Gloucester Street Spring Break Journals (Day Seven)

I like the sound of traffic at 2 AM. There isn't much of it downtown. Downtown Ottawa shuts down around midnight, after most of the buses have stopped running. Lately I've been falling asleep to the sound of snow plows, but that won't last forever.

When I go for periods without working or going to school, I tend to gravitate towards keeping late night hours. I had no daytime obligations for a few months last fall and would often stay up past 3 o'clock in the morning. If I was at Andrea's, I would watch TV, or go on the Internet.

I'm on the Internet a lot, for hours at a time each day. It's been that way for years now. And it strikes me that I spend an inordinate amount of time online checking to see if I'm being noticed. Recognition of me, as a living, breathing person, more often comes in the page view as it clicks up, or the view counter as it moves forward, or the notification of a comment, or an email in the inbox. It is beyond being noticed - it is being seen. I know I am alive when I am seen by other people, and my computer tells me when I am seen. Without it, I would be invisible.

It is an isolating experience. I often feel alone. And I'm okay with that, I think. It only gets to me when I fool myself into thinking that no one cares about me. 95% of the time, I believe I am cared for. And I think that's all anyone can hope for. Luckily, fascination is high on my list of character traits, if it could be called that. I am fascinated by the idea that I can be whoever I want to be on it. It's a new world. A new environment. I can change a person's perception of me with the click of a mouse or the clatter of a few keys in succession. And all along, I seem to carry with me the belief that I'm the only one who thinks about the Internet that way, that everyone else is simply using it as a tool to replace the post office and diaries and telephones and television. They stay who they are. I become someone else.

I can pretend to be here. I can pretend to disappear. I can make my life sound full or empty. I can proclaim to be in love or that I feel lost. I have over 300 people on my Facebook friends list. More than two-thirds of those people will never know the difference between my online identity and my real life identity. They will know that I make music and watch movies and read books and that's it. They will know the same 25 things about me that everyone else I tagged knows. It's how we get to know a person these days, perhaps because there are more people now than there's ever been (a fact that seems shocking to me at 2 AM on a deserted downtown Ottawa street).

What I really want out of life is to be thought of while I'm alive and to be remembered when I'm no longer living. That's my ego talking. What I really want out of life is to fall in love and eventually raise a family. That's my society talking. What I really want out of life is a great job and enough money to take care of me in old age. That's my government talking. What I really want out of life is to create art. That's my heart. Art in everything and everyone, in every thought and emotion and belief. Quiet moments of grace. A trembling of the hand. The way the sun hits the faces of people during sunsets. The look of Andrea's teeth between her lips. Note changes. C to B to A to A flat. When I woke up, there seemed such promise. It seemed like nothing I did would change this. I put my hand through a running faucet and flinched to feel it: a final notice. I put my shoes on and hit the pavement. I passed a stranger and looked right at her. If I could capture this pregnant moment, I'd give birth to it and never feel alone again.

Something like that. The waiting for a loved one to return. Thinking of her. Being thought of. Remembering the sound of traffic at 2 AM.