THE INTERNET IS FULL OF HOLES
The internet is like the ocean, full of holes.
The holes are under water.
Which is itself under more water.
And the holes are on top of the water too,
float in it.
Some people call boats holes in the water that you throw money into.
The internet is like the ocean,
full of holes on,
in,
and under the water.
Holes you might throw money into.
Where does the money go that you throw into the internet?
Different places, at first, maybe, but then into pockets, which are a different kind of hole.
Whose pockets?
My pockets?
Your pockets?
Their pockets?
What is a pocket?
If you are wearing a dress, or a skirt, it might not have pockets.
Why is that?
If you have on a pair of pants with pockets, are they good pockets, useful? Would you like more pockets?
What is a Hot Pocket?
What is a Pocket Rocket?
If the internet is a net, what kind of net.
How finely woven.
Is it like a net you might use to catch butterflies?
A net you might use to catch tadpoles?
A net for a fishing boat? A gill-net?
A fishnet stocking?
What's that?
How many holes are in that kind of a net, whichever kind of net you imagine the internet to be.
I imagine the internet like a scrap of net, washed up on the beach, full of seaweed and shells and bits of driftwood, stinking.
Some threads of this net, my imagined internet, don't tie onto anything, just at loose ends at the edges, and even torn sometimes in the middle.
If you were on a desert island and found that kind of a net, full of holes, you would be excited. It could be a very useful thing.
I grew up on an island named after a desert, kind of, but that isn't how some people say it sometimes.
You can say desert desert or dessert when talking about where I grew up.
The internet could be a very useful thing, even still, even now, even full of holes.
We could adapt it, like that scrap of fishnet, like a fishnet stocking, like a net for a purse-seiner, or a weir, to some other purpose.
Like a fence for a garden to grow things, to keep deer out. I have friends that do that, in New Brunswick, Canada. They use old fishnets of various kinds to keep deer out of their tomatoes and other vegetables.
They also use the internet, in their houses.
In one of their houses, the internet comes through a cable, those people in New Brunswick, Canada, have not yet adapted to wireless technologies, or WIFI, even though their internet comes through a satellite dish.
What a world we live in, with all kinds of nets.
I imagine the internet is just a scrap of a fish net, washed up on a beach, like a Jonah, like a whale, like Amos, like Boris.
Pretty junky net.
Still keep it around, have used it for things like holding hats, securing irregular loads in cargo-bays, trucks.
A cargo-bay.
St. John's Bay.
Hudson Bay.
Boston Harbor.
The East River.
The internet is not a fishnet.
The internet is computers and servers and cables.
Hard-ware and hard-drives and soft-ware and the _____-people that made it.
Clouds are
in the sky,
clouds are
made of
water vapor
that
sometimes
condense,
precipitate,
rain
back
down.
Any scientist, even one who believes in any ghodi will tell you in no uncertain terms that this is called the hydrological cycle.
Evapotranspiration up from earth and plants and animals, precipitation down from clouds.
The internet, generally speaking, does not like the hydrological cycle very much.
Water and the internet do not get along very well.
Hydro-phobic = water-fearing.
Have you ever spilled a coffee or a sugarpoison on a computer and panicked?
Then you know what I mean.
The internet is like the ocean, full of holes, full of security, full of fire, full of walls, full of mystery, full of depth, full of myth, full of history, full of stories.
Stories are like the ocean, full of holes, full of waves, full of feeling.
Here we are now together, in the ocean, in the internet, in the stories, full of feeling, full of holes.
A hair follicle is a kind of a hole with a thing stuck in it, a hair, until I or someone else plucks it, waxes it, or it falls out.
Is one kind of hole different from another kind of hole? What's in that hole? What's in that other hole
A state legislator told me never to ask a question I didn't already know the answer to, like that was some kind of secret.
And a teacher told me once there was never any such thing as a stupid question, never be afraid to ask a question, a neutral, well-placed question is a powerful powerful tool, more powerful than any kind of gun or weapon.
I think we might be getting somewhere, between the state legislator and the teacher and these kinds of questions about the internet and oceans and pockets and holes.
What other questions could we ask?
If the internet is like an ocean and a net, is the ocean a net?
If the internet is in fact or in fiction like an ocean, which ocean, what kind of ocean?
I think the internet is like the black Atlantic. I think the internet is like the green and blue and brown and sometimes murky North Atlantic.
One kind of cable that is part of the internet is actually a bundle of cables called a fiber-optic cable that goes under the green and blue and brown and sometimes murky black North Atlantic ocean.
What is the black Atlantic?
What was Middle Passage?
What is Diaspora?
Is Africa a country?
This is not a test, this is a test, Y/N?
Let's go back to neutral questions.
What is your name?
How do you pronounce that? Is that what everyone calls you?
Do people pronounce your name the way you pronounce your name?
My name is Rufus Morgan Kreilkamp Nicoll, or that is what I call myself, these days, on the internet in email.
I also call myself on the internet shttylttlshpvc.
Once upon a time when I and the internet was much much younger I called myself on the internet in email fistall@hotmail.com without a real idea of how fistall@hotmail.com might read to someone else on the internet.
What might fistall@hotmail mean to someone on the internet then?
Does it matter today, now that I am older?
The internet is like an ocean, full of holes.
For example:
Thank you.