Thoughts On Ahab and the Whale.
I consume information copiously.
Scouring the depths and dredges
for elusive allusions to data,
cooking the phish,
byting off bits,
and spitting out the bones.
But like Ahab for Moby,
my Net will never spread wide enough
to catch all
and satisfy my hunger.
Eventually, things begin to
slip
and
drop
off,
and out of its fish-line fingers.
The load is lessened.
Because as near as my spyglass can see,
my prey is forcedly ephemeral.
O, what a cunning and fitting name
does BuzzFeed have,
offering me sustenance.
Although it is sparsely cut, and non-substance.
Fishing sites such as this
catch me instead, and hold me for hours,
pumping me full of superficial wisdom;
hollow vocabulary
is equate to empty calories.
And yet, UpWorthy lifts high my own faith
with the cute and righteous love they offer, and
the reverent tithe that they pay
to gracious social justice,
and gratuitous Button Poetry.
The cute stitchings that hold them together;
Even Tumblr itself is clasped and tasselled together
by the fleeting words of brilliant minds
peddling graceless gifs
and purporting graceful girls.
Images are information, too.
Moving, and stagnant.
Propelling, and immobile.
All this data takes us somewhere.
With a unified spirit, we are transported.
Society takes wing
and is urged on, and breathed upon,
by the rainbow-soaked loops
of diligent and determined parades,
but also the Nyan cat brigades.
Imagine that;
That a pastel pooping pet,
and the symbol that follows it (literally),
could fly alongside,
and face eye-to-eye,
the Zeitgeist,
and intimidate it, and convince it to shift its flight path.
Frabjous day,
that our culture has created its own
Jabberwocky,
even as The Jabbawockeez,
have fallen in, and then down and out of favour.
Where, and what do we favour?
And how long can we savour,
when our c(onsumption/ulture) is limited
not by breadth,
but by the valuation and long-suffering of its
Inter(est/net)?
Information is always there.
Even when the fish have been scaled and processed,
or unceremoniously disposed of,
the fishermen become obsessed with repairing and improving
their Net,
and they will forever dread
the lingering scent
left intwined in its
fibre-optics.
We can never, and will never consume
every ounce and every byte
that we heap onto our plates.
Because even at a buffet,
the trays are inevitably lifted away, to be replaced by something fresh.
But the death (read: consumption) of Moby-Dick
will come not from the breadth of our net,
or the keenness of our harpoon.
The Whale will come to us when we realise that
that displaced school of fish
that has been unwittingly shoved over the side
will forever be more satisfying and important to the multitudes
than the foil of our own foolishness that
that mighty mammal represents.
But while our interest,
and our Internet,
flies away in a kitten’s paws,
not every story will ever be told,
Our Net has the reach for it.
Our Net was made to be ‘inter-‘,
'between'.
But it has become ‘in-transit’,
'only passing through'.
Let’s look ‘intra-‘,
'within',
and endeavour to consume more piously all ideology,
and continue a demand
for a conscientious, and expanding
(not trending)
supply.