This is a history of telegraphy. This is a history of suicidality.
This is a history of a cathedral. This is a history of women’s
handbags. This is a history of being dragged out, kicking
and screaming. This is a history of the boogeyman. This is
a history of Wellbutrin. This is a history of the Cold War.
This is a history of information technology. This is a history
of biracial subjectivity. This is a history of microgravity.
This is a history of the digital texture of connection.
—
To be sung out loud:
Small craft in a harbor, that’s still and serene
Give no indication what their ways have been
They rock at their moorings all nestled in dreams
Away from the roll of the sea
I have dreams where I wake up and don’t use my smartphone. And
it’s not that I just don’t use it, it’s that the phone isn’t there at all—as
though it has gone away because I have surpassed the need for it.
I cried once, thinking about how I will probably wake up every day of
my life and feel the need to check my email—thinking that I’ll probably
die with a phone on my nightstand.
But I only cried just that one time.
Google makes money by observing our observing. Each of our
searches and clicks are aggregated, recorded, and then sold to
advertisers. The advertisers use the information to deploy highly
specific marketing to our browsers and email inboxes. Every time
we google something, we are performing unpaid labor.
In the same vein, social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and X,
formerly known as Twitter, foster a digital environment for a novel,
late-capitalist subject called the “prosumer.” A prosumer is an
individual who both consumes and produces content on a social
media platform, thus performing unpaid labor in two ways at once.

I am currently in pursuit of the silhouette of an archive. I am currently
making my own samsara. Just the extant tape, tacks, nails, and staples
on telephone poles, lampposts, and stoplights. I am currently
making my own samsara. I am currently in pursuit of the razor-thin
shadow of a paper trail. I am currently making my own samsara.
Just the evidence that someone, anyone, had a message worthy of
at least one other person. I am currently making my own samsara.
I am currently in pursuit of the footprint of our primordial desire to
connect with another. I am currently making my own samsara. Just
the tokens left behind before our archives stopped casting shadows.

Get your copy of A Solar Flare today!
“A Solar Flare is a kind of commonplace book, a well of collected knowledge, that unlike internet search engines and social media algorithms curbs rather than fuels ‘prosumerism.’ Its white space and sparsity is an invitation to pause and observe, memory receding like a wave, or the petals of a lotus opening one at a time.”
—Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint, author of Names for Light