Authentication failure and I

Have I kept secret my relation-

ship with social media? I don't

mean D&B or Dilatory Domiciles,

much less alumni publications.

I mean, as you'd suppose, the

darling upstart industries with

GPS impertinence, which captured

friends I knew once, whom I nev-

er hear from anymore, because I

refuse authentication. Every day,

it's the same distraught message

from the leading app du jour, ex-

claiming that my authentication

has failed, in the belief (I'm 

only guessing) that I should be

sufficiently alarmed to leap in-

to corrective engulfment, to be

ratified as real, as if one's

surgeons, themselves, could not

be trusted to find a heartbeat

without this evidentiary trail.

Not to be pompous about it, it

suits me to dissatisfy entreat-

ies for absorption in this new

standard of trust. I remember

methods that work well enough

for that; and for recognition,

too. I do wish my telephones

would accept this reassurance,

but they persist in urging me,

disturbing me, distracting me

and worse, to immerse myself 

in a daisy chain illusion of

sustaining my relationships.

Not extremely likely, anyway,

that I'd be a fit for any-

one's corsage of intimates.

Who would forget Forster -

It would require a botanist

to do justice to these flow-

ers, but fortunately there

is no occasion to do justice

to flowers.

Oh, yes, indeed. I'm aware of

how much leverage I'm refus-

ing, how much linkage I am

squandering, for the projec-

tion of one's face into the

grand tier - or was it, upon

the stage, my cap's supposed

to be set? O, mirror, mirror,

marry me, at least my merry

effigy, today, lest all of

my society despair of improp-

riety in play. One does feel

somewhat Waldenish at times,

while others seem genuinely 

to thrill to this mindlessly

acquisitive, exhibitionist 

structuring of friendships. 

It lacks the requisite dignity

even for abstention to imply a 

characteristic of life, or any 

remark one could intend. 

                  Then the camel will shuffle 

                  up and down, dragging after 

                  him a wooden plough, and the 

                  Bedouin, guiding it, will sing 

                  tunes to the camel that he can 

                  only sing to the camel, because 

                  in his mind the tune and the 

                  camel are the same thing.

E.M. Forster

Pharos and Pharillon

1923©

Creative Arts Book

  Company, Berkeley, 1980©