The Grammar police

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I keep looking behind me but the problem is hear in front of me. Did you see that, I used the wrong one, the wrong spelling of it. Another act of rebellion. A moment when I did something you aren’t allowed to do anymore. They will call it a mistake, in a report somewhere. It was no mistake. It was deliberate, deliberative-there’s a word you never see now, can’t even use it in that context, who cares, it was a deliberative act. ..read more

I try three words, any combination. I pulled them from the dictionary. It is a manual dictionary. You know what I mean? It has pages, real pages, paper. Have you ever touched paper? Do you know what paper is? Look it up? No don’t look it up. They might be watching you too.

 It was hard to find a manual dictionary. Hard to even find a bookshop with real books. They don’t like you to have dictionaries. Dictionaries are powerful things. Especially old ones. You can find out stuff, stuff you aren’t supposed to know. They can tell you about the past, about the past of a word, about what it once meant. They can tell you about a time before a word even existed. The dictionary I have, the manual one, is old I think. It doesn’t have the word ‘email’ in it. Which means? You know what it means? There was a time before email. A time when ‘email’ did not exist. How did people communicate then? I don’t know. I thought they told us, email is the oldest form of communication there is. But the word ‘email’ is not in my manual dictionary. I huddle over my screen. I know someone, something, somewhere is looking at every word I right. Don’t tell! I used the wrong right, right? Yes? These words are just going out into the ether, but the ether is always watching. Collecting information. Informing. This machine is an inform-ant. I hyphenated when you shouldn’t. I must be careful.

I think there was another way of communicating before ‘email’. Those are radical words, revolutionary words. A revolution sent out into the ether.  ‘Verbal’! That’s a word I found but I don’t know what it means. I think it means ‘spoken’ which is about speaking but I am not sure what speaking is-but speaking is not emailing. I thought before it was, that when I was emailing I was speaking but maybe I wasn’t. I think I’m not. Emailing and speaking-they are not the same. I know that now. I have a dictionary. I fling a question into the ether-my fingers fly over the keys-what is speaking? But there is no answer. Only music comes back at me, notes and sound and melody. Noise but not words.

They think that if they can control what words mean they can control what words we use. We all write in Code, their code -but I have a dictionary. I wonder what it means ‘to speak’. The music comes from the ether, from somewhere inside the machine.

I type in another random search of three words. Three random words taken from my manual dictionary. Then I click on image. The images are random. The search engine does not understand what I am asking it to look for. That is my point. A random three word search. They don’t know everything. There are endless possible searches with my dictionary. If I do enough of these all in a row they will find me, but if I just do two at a time, every so often, I will go under the radar, or the data mining. I just have to be careful. I can make it work or not work just by carefully choosing three words. I type in three more random words, I don’t know what they mean. More random pictures.

I don’t want them to know everything about me. I want some control. I want the algorithm to be confused by what I am doing but not confused enough to report me. I don’t want anymore stupid targeted advertising. There is no opt out. The privacy policy is not an agreement, it is a rule, a law. There is no internet without agreement to the privacy policy. I sign up or else I am no longer part of the world. I am not the only one. Confused. Confounded. Annoyed. Three words I would not type into a search engine in a row because they would know then. Why do you think dictionaries are so hard to find? Bookshops are illegal aren’t they. Why would you need a bookshop when every book is on the internet? Why? Fair point but you still don’t need to make them illegal-do you? Why? What about competition? Maybe every book is not on the internet, just the ones they want us to read.

Bookshops are illegal because? Because they have a different viewpoint. Now you are getting the hang of it. Because they can’t know which page you’re up to and if they don’t know which page you are up to, they can’t know how much you know or what you are thinking. They can’t tell you what to think and when to think it when you are turning the pages yourself. A book is a means of being autonomous- without the ever watching eye of a machine. A book does not collect your data. It does not store your thoughts. A book asks nothing of you but that you turn to the next page. What if you don’t want to finish a book? You can do that-with a manual book you can do that. What if you are a bad citizen and don’t read the book in a linear way. What if words haven’t always meant what they say they mean. Because I want to know the history of words. I want to know what they once meant because I need to know how they gained control of the conversation. Because even now this is their conversation. My words, their machine. My thoughts. Their data.

I sit here typing, looking over my shoulder as if they are coming, but they are not coming. They are already here, in the machine in front of me. I try not to panic. I want to type in three more random words, but that would be dangerous. At night, when I am alone, I flick through this dictionary. It is from 1984, I know that year, it means something but the dictionary doesn’t tell me what.

I hold it. I want to suck all the knowledge from it. What did all the words mean once. Before them. Before the little green line appeared. Why don’t they mean that anymore? Who changed it? Who made the rules? Who forbade words out of context? When did the phrase ‘grammatical offence’ first appear.

I take a breath. I look at the screen. The images are random. No one can possibly know what I meant because I meant nothing. It will register in a report somewhere but not often enough, not yet, for me to be a ‘submersive’ –but according to the dictionary, that means underwater-they have it wrong. It’s the wrong word, and I know, its subversive. I am subversive, not submersive. How did they get that wrong? I have read it. The book is open on my knee. Its that sleight of hand, that slight of hand, the subtle changes that have made all the difference. It means something different today to yesterday and you can never keep up with it. Our words used against us. What does it mean to speak? What is a voice? More than a point of view? A sound? A noise-that is not musical. How odd.

I am a radical, a rebel. I want my life back. I want my beautiful words to tumble from the page and to mean what I want them to mean. I hold the dictionary. The history of words, where they started, where they come from. Words are power. When did we hand over control to the spell checker. To the green line that dictates grammar. I won’t do it. I can’t do it. The sound of the keys is the only voice I have now.

I keep looking behind me but the problem is hear in front of me. Did you see that, I used the wrong one, the wrong spelling of it. Another act of rebellion. A moment when I did something you aren’t allowed to do anymore. They will call it a mistake, in a report somewhere. It was no mistake. It was deliberate, deliberative-there’s a word you never see now, can’t even use it in that context, who cares, it was a deliberative act. A rebellion amongst a million typed characters. I am a rebellion- another one. They will definitely be watching now. I must be careful. This is foolhardy and foolish and folly and a lot of other ‘f’ words.

I pull my coat close around me. It is cold here. I let my fingers glide over the keys. I think of other mistakes I could make. Other words I could use. Half sentences. Improper phrases. Bad grammar. I know they are watching. I must be careful. What if I just wrote a line of solid ‘j’s. What would happen then. Would they break down the door? I clutch the dictionary close to me. I know there was a time, before, beyond the machines. Nothing is forever. The time, it will be again, I hold the past here with me and as long as someone does, there is hope.

I look in the mirror-it is not me

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

We can never tell each other how much we know. It’s a pact between all commuters everywhere…read more

I look in the mirror. Its me. I close my eyes. I reach out my hand. I find the button-a groove in the smooth surface. I should have bought one that was voice activated or at least changed the setting using my phone before I came to look in this mirror. I gently push the button in.

I open one eye. There I am, my image reflected back at me in the mirror. Except its not me. It looks mostly like me, but it’s a better version of me. Its an avatar. I have it on all my mirrors, a filter, so I never see what I really look like.

Except the button on this mirror doesn’t seem to be working. It won’t stay on my image, it constantly reverts back over night and when I come in here in the morning, there I am. Really me, what I must really look like. I close my eyes tightly whenever this happens and switch to the virtual me. The me with filters and ‘adjustments’, the me that I am sure is really me because that other me-I don’t want to look like that.

This can’t be healthy. I put make up on the virtual me, well I put it on the actual me, but in the mirror it goes on the virtual me. It looks a bit rough, I hit another button and the whole image is smoothed over and the makeup on the image in the mirror is perfect. I have no idea what it looks like on the actual me. I don’t care. I head for the train station. Its still dark. I walk and no one can see.

No one notices if my makeup is badly applied. No one notices me at all. That is how commuting works, same people everyday. Same seat. Same bags. Same coat. New coat. She has a new coat. And no one notices anything at all ever. I know these people, their habits, their smell, their conversations on phones. I know there lives but not their names-sometimes their names but only accidentally because I overheard. They probably know me too, but we can’t let on. We can never tell each other how much we know. It’s a pact between all commuters everywhere. A tacit agreement that even though we know everything we will pretend to know nothing. Except she has a new coat. I look down. That is not my business. It is not relevant to my life. I can not notice that.

I don’t look up. I just look at my phone. I put it on mirror. It just has an image of me. Always, Never actually me. Well yes me, but me with filters.  My makeup is perfect in that image, my ears are smaller, my mouth more rounded. I tell myself I look like that and there is nothing to contradict me. Nothing at all.

I go to get my coffee. I am wearing a scarf. I look at the ground. I don’t want to be noticed.  I have a takeaway coffee. They know my order, I send it by phone, I don’t even need to make eye contact. I have paid for it by phone. I just swipe my phone at the collection station and its released to me. I don’t have to see anybody. More importantly nobody sees me.

I get to work. I go past the kitchen. There is someone in there so I avoid it. I go to my cubicle. I take the lid off my coffee cup and sip it. Sweet, bitter delicious coffee. I switch on the machine, really can they not set it up so that I can do this from my phone before I arrive. It hums into life. I slip into lifelessness. I look at the Inbox, the news. I think about my first meeting. 9am slips by. I look at my phone, at the image on my phone. It is a good image. I have a meeting at 10am. I decide not to go in person but to send a virtual me.

I know that since I am in the office I should not do this. It is technically against the rules but I do this. The image of me, it is I think-better than the real me. The virtual me goes to the meeting. I see the meeting on my machine, I say things. I sound good. I look good. I huddle over my machine. Sooner or later they will ask why I am never there in person.

I finish my coffee at 11am. I always take ages to drink it.  I need the bathroom. I cannot go to the bathroom. The bathroom has mirrors. The mirrors in the bathroom are real. Real mirrors with real reflections and they cannot be changed to show your image, your avatar. It is really you. You cannot avoid seeing them. I need the bathroom though.

I grab my scarf. It looks odd. I know it looks odd, I pick a time, 11.21am. I am bursting now but 11.21 is not random, its too early for an 11am meeting to have finished and passed the time when anyone with an 11.15 will be going to a meeting late and too early for anyone going to an 11.30. I have this. I can get to the bathroom with my scarf and no one will see me. When I get to the door, I can wrap the scarf around my face and I won’t see it in the mirror-well maybe just the eyes-but the eyes are very close-aside from the colour. Did I mention that my avatar has different coloured eyes to me.

I look out from my cubicle, there is no one. I make a break for it. I see someone. I have misjudged it. 11.22 would have been better. I walk on by and pretend not to see her. I am here now before the toilet door. I wrap the scarf around my face and go in. I can only see my eyes. I focus on what I have to do. I focus on the taps when I am washing my hands. I do not make eye contact with myself. All the glimpses I get of me are accidental or peripheral. That person, she is not me. I am the image on my phone.

I look at the time, 11.27, just in time for the 11am meetings to finish and for early birds to the 11.30 to be on their way. I hide in the toilet cubicle. 11.30 passes. 11.35. 11.37. I will go  at 11.38. At 11.38 on the dot I fling open the toilet door and race for the exit. I nearly bump someone over in the rush. I mumble something to her. Sorry maybe or excuse me. I try to avoid panic, I can’t breathe. Is that panic or because the scarf has been covering my mouth for 20 minutes. I don’t know. I can see my cubicle. Head down, I march towards it. I see my chair. I reach out for it, grab it, slam myself down on it. I unwrap my face and bend over my desk. I have made it. No one saw me, at least not the real me. Next time I will send my avatar to the toilet.  It was not always like this. There was a time before this. Before there was a better perfect me, that existed as a picture when I am flesh and blood.

Everyone is concerned

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

In reality I live on lentils and quinoa, in VR I indulge in cake and cake, and well cake. I mean wouldn’t you. The sensation of eating it without the actual eating of it…read more 

Everybody is concerned. I get that. But I am not concerned. I will do the same thing today that I have done every Saturday since it happened. I will go to the café and sit across from my mother. We will have the same conversation that we had last week. It will be almost word for word.

It is a virtual café, so I will sit here in a chair in my kitchen with my head set and in theory she is sitting in a chair somewhere far away with her head set on. We are sitting in the same virtual reality though, so I will be able to see her and she will be able to see me. Or at least a version of me. The version I had made for VR is so close to me that you can barely tell.

I picked this virtual café because I liked its décor. There will be the same people talking in the background, the same people going in and out. I will order the same coffee and feel the odd sensation of drinking it, of reaching out to pick up and cup and take a sip, and knowing it is not real. Yet still feeling the cold porcelain, the warm milk. I will scoop the chocolate sprinkles off my cappuccino and my body will think I have eaten them. I can fool my brain into thinking I have had a coffee now without ever touching the evil stuff. It is ecologically more sound as well.

But I am not here for the false coffee or even the false carrot cake-the one with double thickness icing, all that sugar and not a calorie in sight. Sometimes I follow it with chocolate cheesecake. I do love virtual reality. In reality I live on lentils and quinoa, in VR I indulge in cake and cake, and well cake. I mean wouldn’t you. The sensation of eating it without the actual eating of it.

Anyway I am here in VR for my mother. My sister says it is wrong and I must face reality. I say I am not ready. I have lived a long way away from my mother for a long time. We have had virtual coffee in the same virtual café for nearly three years now, since it first become available. She had an image made of her which was quite true to life, if a little younger than I remembered-but hey who doesn’t. I have several images of me that I use in VR and none of them is quite true to life although the one that sits across from my mother is very close and was very expensive.

It’s odd this VR thing, because it can’t put us physically in the same room, but we are in a seemingly three dimensional space and it is very like she is in the same room. The image is her but not quite her. We can see the same thing, hear the same thing. It is hard to explain, because they could project real images, but no one does that anymore, everyone is touched up just a bit. I met my previous boyfriend in a VR café, there are such places and when I finally met him in person he was barely recognisable. It didn’t last.

Anyway my mother, we sit here every Saturday in the same virtual reality. I order the same kind of coffee and she orders tea. I eat carrot cake and she moves a chocolate slice around her plate as if it was real. I can see the sadness in her eyes, I don’t know why she did that. She could have had happy sparkly eyes or even tiger eyes. I think she was trying to tell me something. Those are not her real eyes. I know she and I are using images because she does not look like this anymore. It is always the last one I use. My sister says I need to spend more time in reality. I tell her this is my reality. She says, there is a truth and this is not the truth. She is far away too.

She sometimes calls me on the phone, refusing to turn up to a VR café, tired, she says of indulging my fantasy. I need to come home she says. I need to see it for myself. She sends me pictures. I delete them. I am not ready I tell her. I am simply not ready. She says you can never be ready. There is no ready, it has just happened and I must deal with it and the argument goes on. She sent me vouchers for therapy –I can use them anywhere apparently. She sent me a link to a therapy app. I have not used any of it.

Now that there is Virtual reality, I fail to see why I can’t exist in it in some form, why my mother can’t exist in it in some form indefinitely. Even though she is gone.

My sister tells me it is a recording, something I made and paid for before she was gone and that sitting there every Saturday isn’t going to bring her back. She says VR is not reality and I must face reality. I say it is reality, just of a different kind, she gets exasperated and I hang up.

I know that she is trying to get copyright of my mother’s image in VR so that she can stop me using it. I know that she is trying to do this. But I have copyright over this last recording of the two of us sitting there together, of our conversation, and because it happened, because it is a real conversation that happened and I am in it, I think she can never win.

She says I have to accept my mother’s death. I say that every Saturday I sit across from my mother and we have coffee and cake and we chat. I know it is the same conversation but it is as if she is there in the room. It is her voice. It is her image. And I am there and she smiles when she sees me. And she is warm, and we laugh at the way she orders the chocolate cake but never eats it and we laugh at how much I love carrot cake in VR but never eat it in real life. She loves that I always scoop the sprinkles off my cappuccino. We talk about me, about family, about my job. Always the same conversation. How is my life going? Is he the one? Would I have kids without a man in my life? We talk about big things and small things. It is the last conversation we had, it is the last conversation we will ever have. We have it every Saturday, over and over again. I know she is gone, I know. But I am still here. Sitting across from here, willing life into her. Drinking coffee, eating cake and I see no reason to accept otherwise.

Would you take a Neon-man home?

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

But where would you take a neon man for dinner. You can’t take him to just anywhere-for one thing he probably needs a continual power source and also what if you go somewhere with bigger neon than he has. That would be embarrassing…read more

We hot-desk. I still sit at the same desk everyday. I get in early. I leave my heels there over night. I don’t care. At least I didn’t until recently. I can’t even remember when I first saw it. We aren’t that high up, the 9th or 10th floor and there are windows, well of course there are. Floor to ceiling and we look across at other buildings. Of course we do.

I don’t even know why I was looking out the window. It makes no sense. I can see several buildings from where I am, and this building is nothing special. Its no different to the others, except, well one day. On this one day, at least when it started, there was a neon outline of a man, taking up the whole window. On the inside not the outside. Its not a huge window, I mean its not small either. It’s a window, probably average for a window, I mean its floor to ceiling with a strip of something separating it from the window’s either side, but its not massively more wide and tall than the other windows. I’m talking too much. Overthinking it. It’s a window, you get it’s a window.

It was odd. I mean. I guess. I mean I thought it was odd. I stumble over my words a lot. People say that I do. I am truly sorry.  A neon outline of a man, a man  outlined in a neon sign. Just the outline and nothing else. Just there. In the window of the building. The window I was talking about. It was just there. I mean the man and of course the window. Sorry I’m not explaining it very well. It was yellow. The neon man, he was yellow.  Which isn’t really odd. I don’t know? Would it have been less odd if it was orange or green or blue? I tried to ignore it.

But it was there all day and my eyes were just, drawn to it. I vowed not to sit there again the next day. But I left my shoes there over night and when I went back the next day, the neon man was gone. Or at least I couldn’t see him. So I sat there again. It didn’t seem like such a terrible idea. I mean even now, it was my seat. Like I said, we hot-desk, but I sit there every day. Then around 11am, there it was again, the neon man, yellow, in the same window. I looked around me, no one else seemed to notice, everyone else seemed to be working. I didn’t want to disturb them. I kept sneaking a look at him, luminous. He made me smile. To think I knew he was there and no one else had noticed him.

It was distracting then so I tried to ignore it, to avoid it, to not see it. Then when I looked again, there was someone standing within the outline. A real man. That was weird I thought. Five minutes later and the man who had fitted into the outline was gone. I didn’t know what to do. Its not the kind of thing that warrants a phone call to the police, but it was odd. I mean don’t you think its odd. A neon outline of a man in the window if an office block. Then a man stands there in the outline and then-he is gone and there is just the neon left behind. Maybe you don’t think its odd. Maybe its me that’s odd. I can’t know either way can I.

It was gone the next day. Or at least not switched on. I couldn’t even pick the exact window with any certainty. I was busy all day Thursday and a little sad. What had happened? Where had he gone? But Friday, Friday, there he was again. I was so happy. I was buzzing. No one else seemed to notice him or to care. I wanted to say something but what? What do you think about that neon man you can see in the window over there? Maybe they’d think it was an odd question. Maybe they wouldn’t think about him. I did think about him.

Maybe they already think I’m odd. This would make them think I am more odd. I think ‘odd’ is an odd word. But it does what it says on the packet, even if you didn’t speak a word of English and someone said it to you, you would know what it meant. Its one of those words that’s all in the tone and the facial expression. You know what someone is saying when they use the word ‘odd’. The world is not full of those words, there aren’t many. It is a word I love but am desperately afraid of. I live in terror of the hint of an expression of it behind my back as I leave the office kitchen.

Where was I? Friday, yes, odd, yes, Friday. He was back. Neon man in all his yellow luminescence. I wanted to talk about him. I would have talked about him, but no one met my eyes all day. I stood in a world of my own on the way home on the tube. I should give him a name. He should have a name-my first thought was Leon, but no I didn’t want a name that rhymed, that always lacks dignity. But a bit of alliteration is ok, I settled on Norman-Norman Neon. It had a ring to it. It flowed. You could introduce yourself using that name at a dinner party and everyone would know you were in sales, probably electrical goods or medical supplies. Smooth talking Norman Neon. I liked him. Underneath the impeccable natty suit were tubes of light gold, he was well dressed, he talked a lot but he only truly lit up when I was in the room.

 Then I thought, Norman and I, we should have dinner. But where would you take a neon man for dinner. You can’t take him to just anywhere-for one thing he probably needs a continual power source and also what if you go somewhere with bigger neon than he has. That would be embarrassing. You need somewhere quiet and atmospheric although not too dark because you can’t have him lighting up the room for everyone else. He would be great in a club, kind of like your own personal strobe but more low key, perhaps we could just skip dinner. I wonder if you put neon on your sofa if it scorches it?

I missed my tube stop thinking about Norman. I had to remind myself that he wasn’t real. The thing is I kind of liked him. I liked him a lot. I could hear myself laughing with him as we walked home to my flat, laughing because Norman was better at killing insects than any man I ever met. He could zap a fly with any part of his tubular body. I could see myself chatting to him getting a kind of low level buzzing in response. He has a kind of gruffness to that buzz that could keep me awake at night. I could see him sitting on my couch. Bright yellow, lighting up the room. I would never need to change a bulb again.

I thought about him all weekend. It was ‘odd’ –that word again. By Monday I was desperate. When I first got to work he wasn’t there and I was crushed. But then there he was again at 11am, yellow and luminous and brightening my day. Filling my dreams with walks in the park and I don’t know –just the idea of having your own personal light source. By Tuesday I was in love. Norman and I were –well it was destiny. But Wednesday-Wednesday-I will never forget Wednesday. He wasn’t there on Wednesday, like the lover that ghosted you. He was just gone. I was heart broken. I couldn’t concentrate. Where was Norman?

I went home. Sat on the sofa, drank hot chocolate, watched TV and well I cried. Thursday. Thursday. There was no one I could talk to. No one I could tell. I just had to act as if nothing had happened. But Norman, Norman was gone. There was still no Norman. He was gone and I had to face it, maybe forever.

It was Friday that I resolved to find out. To go there. Directions are not my thing but I figured out the building and where I thought it should be and off I went. And. Well. Love is weird. I could see the building. I had come slightly the wrong way and ended up at the back of it and not the front and there was a skip. I. You understand. It was destiny. There he was. In the skip. Abandoned. A strange outline of a man. All neon. Tubes of light, dulled by lack of electrical current. So. I. I took him. I tried to ask. There was no one around. I just. I took him. I didn’t go back to work. I got on the tube and took him home. I called in sick for the afternoon, said I had fallen and hurt my ankle. I plugged him in. I lit him up. It was an amazing moment. There we were for the first time, me human and him neon. It was a beautiful moment.

And now, now we are together. And everything is fine. I plug him in. He lights up the room and it is how its meant to be. We watch TV.  And everything is fine. I have searched the internet, there is no one like me. I get that. I am ‘odd’ truly ‘odd’. It is a good word. I savour it when I look in the mirror sometimes. I smile slightly at the faint glance as I leave the office kitchen, the one that says they are about to use that word. Sometimes at work- I talk about Norman as if he a human. When they ask me for a picture, I show them a picture of my neon man. No one ever knows what to say. I look at them –all flustered-reddening. Trying to think of the words, how to say, that isn’t a, he isn’t, you can’t, its not. All those sentences they can’t say. Odd, how they stumble over all those words. And Norman and I –we are happy.