So why write in a place that's so hard to even find?
## Lost and found
I think a lot about "zones" -- zones of influence, the concept of earshot, the "aura" of a person; it all points to an affect of proximity, regardless of actual proximity. A person has a specific geography. Not like the "topology of their face," Blindsight-style, but I mean, really, that self-expression is about rendering what one "is" a legible, real, external thing. Or, perhaps, an aspect of one's experience, an ineffible, difficult-to-describe part of life, something that needs to be depicted in linear time, using formal constraints.
A few years ago, I wondered if one day we would start geocaching memories inside of virtual environments. What if through VR, cameras and haptics, the secrets of someone's life become a matter of playing Inception? The depths of depression require someone to enter a blizzard and dig me out of the ice. You know what I'm saying? People create arenas where psychological impasses can find a resolution. Other people get cast as the heroes, other people get cast as villains. Something is trying to be understood by something else.[1]
The way we distribute information has changed, irrecovably, since the 90s. Submit a piece to a gateway, get broad distribution through subscriber channels? Slow decline. Throw something out into an enormous marketplace, see if it makes anything happen? It's become a bit gameified, but still exists. And in the middle? For those of us just making connections?
In the 2020s I feel like a hyperconnected "presence," a mutation of IRC's proximity and pagers' expectations, has become dominant, but it often doesn't engender more than the behavioural elements of a person. I find years go by and I'm not sure what I've been doing there. I don't know if I've "made friends." I've found myself wanting to explain the way I think, and having little avenue to do it. I've wanted to write longer form things. This is actually what started paralogue.org, but that's a separate topic.
It's really kind of simple. I like it when people look for me. Who doesn't enjoy the possibility of letting someone demonstrate that they want you, and you specifically? To not be "browsed upon," but actually sought out? That's what I find compelling about this place. I want to be found. I want to find you, too. Friendship is recognising the ineffable qualia -- some existential fragment -- as a shared experience, a "you, too," after all.
[1]: Honestly, it doesn't even have to be "the subconscious" and "the conscious subject," respectively -- it could just be that there are external entities playing themselves off of our bodies like substrates. It could be that "moods land" into a person through a natural force, something about their personality that attracts them, but then needs release. Maybe I saw too much Mushishi.
