No more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken, plans to meet up later, pleas, complaints, desires, pictures of babies dressed as bears or peppers for Halloween. No more reading and commenting on the lives of others, and in so doing, feeling slightly less alone in the room. No more avatars.
Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
Station Eleven is a story about the end of civilization as we know it, and in reading it I traversed every emotion I expected: Terror, fear, deep sadness, loss, pain, guilt, hope.
But when I read this paragraph, I felt only a fleeting loneliness, like a bird skimming across the surface of water. Below that—deep below, where things resonate and expand inside you—I felt envy. This world has become so naked and noisy, and part of me wondered if that profound desire for quiet, for a day that means more than a compulsive Instagram upload, is the reason why so many people nurture only-half-jokey zombie apocalypse fantasies.
But when I read this paragraph, I felt only a fleeting loneliness, like a bird skimming across the surface of water. Below that—deep below, where things resonate and expand inside you—I felt envy. This world has become so naked and noisy, and part of me wondered if that profound desire for quiet, for a day that means more than a compulsive Instagram upload, is the reason why so many people nurture only-half-jokey zombie apocalypse fantasies.
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