a minute before him. Her profile was a snippet of a conversation between the two of them:

                XXxSuicidesxGracexXX: if any guy ever hurts you

                XXxSuicidesxGracexXX: i swear to fuckin god

                XXxSuicidesxGracexXX: i’ll chop his balls off

                victoriASS1992: omg lmao

                XXxSuicidesxGracexXX: and then feed them to benji

                victoriASS1992: HAHAHA

       James was hit with a wave of annoyance, as he was every time he clicked on Victoria’s profile and saw this conversation was still there. It had been in there for almost three weeks. Way longer than you were supposed to leave anything in your profile, but especially a conversation. Song lyrics you could get away with leaving in there a bit longer.

      And Victoria had never even dated anybody. Unless you counted the three days back at the beginning of seventh grade (a lifetime ago) when she “went out” with Sean - had put his initials in his profile alone with the date and a heart (SN 9.12.05 <3) and decided that their wedding song would be “When I Look At You” by Beautiful Misery (her and Hannah’s favorite band) because it was “just so us.” (The lyrics to the chorus: “Sometimes when I look at you / I know that I’m in love with you / And sometimes when I look at you / I want to kill you, my beautiful darling.”) Meanwhile, Sean was busy playing video games and skating around town. Then on the third day, in the hallway outside the Art room, a  chubby girl named Courtney Collins - a former teacher’s pet who had tried to rebrand herself in middle school as “the one who knew all the drama” - told Sean what Victoria had been saying about him and he remembered that he had said “yes” when Victoria’s friend had asked him if he would go out with her. So he told Courtney to tell Victoria that he was breaking up with her, and she beamed. James had been standing next to Sean when this happened, and he had laughed, too, because Victoria annoyed him.

       But the real reason that was in her profile was just so everyone would see that her and Hannah really were best friends. James knew she was afraid that people thought their friendship was one-sided, that she liked Hannah so much more than Hannah liked her. This was her proof to the contrary.

       But James, who was Hannah’s real best friend even though she couldn’t admit that publicly, even though she had to call Victoria her best friend because they had known each other since fifth grade, and you couldn’t have a “best friend” who was the opposite sex, anyway (which is why he had to call Sean his “best friend”) - he knew how much Victoria annoyed her too. He was the one that she vented to, the one she trusted with her secrets. For instance, she had even told him that she wished Victoria would take that stupid conversation out of her profile.

       its not even that funny, she had said on Saturday night. i was just trying to make her feel better cause she was like all depressed. and i dont think benji would even eat balls hahaha.

     Benji was Hannah’s dog, a mostly-collie mutt, who she loved more than anything and took pictures with all the time. James had never met Benji, but talked about him like he had. Hannah had told him so many Benji stories that he felt like he knew him, anyway. That night, he had responded to her: yeah i bet he’d just chew them up and spit them out.

       James wanted to meet Benji. But he couldn’t tell Hannah that, because it would just remind her that he hadn’t, remind her that they weren’t really that close.

       Victoria also wanted everyone to remember that she knew Benji, that she was one of the only people who ever got to go to Hannah’s house. But that was only because they had known each other so long. she just like shows up, Hannah had explained. and my mom doesnt even care. but like my mom would freak out if i invited someone else over. but like she doesn’t get how annoying victoria is.

       James glanced at the clock in the corner of the computer. 3:03 PM. Hannah should be getting online soon, unless her mom had started a fight with her as soon as she got home. That happened sometimes. Usually only if her mom had been drinking (which she had told James but made him swear not to tell anybody, so he hadn’t.) But that meant she would tell James all about it later, when her mom passed out or went to her boyfriend’s house and Hannah could finally get online. So he could put up with a couple hours of not talking to her, if it meant he would get to be there for her when she really needed him later.

       A chat window suddenly popped up on the screen, accompanied by the familiar chime that always meant Hannah - until it didn’t. James was hit with a surge of adrenaline, then a wave of crushing disappointment when he saw the screenname. It was Courtney Collins, who wasn’t even on James’s friends list.

               

                CourtSport32: hey

        He and Hannah never started conversations with “hey” or “hi” or any actual greeting. Whoever messaged first just said whatever they wanted to say, or if there was nothing specific they wanted to say, just said a random word. (Some of Hannah’s favorites: “penis,” “cauliflower,” and “unicorn.”) It was another one of their “things.” But with someone like Courtney Collins, you had to go through the whole ritual:

                CourtSport32: hey

                xx themachine: hey

                CourtSport32: whats up?

                xx themachine: nm, u?

                CourtSport32: same

                xx themachine: cool

       James kind of hoped the conversation would die there. Maybe she’d realize he didn’t want to talk to her. But then again, if Courtney said something stupid, he could always send it to Hannah when she came online and they could make fun of her.

                CourtSport32 is typing . . .

      The line of text appeared, disappeared, reappeared. Courtney was drafting her message carefully, or being indecisive. James placed his cursor over the X in the corner of the chat window.

                CourtSport32: do u like hannah?

     There it was - that same stupid question he had been asked a thousand times before, plenty of them by Courtney Collins, and had always given the same answer:

               

                xx themachine: we’re just friends

                CourtSport32: well ya

                CourtSport32: ur just friends cuz SHE says ur just friends

                CourtSport32: but every1 knows u like her

                xx themachine: lmao

       James copied the last couple lines of the conversation so he could send it to Hannah later (she’d appreciate his sarcastic “lmao”), then clicked the X. But Courtney wasn’t done.

                CourtSport32: why r u still denying it

                CourtSport32: like kid

                CourtSport32: EVERY1 KNOWS

                CourtSport32: just admit it

                CourtSport32: i wont tell anyone

      Yeah, right, she wouldn’t tell anyone. Courtney Collins couldn’t keep her mouth shut about anything, nevermind something as juicy as this. James’s confession of love for Hannah was a coveted prize: whoever managed to get it out of him would be the center of attention all night and maybe even into the next day. Not only would people be messaging them asking for the details, asking to see what James said exactly - but everyone else would be talking about them, too. They’d be an inextricable part of the story. Whenever someone passed along the news that James did like Hannah, after all, their name would be mentioned too: “Yeah, he finally admitted it, he told Courtney Collins . . .”

        But James certainly wasn’t going to let Courtney have that. Besides, he really didn’t like Hannah as anything more than just a best friend, and even if he did, he would tell her himself, directly, because that’s the sort of guy he was. He already knew how he would do it if he ever did end up liking her: he would bring her to a concert by one of their favorite bands - (in the fantasy, he had his license) - and then right in the middle of the best part of their favorite song, he would look her in the eyes and mouth “I love you.”

        Shit. The concert.

      That’s where Hannah was, why she hadn’t come online. She was going to a Beautiful Misery concert that night with Victoria, had been talking about it for months. How the hell could he have forgotten? She even had the date marked in her profile: beautifulmisery 5.22.07 ICANTFUCKINGWAIT. Victoria’s mom had gotten them the tickets for Christmas, so he couldn’t be too upset that he hadn’t been invited. But it did make this whole night seem pointless. A chunk of time he just had to endure.

               

                xx themachine: so first of all

                xx themachine: you don’t know me and hannahs friendship at all so dont act like you do

                xx themachine: and like

                xx themachine: you should mind your own fucking business anyway

                xx themachine: go do your homework or something idk

       That was a good line. In fourth grade, Courtney had raised her hand one day and asked the teacher if they were going to have homework that night, and the teacher - a grandmotherly, floral-dress-wearing kind of fourth grade teacher - had smiled and said, “Thank you for reminding me, Ms. Collins.” Everyone knew that story. James thought about copying this part of the conversation, but remembered it would be tomorrow before he would talk to Hannah again so he didn’t bother.

               

                CourtSport32: how come u rnt going 2 the concert wit her then?

                xx themachine: well its still none of your business but

                xx themachine: victorias mom got them the tickets

                xx themachine: and i dont even like bm that much anyway

                CourtSport32: i thought u did?

                xx themachine: theyre ok

                CourtSport32: oh

                CourtSport32: cool

                CourtSport32: gtg bye

               

       Courtney signed off. Or blocked him so he would think she signed off. James didn’t care either way. She was just mad that he didn’t give her anything new to tell people, didn’t say anything he hadn’t said before.

       3:13 PM. This was going to be a long night. James pulled his iPod out of his pocket, spent a couple minutes untangling the headphones (even though he had just been listening to it on the bus), and then put on the latest CrossMyHeart album. They were his band - everyone knew that - just like Beautiful Misery was Hannah and Victoria’s band. Everyone listened to them, of course, but no one else could ever say they were their favorite.

      Why was Victoria still online, anyway? Shouldn’t she be getting ready for the concert with Hannah? Or was she actually sitting there on her computer, talking to other people, when Hannah was over? Hannah had said she sometimes did that. like why does she even ask me to come over, she had ranted to James one night. if that’s what she’s gonna do? like thats really fucking rude.

         i know, right? James had replied. id never do that.

*

       Victoria spent that whole Tuesday in a state of nervous excitement. Her first concert. Her first fucking concert. A chance to finally be a real person, a real teenager, to walk around with Hannah and meet guys - cool guys, real guys, not these obnoxious little kids who sat next to her in Social Studies and made stupid, homophobic jokes when the teacher said “manifest destiny.”

         Hannah had taught her what “homophobic” meant, because she had a gay cousin who was, like, twenty-three and lived in New York City. Victoria hadn’t met him yet, but she and Hannah had plans to go down there for a weekend as soon as Hannah got her license (she was six months older, would be fifteen in September), and Charlie had already said it was cool for them to crash with him, and he would show them around, bring them to all the cool places. And as soon as they graduated, they were going to move to the city and get an awesome apartment in Manhattan together (Hannah said Manhattan was the coolest part of New York) and Hannah was going to be an artist or a graphic designer or something and Victoria would go to college.

        my parents will kill me if i don’t go to college lol, she had told Hannah.

        who cares? was Hannah’s reply. fuck what they think.

       But later she had softened, said it might be cool to have a roommate who was in college, as long as she went somewhere cool like NYU or Juliard.

       These plans for the future had gotten Victoria through many boring days at school, or at home with her parents and little brother, but this Tuesday she didn’t need them. Beautiful Misery was enough. The greatest band in the world. With the greatest lead singer in the world. Xander Cross. Even his name was awesome. (Hannah had pointed out how the X in his name even looked like a cross.) And his perfectly messy black hair and dark eyeliner and the way he near-whispered words like “my love” and how much he appreciated and loved his fans. Apparently, after every show, he picked a couple of random fans to come backstage and just hang out with the band for the night. Eat Cheese-Itz (Xander’s favorite snack) and watch Spongebob Squarepants (his favorite TV show.) That would be her and Hannah. She knew it. Hannah would make it happen somehow.

       Social Studies ended, then it was Math (spent imagining conversations they could have with Xander Cross, what she would say if he asked what her favorite Beautiful Misery song was), then Phys Ed (the second day of a volleyball unit - practicing the “bump pass” in partners), then her last class of the day and her only class with Hannah - English. Taught by Mr. Brown, a youngish guy with a beard who was pretty lax about rules and assignments, especially towards the end of the day. Today he talked for a couple minutes about something that wasn’t Beautiful Misery, then told them to read independently. Victoria took her beat-up copy of whatever novel they were supposed to be reading, opened it to a random page in the middle, and held it in front of her as a prop while she talked to Hannah.

       “What are we wearing?” was her first question.

        “Well . . .” Hannah said slowly, deliberately. “I’m wearing the same pair of jeans that I wore last time, cause obviously they’re good luck, and then probably either your light gray shirt with three buttons on the top or something plaid - I don’t know yet, I’ll decide when we get to your house - oh, you don’t care, right? And, like, obviously my Converse, the black ones - I don’t know what you’re wearing yet, what are you thinking?”

        “Well . . .” Victoria started, trying to mimick Hannah’s speech but hers sounded nervous rather than deliberate. “I was kinda thinking maybe I should wear my BM shirt.”

         Hannah made no effort to hide her laugh. A kid a few desks away shot a glare at her through his glasses; Mr. Jones barely glanced up from his own book (not the class text.)

        “Ohmygod NO!” she exclaimed. “You don’t wear a Beautiful Misery shirt to a Beautiful Misery concert. You’d look like a total poseur. And you are not a total poseur. What the fuck are you looking at, Columbine?” she said to the kid with glasses, who returned to his book without comment.

          “But then, like . . . what if I wanted to get Xander to sign the shirt?”

         “Victoria. You can’t. I mean, you can get a shirt there - like, that’s obviously what I’m gonna do, and then we can wear them to school tomorrow! But you don’t show up wearing one. Plus, like. Your BM shirt is black. Ohmygod. I can’t believe you were almost gonna wear that. I’m so glad you said something to me now. Like, imagine if we were actually getting dressed - wait, your mom is dropping us off down the street, right? I am not getting out of a fucking minivan right outside of the show.”

        “Yeah, I think so,” Victoria lied. Her mom had actually purchased three tickets to the concert, not just two, and she had not yet worked up the courage to tell Hannah this. Her hope was that Hannah would be so excited by the time they got there that she wouldn’t even care that they had to walk in with Mrs. Brixton. And they would obviously ditch her as soon as they got inside.

           “Good. Because like I said, I cannot fucking be seen getting out of a gray minivan.”

           “I know, right?”

          “And she’ll pick us up in the same place, right? Like, five minutes away at least. And you’ve got to tell her to wait til you call her, ‘cause we might end up staying and hanging out with people after. Like, if we meet anyone cool, I mean. Or like, no, you know what, tell her we can just find rides back.”

         “With who?”

      “There’s always someone,” Hannah said casually. She flipped to the next page in her book; Victoria did the same. “Wait, you’re not actually reading right now, are you?”

         “Yeah, right,” Victoria said. “I’m just doing that to trick Brownie.” Their half-affectionate, half-mocking nickname for Mr. Brown, which Hannah sometimes used to his face.

           “Like he cares,” Hannah scoffed. “This book is, like, actually kinda good, though.”

           “Really?”

           “Yeah. You should read it sometime. But not right now because we’ve got way more important things to worry about - like Xander-Cross-and-how-fucking-sexy-he’s-going-to-look-tonight!” She made a shrieking sound, loud enough to make Mr. Brown place his book face-down on his desk, stand up, and scan the room. “Sorry, Mr. Brown.”

           “Keep it down, please, Hannah.”

           “This book is just really interesting.”

        “Uh-huh.” Mr. Brown played along. He remained standing but didn’t move from behind his desk. No real threat. But Hannah had apparently decided their conversation was over for now, anyway, which meant it was. Even if she tried to start it up again, it wasn’t going to happen.

          Victoria wondered when the hell Hannah had had time to read any of this book. She definitely never read during class, and after school and on the weekends she was always either at Victoria’s house, online, or dealing with her psycho alcoholic mom. Unless maybe she was reading right now, and  her page-flip hadn’t been a calculated move after all. That was the thing about being friends with Hannah. She would always surprise you somehow.

       Victoria tried to read a couple lines of the page in front of her. Some kid named Scout who sounded like he was from the south or something. Boring.

         But Scout made her think of Girl Scouts, and remember with a sharp pang of embarrassment, of mortification, that she had still been a Girl Scout when she had met Hannah. The person she had been back then, only three years ago, seemed like a total stranger. A girl who rode horses and went to summer camp and did crafts; who listened to the radio; who had a backpack with her initials stitched on it, a backpack with wheels. Someone she and Hannah would make fun of now.

         And then Hannah had arrived one day, a transplant from Connecticut (“which is pretty much just New York City”), the representative of all things cool. Dyed hair, eyeliner, blue eyes, the body of a fourteen-year-old, t-shirts with the names of bands on them, jeans with song lyrics and the signatures of all her Connecticut friends. Rumors of a tattoo. And somehow, by some miracle, she saw through Victoria Brixton’s little-kid appearance, saw her true potential, and was willing to take her under her wing, into her gravitational field. She had introduced her to Beautiful Misery and all the other good music, taught her how to do makeup. Had saved her.

         She only hoped that other Victoria Brixton - the one from Before - was dead to Hannah, as well. The fear that kept her up at night was that Hannah still looked at her and saw a twelve-year-old with pigtails, wheeling her backpack down the hall.

everything, part one

You look out the window at the beach at sunrise and you see a prescription drug commercial. It’s low tide; a middle-aged couple is walking by, dressed in white, hand in hand. Your brain starts listing side-effects.

And this is itself a side-effect. The residue of countless childhood and adolescent nights spent parked in front of the TV, pleasantly buzzed, awash in its glow. Knowing intuitively what the ad execs, with their huge paychecks and strategic plans and focus groups, didn’t understand: commercials were just low-level entertainment. Or a sedative. No one was listening.

Christ, the things we have to be nostalgic for these days, you think to yourself, turning away from the window. (You’re not religious, but there’s something about the epithet that feels powerful.) Lying there, staring at a screen, having no idea what’s coming on next but just letting it happen to you because you don’t want to look for the remote. Or sitting through whatever drivel your parents or siblings or roommates felt like watching.

Those were the days when people could rail against mass culture. Intellectuals, brooding anti-heroes. They would look out at the suburban streets lined with strip malls and fast-food restaurants and movie theaters and fantasize about burning it all down, or leaving it all behind and finding something more authentic. Now that sentiment seems quaint, outdated.

Now, the strip malls are slowly shutting down, one store at a time, like the lights going off in an office building at the end of the day (an office where the workers don’t talk to each other, where each one does his or her work at his or her own pace and leaves once it is done.) They are becoming ghost towns. And thinking of this, you start to miss them.

You’ll probably miss sitting in traffic when all the cars are self-driving, when everything is efficient and optimized.

            
You miss these things the way you might miss a cold. When you have a cold, you can blame everything on that. I’m sick, you can’t expect me to give my all at work. I’m sick, you can’t expect me to be nice to people. I’m sick, you can’t expect me to write.

            
The coffee maker must have brewed at least enough for a cup by now. On your way to the kitchen, you see your book sitting on the end table next to the couch where you have been sleeping and try to remember what you read last night. You can’t. You figure it will come back to you when you start reading again. Or maybe some random snippet of conversation or thought will jog your memory.

            
It’s got to still be in there somewhere.

            
You choose one mug from among twenty identical siblings and pour some coffee into it. You consider picking up the book again and completing the wholesome image of sunrise, beach, porch, book, coffee. No one else is up yet, but you like the idea of being caught in such a picturesque pose.

            
You don’t post pictures to social media, and mock those who do, but you are just as shallow and image-driven as they are. The difference is you understand that posting the picture looks bad, looks desperate. Looks like trying. And that overrides any actual aesthetic. No image is strong enough to overcome its own deliberateness.

            
You open the fridge and take out the carton of almond milk. (You tell yourself it’s for the taste, or for health, or for the cows, but it’s really just trendy.) As you top off your coffee, the refrigerator beeps at you because it’s been left open what some engineer once decided was too long.

            
You tell it to shut up. It sounds playful, but there is real passion behind it. You hate that beep. First, it was on principle; now it’s almost Pavlovian. You hear it - or the similar but distinct beep the microwave makes when you leave your food in there too long - and you tense up. You feel like you’re being programmed, controlled. It makes you want to leave the door open even longer out of spite.

            
Spite for a refrigerator.

            
You take your first sip of coffee and decide you don’t really want to read that book. But then the perpetual question arises: what do you want to do? You wish you could just “follow your instincts,” but you can’t even tell what is an instinct versus a compulsion versus a fleeting impulse that will evaporate in a second. Those are all labels we give things afterwards; in the moment, they all feel the same.

            
Sitting down at the kitchen table, coffee in hand, you remember your list of topics that interest you, things you want to know more about, created for occasions like this. Aristotle; the British rule of Hong Kong; how exactly the stock market works. But what can you do? Type Aristotle into Google and skim his Wikipedia page? Pretend you’re going to buckle down and read the Nicomachean Ethics all the way through, the way you did with Paradise Lost earlier in the summer?

            
You’ve done all those quixotic things before and they’ve never made a difference. It turns out that all you really need to know about Aristotle to get by in real life are the basics: Greek philosopher, student of Plato, tutor of Alexander, empiricism, Nicomachean Ethics. That’s enough for Jeopardy; that’s enough for the crossword puzzle.

            
You spot your phone sitting on the counter. You tell yourself you are just going to check to see if anyone texted you overnight. No Facebook, no Twitter. You’re trying to avoid social media this summer. You walk over, press the unlock button. Nothing, which is unsurprising: it’s barely past six o’clock in the morning.

            
But now the situation has changed; the phone’s already in your hand.

            
And so the bargaining stage begins:

            
Atticus Finch read the entire newspaper every day after work, so it’s okay for you to scroll through Twitter.

            
You’re well-read enough to remember that Atticus Finch read the entire newspaper every day after work, so it’s okay for you to scroll through Twitter.

            
You’re self-aware enough to realize that you’re just coming up with absurd, bullshit justifications for something that you want to do just because you’re an addict like everyone else, so it’s okay for you to scroll through Twitter.

            
You open Twitter.

            
Your feed is a Frankensteinian creation, a patchwork quilt: a handful of your real-life friends; people from college you haven’t spoken to in years (most of whom you had to follow for some class or other: half your professors seemed to be obsessed with Twitter); various writers, journalists, and comedians (whose posts mostly just make you feel guilty for not being a writer, journalist, and/or comedian (the lines are blurred) yourself, but they’re also your main source of news); a few bands you really liked a few years back. You should really purge and update your following list at some point - or delete Twitter outright, like God flooding the world after humans screwed it up.

            
But you also kind of like the idea that each account you follow has a history to it. Your Facebook feed is similarly hodgepodge; it’s just inhabited by the ghosts of a different era. High school acquaintances and family members, mostly, with a sprinkling of random (mostly older and/or lower-class) coworkers who decided to add you (you can’t quite bear “friend” as a verb) for reasons of their own in more recent years.

            
The first post you see (calling them “tweets” is slightly more palatable than saying “to friend,” but still not something you can fully own, at least not without scare quotes or an ironic tone), incidentally, is a link to an article about Facebook, shared by one of those journalists-comedian types. The headline informs you: over two hundred million users’ data is being stored on some government server, a clear breach of the company’s claims regarding privacy. You assume your data is included in this, but it doesn’t bother you. It’s kind of nice to be part of something.

            
Besides, is this really even news? The headline frames it as egregious and shocking, but you think - didn’t we already know that? Didn’t you read or watch something about it a few months ago? In the spring, in the early evening, sitting in that uncomfortable chair on your porch while you were really just waiting to hear back from Sarah about dinner plans . . . ? Or was that something else?

            
(You don’t even really like Facebook as a social medium (everyone seems to be using “social media” as a singular noun these days, but you’re a holdout, even though you know it’s pedantic) but deleting it would make you elitist and out-of-touch. Like refusing to shop at Walmart or eat at McDonalds.)

            
Now: do you click the link or keep scrolling? You feel both desires (impulses, compulsions) simultaneously. They play tug-of-war for your attention. Breadth versus depth. An angel and a devil on each of your shoulders - but which is which? To click is to engage, to follow the thread, go down the rabbit hole; to scroll is to accept the headline as sufficient.

            
Hamlet was wrong: this is the question. Or, rather, Hamlet’s famous question is just a higher-stakes version of the same basic human conundrum. When an idea arises in the mind, how do you decide whether to turn it into an action or let it remain an idea? It’s not something that can be dealt with in the abstract. You can’t follow every impulse; you can’t turn down every side street that catches your eye. Nor can you refuse to act entirely. You must make these decisions all day long, every day, and so must everyone else - that’s what life is, you’re pretty sure - and so must everyone else - but understanding this does nothing to actually help you decide.

            
You look at the source of the article: the New York Times. One of four sites you’re willing to follow links to (the others being The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker. You can’t remember when, why, or how exactly this list was created, but it’s become a more or less inviolable rule and you’re grateful for it.) You look at who shared (you’ll say “retweeted” with less distaste than “tweeted,” for some reason) it: some writer from New York. (You really should be living in New York at this point in your life, shouldn’t you, or is that just the cumulative effect of nineties sitcoms on your psyche?) You imagine the details that the article will give you: the name of the whistle-blower or the specific government agency that is holding the data (all of which are opaque indistinguishable acronyms to you, anyway connoting only authority and bureaucracy.) Of course, there’s always the possibility of incidental learning from an article like that, too. You may encounter a detail about Zuckerberg or the name of some Senator who is quoted, and that may stick with you for some reason (and when you think of it later, you’ll remember you first read it at this kitchen table on this morning) or it may remind you of something else you’ve read or thought or experienced - maybe even the book from last night, which part of your brain is still trying to recall, in order to prove a point - but that’s unpredictable and could happen scrolling through your Twitter feed, too, and now that you’ve given the idea a few seconds to settle, it occurs to you that you really don’t care about the subject of the article, so you keep scrolling. You stab Polonius.

            
That is how decisions are really made, you reflect, which is why life can never be planned for. You remember the moment - years ago, but clearer in your memory than yesterday, even - when you were sitting in the couch in your old living room, trying to read Heidegger, and all of a sudden it just welled up inside of you, rising from your roots right up to your hands, and before your mind had even registered it you had closed the book, and it was decided: you’d never be a great philosopher. You were a philistine, through and through.

            
The next Tweet appears: the president said something stupid, made it obvious he didn’t understand who Harriet Tubman was, and this particular writer (who happens to be black, and who you certainly didn’t follow because he was black, but once you had considered following just as certainly couldn’t not follow, because then what if you were not following him because he was black, even if that was on an unconscious level (you always say and even think “unconscious” when you want to say “subconscious” because you remember hearing that Freud disliked the word “subconscious,” even though you are also pretty sure that a lot of Freud’s theories have been debunked)) is irate. You, however, feel nothing but mild amusement. The current president’s idiocy is a given at this point - like the weather, an easy go-to when conversation falls flat, a lingua franca among everyone you know. How effortless to say, “did you see the thing where he . . .” And now you mentally finish the sentence “. . . didn’t know who Harriet Tubman was?” a phrasing borrowed from the black writer. You put it to the back of your mind for later, a squirrel hoarding nuts for winter.

            
There is a civil war going on in Southeast Asia.

            
Your acquaintance from college doesn’t understand why weddings are so expensive.

            
A singer you don’t particularly like (or dislike, for that matter) released a new album overnight.
            

There have been a certain, large-sounding number of police shootings of unarmed suspects since some date.

            
Someone else shared the Facebook article. Another journalist (white, male, forties.) You are reminded of its existence and are forced to re-evaluate your previous decision that you do not care. The fact that someone else shared it pushes you a little bit back towards clicking it, but you don’t yet. But if it turns out to be The Story (capital T, capital S, which you pronounce differently in your head than “the story”) of the morning, you realize that you may have to, as a statement in favor of a world where we do all read the same news - even if it’s propaganda, even if it’s lies.

            
There is a fly buzzing around the room. There will always be a fly buzzing around the room, you think, not quite knowing what you mean by it but liking the sound of it . . . (to be continued, onward and outward, to infinity . . .)