Saturday, January 28, 2012

Techno-mite



It is impossible to put something down without picking up something else, which has to be put somewhere else, where something even elser is. Drop it on the floor, then. You are fighting for a cubic foot of space in a set of dusty cubicles where there is no longer space, only pieces and chunks and sheafs of matter, some of which is important and valuable and some of which is not. The important matter, such as bills, clean laundry, and contact information for clients, is scattered in little piles all over the rooms. Get something done! Some of them need to be attended to right away, but you get distracted trying to throw something out. Then you think of that project that was supposed to be progressing, but you can't even see it any more, it is behind other projects that are supposed to be progressing, like the digitization of photographs and tapes and other documents. Despairing of getting anything done, you return to Facebook hoping you will find something new from one of your good friends, but there is nothing there but people passing around old music videos. Back to the room where there is a pile of bills and a bag of dirty laundry. The sink is full of dirty dishes. Get something done. You clean them but then an hour later the sink is filled again because you ate something. You have thousands of books you can't bear to part with. There's one on the shelf now. Time to read it, after 20 years of neglect in your collection. There is an eighth of an inch of dust on the top edge, which you blow off in a cloud of annoyance. The book's open page says, "Get something done." There is dust everywhere, dust on the books, dust on the floor, dust on the windowsill, dust on your collected collectibles. And in all that dust are the mites, millions of them, your little unseen companions. Some of them are equipped with nanotechnological sensors and mini-processors, reporting to the Search Engine that you have not gotten anything done.

Photoshop, "digital ink," about 5" x 5 1/2", January 28, 2012.

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