life after relevance

we are sentient content machines

Cherry blossom season. Gestation needs a sweeter time. But you are not a flower nor a sweetheart. You are a prisoner with tunnel vision, undignified and absolute in calculations. It’s okay, so am I. You want your wishes granted — who doesn’t? I’ll tell you this: you are owned, in stasis and fixity, by what you’ve been told was going to happen once you’ve done a thing and done it well. It’s not that they’re bored with you, it’s just you’ve been letting yesterday get to your head, and praise isn’t worth much past its shelf life. In an economy where nothing matters, everything is the biggest deal in the world.

I’ve been thinking about ambition. I’ve been running to its rhythm, of course. Hunting down gold. Decisions are compounding, days stretch ahead of me with no retribution, weak sentiment, but I’ve remained noxious to spite them, I’m not stupid. Salvation’s off the table anyway. Love me, love me not, love me relevant. Today, I’m the happiest I’ve ever known myself to be, but I’m also the most terrified of losing the momentum, the imminent ticking clock of a sentient being who gets a shiny thing but fails to sustain it. It's a race, not toward being remembered but toward not being forgotten, which is somehow worse, devotional, plus nobody wants a woman in a rush. Forgot my lipstick again and lost my mind. I was never gifted like most of you but God, did I make trying look good. Writing is not the dream, neither is wisdom — beauty and relevance are what I’m really after, like an amateur defusing explosives. I must preserve intelligence in the direst of ruins, and if not, I must continue finding something to live for that isn’t trying to kill me, like getting hotter or posting online. It’s funny how I used to pray for all of this attention. Now I just pray I can squeeze out a little more novelty. Not tethered to the love, rather morally indebted to it.

But the speed of it all, oh how the algorithm moves, frictionless. Intelligence, artificial but ready. Revenue at the top of my profile to remind me I’m not much but a piggy bank of my own compromised utility. Put my attention span on speed dial, I’d like to stay on your mind. What a time to be alive and dashing — anything’s an excuse to get the most out per capita. So much chatter about the brokenness of our generation, the hostile bone marrow, and yet not a single gesture of empathy for how we’ve been priced out not just of instruments but of instructions too, hijacked by the boredom of never truly having anything, this morbid desire for public martyrdom and private e-commerce. Look up from your screen (beyond which not much has remained fruitful) and go touch concrete (it may bite you). Everything we want is Too Much, so our desires no longer express us but dissolve prematurely by clashing against their own impossibility. No, you’re not the only one. Forever depleted and immediate, but it gets us off, doesn’t it?

Living in a world that enforces urgency but has no intention to reward said urgency is how you make an addict into a killer. Getting a flu shot on a loop, pain succumbs to its very meaning by self-reducing to background noise. Even intermittent reinforcement has to have its rewards — there should be true domestic bliss, crumbs if any, maybe sourdough, but the luxury of a promise we are no longer offered. Too expensive, like asking for meaning, looking forward to something is an assault on convenience itself as that implies you’re worthy of anticipation. They don’t quite comply with you being worth anything. What is it we’re being proposed then? What’s our version of the American dream — did we reinvent it into something we can’t stomach? You’re wanted gentle and proud, smart and crimson. It seems just yesterday you were turning seventeen. I know I'm growing unattainable, uncooperative, privately reconciling with my shortcomings, and more painfully with the restraints of locating them. Can’t mourn a place that scolds you for asking what’s in it for you.

The non-physicality of it all is entertaining. Are you afraid of disappearing, my effervescent darling? Are you, too, afraid of running out of things to talk about? This dream-come-true is dragging me down. So ephemerally digital, we may as well not exist at all. The only sustainable way to die is to live so thinly, so numerically, spread evenly along the edges, zeros and ones, so unimportantly, to keep speaking without saying anything, that the legacy you leave behind is a desktop decay, a work email, some accolades, lustful screenshots behind predictable passwords, and exes you’d dedicated your worst nights and best sentences to. We care about preservation, don’t we? That’s why your straw is plastic. That’s why you never raised your voice. Recalibrate. I will be remembered as the girl who ate the most oatmeal and typed the most letters. Oatmeal because she was always hungry, letters because the recognition was so cheap, so needed. If for no other valid skill, this is where I win the war against the algorithm. They told me I should feel successful any minute now, the fine print said success is not a feeling but an anaesthetic. I fear I have been drafted into something that’s rapidly diminishing. But what do I know? I’m just a woman in an empty room.

And all this force is not without aftermath. I have no clue why I’m so far away from family, willingly, chasing the dream or its litany. Sometimes I am so keen and certain, but only until the threads of sacrifice start weaving their way through my chest, gluing me to the envelope like a seal stamp, filling my lungs with debris and hot wax till all the anguish dries out. Having nothing to lose and everything to prove is a terminal combination. But I’m absolved. Absolved of the guilt that my ambition is not amounting to its credit. ‘Chasing your dreams’ is a state both negligible and noble, a piece of lightly buttered toast to ease the stomach acid, thus kindness and understanding are guaranteed even by the farthest removed from reaping the benefits.

You’ll notice this at any family dinner. My grandmother never complains that I don’t call her enough. She knows I’m chasing something. She taught me how to ride a bike, and now she’s getting older and I’m just not there. I translate my essays for her when I can, clumsily. I haven’t spoken Russian in so long. She never complains. She knows I’m chasing. More castles to build. I bring back gifts, each time taking a fraction of a minute longer in bracing to look her in the eye because I know exactly what I’ll see. I’ll see a lifespan taking its final shape, the ruthless imprint of the time I’d spent away mapped out on her face, new wrinkles, a slightly slower walk. My heart now breaks in newer places, but time is only finite until I’m back to the races. She never complains. I’m comforted, not chastised, my running justifies the process, the reabsorption, and the holy spirit. I’ve almost gotten to the pearl of the matter. Don’t ask me who this pearl belongs to and don’t expect an answer if you do. I know my words won’t outlive me, but my fears will.

But then a glimpse of feeling every now and then. A new crush to devour. Lemon in my tea, a steaming cup, not too proud to admit I want love and a family. A painful zit, laughing on the phone with a friend who lives so far but feels so close. I pulled my hamstring at the gym, the pain reminded me I’m still a person dressed in responsive flesh. Even reality allows for glitches, playing so graciously human with us, so forgiving. I used to think I was a prophet or an alien, turns out I’m just a nucleus collision of two horny people. Bach’s Concerto for two violins. I love my little clumsy life and huge intentions, some things turn me on, others shut me down. I’m not giving up yet, not on the dream, but on the grandiose and tragic sacrifice the pursuit itself demands of me, and the subsequent forgiveness for all it’s taken hostage while I was figuring it out. What is this thing I’m after like a needy child? This cardinal inclination to prove it to myself, so mystical. Among a hundred things I could’ve been, I chose this — I’m no victim. We’ve been conned, but anything inside a con can blossom cherries. Maybe it’s ego, maybe I’m coping. Maybe just ruthlessly alive.