I have a hard time getting over how the Internet so radically changes how we look at people. Individuals aren't just individuals anymore; they're media conglomerates, with their own news department, with cut-and-paste YouTube/Flickr/MySpace syndication, a bundle of metatags. It's a highway and everyone is signage. I don't have to remember, because I can read their LiveJournal or Blogger and make them contemporary. I don't have to find a biking community to discover how not to get my ride stolen, or brake and turn properly, or fix a bent tire, because the community has been metabolized into a series of forums and web articles that can be accessed without ever staking a personal claim in it. It isn't the same as brick-and-blood living, clearly, and it has its limits, but remarkably, we still do adapt and come into ourselves in even the narrowest of bandwidths (ever felt a feeling in a telephone conversation? been moved by a book?).

I don't think I've really talked to anyone since I've come back to Hawaii. Of course I've made conversation, but really talked? No, not so much. Except perhaps with my parents, when my mom brought up she was considering the idea of moving away from Hawaii. Now that brought up some interesting feelings in me! My tendency is to say, to my own confusion, "no." But how can that be? I hardly even like the place! Or so I say. I don't like being here. I like re-imagining it. It's undeniably a part of my self, my narrative, and for that reason it will never be completely out of mind. I'm sure I'll come back, again and again, to reassert the truth of my stories. But what it comes down to is, living here for me is hardly more than an expensive, unforgiving mental game. There are friends who are in it, but I can't do much for them besides play along, and do my best to slyly hint at bigger possibilities, in my subtle flouting of the game's rules. So it wouldn't be tragic. But it would be something to notice, yes, if and when it happens. Isn't it funny how certain small things in life make themselves known like that?