I have been without access to the Internet--- a.k.a. the Planet Earth beyond my strict physical & emotional self-imposed confines as a (temporary hopefully) semi-hermit.

(Blake took a stroll through London once and observed the “mind forg’d manacles” on his fellow citizens. He wouldn’t have seen mine, cuz I would have been hiding in my London flat that night.)

It’s no secret that I have the Bipolar Virus, as I call it. Some days for me are “inside days” per my pathology. The next day I could be bee-bopping down Main Street looking everyone in the eye and chitchatting nonstop, an eccentric gentleman with a simply smashing smile. It depends on how active the fucking Virus is.

Inside days used to be hellish. I would self-implode to the point of near catatonic thought –dessication. All ideas withered to dust instantly.It was a desert in my brain. TV helped. At least I could passively receive. When the Virus was manageable, I would read. Lots of stuff. In isolation.

“Go melt back into the night babe/everything inside is made of stone/There’s nothing in here movin”

b.dylan “it aint me babe”

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Those days are long gone. Ever since my connection to the Internet in 2009.

Funny story. Pot is to blame for me being here bothering you folks with my odd shit.

 I found OS one New year’s day when I was a bit intoxicated on cannabis, and leaped headong into it . And my head was very long indeed that day.

The cannabis bestowed immense importance upon OS for me. I felt I was home, somehow.

Luckily, I had a stash, so for a week or so I would smoke up and go on OS with brilliantly elliptical comments and incomprehensible posts. Those are long erased, by the way. But that’s how I landed here.

From the clouds.

“Take me disappearing down the smoke rings of my mind/down the foggy ruins of time”

“mr tambourine man”

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 OS stuck with me, as I sobered up, and learned the rules and made some friends. I wrote some stuff about bipolar and got an audience. I was on my way.

I also met friends who became confidantes, who electrified my parochial mind with ideas and theories and bullshit that made me a wiser, and more loving human being. These people will be with me for life. I hope. Though I may never meet them. I don’t get anywhere much.

For two years I survived off of Town wi-fi. I couldn’t afford a cable connection. But somehow, my rooming house was located just perfectly in the vicinity of Main Street, where the businesses were provided wifi. I was a succubus. A successful one. I was like a parasitic tick sucking off Town Bounty. And why the fuck not? This is my town. Been here 44 years. My family? Since 1947. My dad educated thousands of kids as teacher & principal here. I have had delightful experiences with merchants, friends, police, the local jail, etc.

Until last Monday, when the gig was up..suddenly town wifi is out of reach.

For a week I felt as though a goodly part of my soul had been amputated.  Just when I was hitting my groove as a groovy writer. Three teasingly erotic pieces that pleased a certain erudite element of OS whom I write for. My writing now is me. And that is writing. All due to my OS apprenticeship.

Gone.

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I am getting a flash driver, or mobile wifi device, tomorrow, so all I gotta do is make it til then.

So:What have I been doing? Reading again! So enjoyable. But now the sparks that the great ideas set off in my head are incommunicable. No way to share my joy of understanding things. There are various friends and relatives I can call, but I don’t want to overdo that. And they don’t especially want to hear Whitehead’s conception of God (process theology) or  quirky speculations about quantum physics or mythopoetic conceptions of the Christian Apocalypse, etc.

“I got a headful of ideas that are driving me insane/It’s a shame the way she makes me sweep the floor”

“maggies farm”

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When you have been in cyberspace, and are then not there, where are you?

You are NOT where you were before you ever had cyberspace, just like a child who loses the ability of speech after gaining and mastering it is NOT the younger innocent version of himself, the preverbal one.

You are out. And you want back in. And some might say, “what a blessing”, now you gotta go out among real people. Except all the real people now look rather…creepy and freakish. It could be just where I live. I should engage them. Yet I eschew them. They usually just wanna bum a buck or a cigarette.

I have been going out and doing good deeds. My best friend is going through a rough time,  mentally, after a hospitalization.  He is half sane now. Still prone to paranoia.

I have tended to him.

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One sister is gonna help me get the flash driver. Georgie’s mom. “Oh, gawd,Jimmy, you cant be without wifi!”

The other one says, “oh well. Lotsa people don’t have computers. Why is your need greater than theirs?”

“i..uh..it’s not. But…I am used to it…”

“Maybe too used to it”

(She suspects computer addiction in me)

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I told her about my good deeds with my troubled friend(s). Mental health advocacy.

“why don’t you meet some normal people?” she asks, in all sympathy. She is a fine sister, but not on my wavelength at times.

I bit my tongue before I said I know a lot of normal people. On the Internet.

This goes to the tired old debate about the value of electromagnetic vs. flesh and blood people.

All I can say, in all sincerity, is that my Internet time has made me a better person. Better writer? I think so.

I just can’t yet achieve that out in RealSpace.  They just don’t know what the f. I am talking about. It’s all social pleasantries. “hi how are ya, how the heck ya been, oh so sorry to hear it, nope, I’m strapped myself, no cash, you’ll be a-ok, blah blah”

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Here’s the thing: in realspace, in my town, I am a disgraced previous-middle classer with so so much promise, in unfortunate & undeserved circumstances. Poor James. Knew yer dad.

In cyberspace I have a chance, a last chance, to …find what this hidden potential was all about.

“this could be the last time/could be the last time/

I don’t know”rolling stones