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Please, excuse my shadow. I can’t 

stop leaving. I don’t know how

to name what I don’t know

well enough to render

in a single sitting. Every poem

about us seems an impossible labor,

like forgetting the face

of the sea, or trying to find

a more perfect name for water.

What could put an end to the worst of the internet? Social and economic collapse would do it, or perhaps a series of antitrust cases followed by a package of hard regulatory legislation that would somehow also dismantle the internet’s fundamental profit model. At this point it’s clear that collapse will almost definitely come first. Barring that, we’ve got nothing except our small attempts to retain our humanity.

MR. GREEN: Two verbs! Granted, they are irregular. But that’s no excuse, for these forms —

Do. Not. Change.

They are immutable!

More reliable than the people in your lives. More stable than governments. More dependable than churches or philosophies. These verbs are your deliverance!

Commit these patterns to memory. Determine the person, the number, the tense. Then remember the form. That’s all there is. To conjugation.

Conjugation. Such a beautiful word. Such a beautiful act. 

ANTHONY
I’m sorry, sir.
I don’t think I understand.

MATT
She took her kid and left in the middle of the night.
To go where?
She’s in the middle of the desert.

ANTHONY
Sir, if I may.

MATT
You may.

ANTHONY
Her leaving
What does any of that have to do with us?

MATT
What does that have to do with us?
We did that, Anthony.
We broke that family up.

A moment.

MATT
Do you not understand that?

ANTHONY
It doesn’t matter what I understand, sir.

The movie is entertaining and intriguing. At four points during it I rotate my eyes to observe Rebecca. The monitor is mirrored on her glasses and behind them her eyes are very wide. Although I am a more experienced programmer, I am certain her ideas on the movie are more complex than mine.

When I was a boy and I sang, my voice felt to me like a leak sprung from a small and secret star hidden somewhere in my chest and whatever there was about me that was fragile disappeared when my mouth opened and I let the voice out. We learned, we were prisons for our voices. You could want to try and make sure the door was always open. Be like a bell, Big Eric would say. But he didn’t know. We weren’t something struck to make a tone. We were strike and instrument both. If you can hold the air and shake it to make something, you learn, maybe you can make anything. Maybe you can walk out of here on this thin, thin air.