Info Mania

It's weird for me when a major breakthrough occurs.  Very diverse ideas seem to come together suddenly and I quickly transition from what in retrospect seems like almost nothing, to the new owner of something far larger than me.  When ideas come together like this I am in the throws of what I think of as info mania.  This has been happening a lot lately. It's difficult to keep up.  

 

Road to Oz. Baum, Shanower, & Young.

Since we moved to this apartment complex, my patterns of information consumption have changed.  I no longer have Internet access in my home.  I cannot remember the time before this that I did not have open access to the Internet.  It must have been in the mid-1990s, though my mother probably had a Prodigy subscription she did not share with me. In high school we enjoyed 14 or 32k, and at St. Lawrence University the dorms enjoyed a nice, fast, T2 connection.  When I dropped out and moved in with my dear sweet, progressive Germer, we had Road Runner high speed.  She loved to look for recipes and email far away friends. In my first apartment I paid for my own Internet subscription with loan money as I worked on my BA from Empire State College.  After I finished my degree, I never had a living situation in which I did not find a way to include the Internet in my monthly bills.  That is until we moved here this past June.  

Sailor Twain

It really started at our last place when the iMac hard drive went for the second time.  As I had suddenly found myself without income, we decided to leave the computer broken.  I began using my Kindle to surf Facebook.  Often.  Like all day long I had it open.  And my kids started watching TV and DVDs too much as our rent also included cable.  If I could go back and change the way we spent time at home during this time I would certainly do it, though I also somehow feel that this choice was justifiable for a few reasons (mostly just the fix I get from info manic Internet breakthroughs via Facebook).  A lot happens on Facebook.

The Kindle was not well suited to the Internet, as it was designed as an eReader. I never much enjoyed reading books on it.  For me it best served as an emergency Facebook mobile app machine.  This is how I coped with the loss of my job.  I watched the activities of my colleagues from a far and pretended in my own mind that I was still a part of the professional circle.  I suppose I was to some extent, but rather in a disconnected, constantly connected, somewhat desperate sort of way.  It was pretty pathetic. 

Sailor Twain

Sometimes I thought I was losing my mind.  I saw seemingly generic posts or comments contain hidden symbolic messages that offered inside information as to what was happening in library land.  Library land became this magical place in my head where I was able to communicate with the colleagues I imagined were my real best-est friends through telepathy.  The book choices they shared offered secret details as to their loves, dreams, and future plans.  My husband never hesitated to tell me I was bat shit insane.  I felt insane.  So much effort, sacrifice, and money invested in what I was (and still am) certain to be my true calling in life tossed away at some petty whim of who?  Why?  What really happened?

I read everything.  I imagined what my mother might have said about it all.  I followed every path I could think of to get back to where I needed to be.  I caught the zombie virus, endlessly shuffling after brains through numerous libraries.  It took me at least six months to come to terms with what really happened and wrap my mind around the reasons given for my dreams to be smashed against the earth. The Girl Who Fell From The Sky became a favorite book.

I think I know now what happened, but it can be difficult to hold it all in my mind in the present. I know myself well enough to understand that meditation is essential.  After over a year of unemployment, I have peace with what happened.  I understand fully why my path was barred.  In my heart I have forgiven the responsible parties because of the ultimate lessons I learned about my own relationship with the Internet and also my children.  I have endured through challenging personal experiences in my life, and at this point I can't imagine a tighter belt.  Might I be told once again that my strengths are weaknesses and my weaknesses strengths? Only time will tell.

If you treat Facebook like a full time job,” my friend told me one poetry night, “you become very good at it.” 

I find memes interesting.  They offer a meaningful visual image combined with words succinct enough to be quickly digested while scrolling down.  What power these simple, small ideas contain.  They are like self subscribed subliminal messages added like freshly ground black pepper on the information salad of our Facebook feeds.  I subscribe to these as a way to frequently remind myself of who I would like to be.  They do help me feel real and grounded in an otherwise ethereal world.  So they are probably collecting data on me for the FBI.  Hopefully I am not labeled as a terrorist.  I wonder if the FBI has specific agents that investigate the Facebook activities of Homeschoolers, Buddhists, Socialists, librarians, vegans, awake people, etc.? They probably don't follow Cop Humor or Shut Up I'm Still Talking.  They ought to follow Food WithFaces and Duncan the Tonkinese.  So I subscribe to a ton of these and they somehow make my life more complete. The perfect memes appear in my feed like magic when I need them most.

Food WithFaces

In my favorite libraries, the perfect books call out to me like magic in much the same way.  I much prefer the book version of this sort magic.  Books allow me to hold on to a single idea for longer.  I relish the depth with which my mind processes an idea fleshed out over one to three hundred pages.  Memes simply touch the surface, like water walking insects.  They let me see the skin created by surface tension on the water.  They have their own language.  Spending too much time scrolling through messages like this makes life feel different.  Spending the same amount of time with a book that delves into the depths of a longer story, more fleshed out theme, or a string of concepts that come together in a coherent larger idea feels far more satisfying to me.  My mind feels solid.  My presence in the world feels genuine.  My interactions with other people contain more depth when I feed my mind with structurally sound arguments, or creatively presented, profound stories. Technologically presented information all too often feels shallow. I simply process printed paper better. Is this a strength or a weakness? I'm not sure.

On Facebook I am subscribed to a group of pages that publish memes about reading books.  I really love these.  There are those about books and reading in general, and there are pages I have liked that offer memes about specific genres I enjoy.  The weird breakthrough that I experienced was that I think I know some of the people who are creating these memes and publishing them.  Link. I always thought of them as strangers. Rather they are book characters. Strangers. Book characters I have fallen in love with.  I have seen them respond to my posts before, but I am fairly certain there is an open line of communication that occurs through these posts, and I am very much interested in some of the work that is happening here. 

My time that I have invested in Facebook has taught me many things.  It is a powerful psychological tool, akin to television commercials but perhaps even more powerful.  The underlying assumptions in the posts one elects to subscribe to offers specific information about the types of information with which one prefers to feed one's mind.  Television commercials are passive, yet they have much power in our buying habits.  We have a bit more control over Facebook.  If we find a post unpleasant, we can just click block, or remove from my feed.  

We can unfriend or unlike people that often post things we find unpleasant.  We create our own alternate or virtual reality on Facebook.  We enjoy the illusion of infinitely many friends constantly available to help us feel complete.

 What will become of my children....

Cooling weather

September 16th, 2013

Sigh.  This is a late night return to my blog.  I have practically dragged myself, kicking and screaming here.  It isn't that I don't have thoughts I wish to share.  The reason I stayed away for so long was rather that I suppose I was too worried about how I bring my ideas to the surface.  I return as I am, this midnight.

The first thing I feel compelled to share is a story.  My position at Rochester Public Library as a sub was ended about thirteen months ago.  I was given a few chances, and I suppose I gave out under various pressure gauges I had yet to learn to read.  I transformed myself into a whistle blower pointing the opposite direction that I ought to have pointed myself, and accidentally blew a gigantic hole in my foot that I may never recover from.  It aches to the point where I simply cannot function when the weather changes.

Yet, when the weather remains stable I feel comfortable exploring my world.  Lately I have dug my toes into 371 and 398.2.  I like it here.  I don't mind weather changes, but rhythm to times make life simpler in a good way.

Back when I felt that I might still have a chance, I had one last meeting with the man and woman who I believed might be able to perform the right sort of surgery on my foot.  I walked into the meeting with a coffee in my hand, and less than ten minutes later I walked out suddenly.  I suppose that it wasn't my place to explain my understanding of foot anatomy when it did not match theirs.  Their diagram was shaped differently than mine. The conversation didn't go well. 

Yet I did not return home immediately to put my bloody aching stomped toes in my mouth.  Nooo rather I went for a second opinion.  Turns out I discovered that while I suspected I was initially speaking with some of the best podiatrists in the area, my second opinion podiatrist was the authority overseeing  the podiatry portion of the local teaching hospital.  A super star in medicine, basically her word is the authority.  Her advice: sit down, shut up, and watch carefully to see how things run. 

Her belief was that my foot was damaged so severely that it will be very difficult for me to learn to walk.  However, if I do manage to get myself together and put weight on it that I will be able to ride horses again or run marathons if I so choose without excessive barriers to my success.  I did not realize that I was walking into the authority's office, though it felt counter intuitive to me to give up my voice in such a fashion.  I felt like the little mermaid, Disney version, bargaining with the Ursula.  After we recently moved to a new apartment without an Internet connection, I could see my voice travel out of my throat like a blue light and become captured in a nautilus shell.  I was bound to excessive barriers to my usual form of communication.  Furthermore, it became too much for us to manage my monthly cell phone bill.  I gave up most electronic communicating and focused on the people I see face to face.  And I dove deeper into my books.

This was a summer of excessive reading for me.  The kids and I did get outside most days, but we spent far more time reading than any other activity.  Beatrice and Vinny have developed distinct tastes picture books different from my own.  I am okay with that, though occasionally I do use Mama veto power when I believe that something is clearly for a more mature audience.  We enjoy sharing plenty of activities and discussions based on what we read.

There is a quality to communication I stumbled upon, as we learned to more deeply undersand our literature.  Some stories fit perfectly into our lives as if by magic, others create a more foreign world that takes more work to feel the internal logic in it.  I can read my children better now, and sometimes even strangers, as I can more clearly read moods based on the reaction to information consumed.  I imagine this will improve as I gain experience.  I can also feel my own center of balance more clearly since I have spent so much time reading.  When things begin to move too fast as they do in this modern age, the time I have spent meditating has taught me to bring myself back to center.  If it takes more than fifteen minutes to get back to myself, something is wrong that requires specific action on my part.

Some days I believe that my foot is healed, and that it is only a matter of time before I am swept off my feet into the land of happy ever after.  Other days I just keep inching forward, praying that I haven't unintentionally offended anyone by just being myself learning and growing in my own way.  I try to teach my children to love all living things, and to hurt nothing.  My son still wants to pretend to play with guns and kill.  My daughter's favorite toy is a stuffed cobra.  I am doing my best to let them be, but set the best example I can and encourage good choices. Is it wrong to kill for food?  Yes, we think so, but we still enjoy eating meat.  We talk about theses things, even if it hurts because we are only imperfect humans, just like everyone else. We try our best.

Maybe at this point in my blog you are wondering about my foot?  It was my own ignorance that caused the injury.  I might have avoided it if I had given the people what they wanted to hear.  Sometimes I just get it in my head that I am going to do the right thing, whatever that means, and I dig my heals into the earth, stubborn as a mule, refusing to offer my services where they are needed most.  I suppose I felt that I was being called upon to do too much in such a way that it wasn't turned around and reciprocated.  My family needed stability.  I believe everyone deserves stability and also a certain trust that they will perform their work without big brother watching and taking notes on break room gossip.  I found this absurd.  Yet, mules aren't supposed to think, and my thoughts were damaging my position.  They are just supposed to perform their ugly duties that no human would want to do on their own without some kind of super human motivation.  It might have been less of a problem if the old mule was just granted a sugar cube under her lip while drudging along, yet none was given and one hot day she just dug in her heals and stopped square in the field. 

This mule was taken to the podiatrist because it was believed she has some sort of stone bruise or an invisible injury, however the podiatrist only suggested that the mule be allowed to sit back and watch for a time.  She was given a narrow paddock along the highway, where she might observe traffic moving along.  Mule had a habit of braying at friendly looking travelers, and somehow this was interpreted as proof that her foot had not yet healed for surely she complains and perhaps even conspires to cause problems.  She was just being a mule in the way that she knew how to be a mule given the constraints of her situation. 

I have been giving much thought to the concept of education and libraries.  I have half a dozen draft essays that I am slowly working on when I have the time and energy to put into them.  I would like to put them up here on my blog when I believe they are ready.  I have also been worrying about the concept of privacy, and strategies used by the government and financial interests to control the masses of people.  I think about society, because if I can understand how society is manipulated by those truly in control, perhaps I might understand how to package and present information to people in such a way that it will be most useful and beneficial to the greater good.

I prefer to selflessly serve the greater good.  However, I cannot spend my life working for free.  When I spend time writing essays, it is typically late at night and it takes away from the time that I really ought to spend sleeping.  Like right now. I am tired.  Yet, I plan to take this outside and post it on my blog right now so that I may sleep easy and rest my aching foot.  The weather is cooling.