Wander Willow
A Blog
#001 - Monica of Hoboken
Monica, her mind affixed to a stream of small video segments, yearns for belonging anywhere at all. She sits behind a wide, pale desk, berating customers via telephone who complain of pain in hopes to pacify her own. Monica, who lets herself do all the talking, simply knows more. She consumes enough information to feel full, knowing only she holds the desired answer.
Algorithms swim cross her eyes, informing her that she is strong, that her opinion matters, that she is beautiful. Anybody who says otherwise is wrong. "They can not feel pain the way I feel it", her mind perpetuates. Monica types and lets her keyboard decide, word by word, what to share about her predicament in between calls.
Old habits die hard. Monica carefully chooses a small set of moving images as file attachments before publicizing the short document, though not a moment before catching her soft, formless chin peering through the mirrored screen. Her hands feel its form. Cold and unwieldy. Monica's hands tilt the device to spill her image off screen right. Only she can see herself as she is.
Monica, remaining seated, rolls across anemic blue tile, from screen, to screen, to email, to call, to text, inevitably, back to her endless feedback loop she will digest in frequent meals. Impenetrable by naysayers, any impleasantry encountered is extinguished by a quick swipe off screen, reinforcing her Edenic concept of object impermanence.
When night falls, the office closes. The creeping darkness allows each screen to feel just a touch brighter. Nuance and softness around her fade into shadow. 'Away' from the devices means wading in the darkness, where silence and pause bring the threat of truth. Monica keeps the light on for a moment longer. Bright enough to conceal her own image cast upon each screen, toeing around the shadows. To defer the voices of anyone, including her own. To deny the pain, to keep swiping.