I am haunted — haunted by tales of electronically-charged change. Haunted by promises of formlessness, disguise, hidden identity. I can't shake the longing to 'beam up,' to pass through time and form, to function like a charged-up device without a shell.
I am haunted by devices. Like a problem child carrying a blanket, I drag the device everywhere, stuffed in my pocket, clutched in my hand, inserted in my ear, [wondering about other options…]. I speak to my devices. I hold them, I push all their buttons.
My devices are haunted. These things that I carry project voices and words. I listen for their call. [They don't seem human.] What is this thing that wants to get out?
The haunting of devices drifts through and collapses time — imbuing the present with presence. Technology structuring history with radical shifts. Miniaturized and ubiquitous, it spins the head of Benjamin's angel.
My devices haunt houses and highways and horizons, endowing place with a new sense of space. They are here and there, and somehow nowhere. They create a new here where I am there.
This haunting makes a sound. It crackles in the air. Snaps and buzzes and hums. It even seems to make the silence. Silent movement, buzzing paths, humming networks, crackling connections, snapping disconnections.
written in La Jolla, California, 2002
