I am thinking today of how one communicates in this vomit-speak world we now live in, a world in which people believe everyone wants to hear their every observation or emotion or even every item they have swallowed on a particular day, literally. I am so not a social media person and yet it seems to be necessary, I have been told, to have a “platform.” So I guess I will commit to this space, as nonpublic as it really is, and consider this good or an opening or a placeholder. And I will explore how best to embrace privacy in public. One would think this would not be such a challenge for a writer, but these are two radically different ways of spending time with the word, even if I am often writing bone-honest nonfiction intended for publication.
I have just returned from New Orleans, where I was overexposed to the world of selfies. People are stopping in their tracks in front of houses or bars or bands, gardens and statues, or for no reason I can fathom; they are taking them in airport corridors and bars, waiting areas, and even on the airplane, catching the image of the person sitting in the seat behind them. I’m not sure what they think they are saying about themselves. Yes, I have an iPhone, and yes I use the camera, but this is my version of a selfie, captured accidentally as I walked from terminal B to F at the Philadelphia airport on the last leg of my trip home.
