Let’s face it: the odds are not good. If you be­lieve that there is only one per­son out there that is your true love, this is worse than find­ing a nee­dle in a haystack. There are al­most 7 bil­lion peo­ple in the world. And they speak over 6,000 lan­guages. Even if you and your mate are tri-lin­gual ge­niuses, the odds of shar­ing a tongue are slim. And what about age? What are the chances that you and your mate would even find each other?

Even if we allow for there to be many great mates out there for each per­son, what are the chances of run­ning into the best matches in your own city? How many peo­ple do you meet every day? 10? 15? 25? (Stud!) Maybe you meet a few hun­dred peo­ple every year. And there are how many peo­ple in your city? 1 mil­lion? 2 mil­lion? Do you like those odds 500:1,000,000? Wouldn’t you want to up the odds a lit­tle, get some help brows­ing through all the pos­si­bil­i­ties, and ex­tend­ing your net­work be­yond your school, your work, your friends, and friends-of-friends. I know I would.

Ro­mance is sup­posed to be an art form. Pas­sion. En­ergy. Elec­tric­ity. Chem­istry. Yet, there’s noth­ing sexy about trolling bars for hook-ups or blind dates with a coworker’s room­mate. Nor is there in the prospect of on­line dat­ing. Let’s be hon­est, this is an equa­tion (or maybe a game) and you have to fig­ure out how it works. Tweak the in­puts, alter the process, toss in a few buzz words, take a few more pho­tos… You’ve got to not only find the right match for you — you also have to be right for them. You’ve got to at­tract and woo them with text mes­sages and “winks ” and “flirts ” and su­per­fi­cial chat­ting. Help, please! Search en­gine op­ti­miza­tion and mar­ket­ing con­sult­ing never sounded so sexy.

Some may fear the techno-poca­lypse, as we be­come ever more de­pen­dent upon our phones, com­put­ers, ro­bots. To them, on­line dat­ing is the next step in the demise of human cul­ture. “Turn the fate of our love life, our hearts, our emo­tional well-being over to al­go­rithms? Crazy!” But think about this: even if it is an evil, self-in­ter­ested com­puter run­ning these sites, it’s still going to work out for you. The site’s suc­cess is en­tirely de­pen­dent on you find­ing a true match.

There will al­ways be a de­mand for love and match­ing. There will al­ways be a steady stream of cus­tomers. But, today’s cus­tomers will only come to your site if peo­ple are hav­ing suc­cess there — if peo­ple are find­ing matches, if they no longer need the site. So, even if on­line dat­ing is a plan for even­tual world dom­i­na­tion hatched by ro­bots, it still wants you to have a hot date. Pretty much a win-win.

Sure, it’s been a bumpy road so far, but I can’t give up yet. Any new tech­nol­ogy takes a lit­tle while to get used to. Would you ex­pect to tie your hover-shoes with your bionic arm on the first try? No. And any­one who says they were like Lance Arm­strong the first time they jumped on a bike is an ass­hole.

It takes time, but it’ll be worth it. On­line dat­ing is like a fu­tur­is­tic ice cream ma­chine that has the abil­ity to make any fla­vor you could imag­ine. All you have to do is type in a 4-digit code. Prob­lem is, it didn’t come with a man­ual, just told you 0001 is choco­late and 0002 is vanilla. Now you’re left play­ing trial-and-error. 3958? Cookie dough, damn. 5869? Cof­fee, shit. 4857? 0192? 5867?… Even­tu­ally you’ll find your mint choco­late cookie, it just may take a few hun­dred failed con­coc­tions first.

I had a crush. He was a bearded Sloven­ian, no­tably di­sheveled usu­ally. He would never know my name, but I read his work with the thrill of know­ing I was too far out, over my head, get­ting in on a se­cret I didn’t yet un­der­stand. When he came to speak at Pow­ell’s, my god what a thrill. I now know a bit more: what it would have been like at ages 11 or 12, front and cen­ter, Back Street Boys Into the Mil­len­nium Tour. Enter fan­boy.

He fid­geted and spouted, fill­ing the air with in­tri­cate, bab­bling the­ory, with con­fi­dent para­noia, with dirty Balkan jokes (How does a Mon­tene­grin mas­tur­bate? He digs a hole and waits for an earth­quake). We lis­tened, al­most com­pre­hend­ing, like in­fants used to Moth­erese talk­ing to an un­bend­ing fa­ther. Chil­dren in the au­di­ence tried to ask ques­tions, par­rot­ing His dif­fi­cult lan­guage, but not quite break­ing through. I wanted to tell Him: write every­day write down every thought that crosses your mind write and send it to me. I wanted to be closer to Him, my philoso­pher.

What could have made me hap­pier than the day I found His Twit­ter: @[He]speaks. A dig­i­tal win­dow! An ex­tended hand! A place to just check in once in a while (every­day). It was all there: end­less ref­er­ences, his fa­vorite youtube videos, heady ban­ter: I fed off it. Maybe I should have known what would come next. After all, his last book jacket showed him seated be­fore a mir­ror that re­flected only the chair. The book’s title: [He] does not exist.

I was still sigh­ing over a par­tic­u­larly charm­ing post, “Writ­ing an essay on the potato, the first post­mod­ern veg­etable.” when some­thing went wrong. We were back where we started, it was all be­yond me: the curt mes­sage from Twit­ter, the stan­dard robin’s egg back­ground, that’s all there was. Oh and the bird, that in­fu­ri­at­ing bird, that un­wel­come, un­speak­able, tweet­ing lit­tle bird.

``When I heard the sound of the bell ring­ing, there was no I, and no bell, just the ring­ing."

I'm writ­ing this piece with my toes in bril­liant white sand.  I'm on a flaw­less beach in Thai­land, with a noisy jun­gle to the back and over­hang­ing lime­stone cliffs to the sides.  My net­book is pick­ing up five bars of wire­less in­ter­net.  

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In Jan­u­ary 2011, Barack Obama de­clared that in­ter­net ac­cess is a fun­da­men­tal human right.  Also in Jan­u­ary, stu­dents in Tunisia and Egypt, using cell phones and so­cial net­work­ing sites like Face­book and Twit­ter, started po­lit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tions.  These rev­o­lu­tions have been suc­cess­ful, and have spread to other dic­ta­tor­ships in the Mid­dle East.  In Feb­ru­ary, Egypt's Pres­i­dent Mubarak shut down some cell and in­ter­net ser­vice, in an at­tempt to in­ter­fere with the pro­test­ers’ abil­ity to or­ga­nize.  But it was too late.

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In Thai­land, I've been work­ing on math re­search for my PhD, av­er­ag­ing 35 hours of re­search each week.  Today I'm post­ing and read­ing ques­tions on the forum Math Over­flow; I'm email­ing and flesh­ing out a wiki that some U.S. west-coast grad stu­dents and I are using to or­ga­nize a sum­mer school in Au­gust; I've down­loaded some ar­ti­cles to read later.  In a few days, I'll video chat with my PhD ad­vi­sor, using a vyew.​com meet­ing room that al­lows us to share screens as we pore over my up­loaded notes.  And I do all this with my toes in the sand.  Most of my re­search is done with a pen and note­book, but math­e­mat­i­cal con­cepts are so in­ter­con­nected, and the prac­ti­tion­ers so in­ter­de­pen­dent, that with­out in­ter­net re­sources I would get nowhere.  

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Cell phones and Face­book ac­com­plished in Egypt what $400+ bil­lion dol­lars of Amer­i­can med­dling  could not ac­com­plish in Iraq.  Em­pow­ered cit­i­zens took con­trol of their own des­tiny, and brought about rev­o­lu­tion by the peo­ple and for the peo­ple.

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This beach, Railay,with more of a tourist pres­ence , has a few beach­side restau­rants with free wifi.  But I'm stay­ing on the next beach down, Ton­sai.  Both beaches can be reached only by boat from the main­land.  There are no cars or hot show­ers.  On Ton­sai, ac­com­mo­da­tion is in jun­gle tree­houses or thatch beach bun­ga­lows, vis­ited nightly by mon­keys or igua­nas, re­spec­tively.  We get elec­tric­ity, from a gen­er­a­tor, only be­tween 6pm and 6am.  There are a hand­ful of restau­rants serv­ing spicy Thai food and fresh fruit smooth­ies.  My only ex­penses are food and lodg­ing, and these add up to about $12 each day.  I'm very happy.

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A re­cent Wired ar­ti­cle in­ter­views John Ar­quilla, a lead­ing mil­i­tary fu­tur­ist, dis­cussing the tremen­dous po­lit­i­cal power that in­ter­net ac­cess af­fords both a cit­i­zenry and a ruler.  In the Egypt­ian ex­am­ple, the US mil­i­tary con­sid­ered sev­eral covert op­tions that would've re­stored con­nec­tiv­ity to the Egypt­ian pro­test­ers.

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Ton­sai sup­ports a small in­ter­na­tional colony of rock climbers.  Peo­ple come from all over (I've counted over 20 coun­tries...), and stay for months.  We climb on cliffs by the beach, climb up through caves, climb over 50-foot sta­lac­tites that are grow­ing sta­lag­mites that are grow­ing sta­lac­tites, climb over deep water with­out ropes and jump in.  The rock is white, black, red, or­ange, and green.

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For ex­am­ple, sup­pose you have been using cell phones, Twit­ter and Face­book to or­ga­nize your rev­o­lu­tion - plan­ning protest lo­gis­tics, spread­ing the word, check­ing in with co-con­spir­a­tors.  But the ruth­less dic­ta­tor then pulls the plug, and you be­come dis­con­nected and help­less.  

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Every day, a few climbers make a pil­grim­age from Ton­sai to Railay, to sit down with their elec­tron­ics and bask in the in­vis­i­ble waves.   This 20-minute hike con­sists of scram­bling over a rocky and slip­pery head­land, or, if you're lucky and it's low tide, wad­ing around

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But then, sud­denly, your cell phone beeps to life.  Your smart­phone has full 3G cov­er­age, and starts re­ceiv­ing texts and up­dat­ing your sta­tus.  Even the GPS works.  In fif­teen min­utes, you've had enough time to do your part in mov­ing the rev­o­lu­tion for­ward.  A triad of un­manned drone planes has been fly­ing low, cir­cling above you.  On their bel­lies are high-power an­ten­nae that beam down wire­less cov­er­age.  The planes move on, and again you are dis­con­nected.  But not for long. From Moldova and Iran to Egypt and Tunisia, these new-school rev­o­lu­tions re­quire re­cep­tion, not guns and tanks.

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The math­e­mati­cian, the climber, the rev­o­lu­tion­ary - all prac­tice a soli­tary art, and all are de­pen­dent on the thin threads .

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Wel­come to Minecraft Beta, a multi-player web browser video game that lets you join with friends and fam­ily from any­where on the globe to build your vir­tual col­lec­tive world. My brother bought me a gift code to the game for Christ­mas, which gives me ac­cess to his and his friends’ server.

He walks me through their king­dom-of-sorts. It all starts with har­vest­ing trees and min­ing cob­ble­stone, and a spe­cial thing called a craft­ing chest, which al­lows you to mix basic ma­te­ri­als in spe­cific pat­terns to cre­ate more com­plex tools or ma­te­ri­als. From the­ses first re­sources avail­able for use, my brother has some­how cre­ated an elab­o­rate glass house with large pieces of framed art­work and an in­door veg­etable gar­den. The more you cre­ate, the more you can har­vest and the more you har­vest, the more you can cre­ate. Basic ma­te­ri­als com­bine and form tools and tools help you har­vest pre­vi­ously un-har­vestable items. You can also har­vest fire and use heat as the cat­a­lyst for cre­ation.

My brother leads me through an ad­join­ing room, where he has built a mu­seum to show­case the items one can make in the game (the dis­play wall seems in­fi­nitely long). On the op­po­site wall he has painted a rain­bow. His friend Mario, who built a cas­tle, is his clos­est neigh­bor and to­gether they con­structed a long, nar­row stone bridge that joins their two homes. Of course, no game would be com­plete with­out a dark el­e­ment to pro­vide a lit­tle dan­ger. Chris, who has just joined the tour, re­minds me to be­ware of the zom­bie mon­sters that come out at night­fall.

Minecraft sets a frame­work where so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion must be chore­o­graphed, re­gard­less of the level of in­ten­tion. I asked my brother a se­ries of ques­tions to find out how his world ac­tu­al­izes that or­ga­ni­za­tion:

Are there any dis­tinctly com­mu­nity struc­tures?

We built a “safe house” that peo­ple can stay in when they first come to life. It pro­vides shel­ter from the mon­sters at night and has a stash of basic liv­ing sup­plies. A path of torches leads you from the spot where you first gen­er­ate to the door of the house. I also built a giant roller coaster that stretches from the top of a moun­tain and winds around the land. Any­one can ride it if they have a friend to give them a push at the start.

Do you ever build pro­jects at the same time?

Every­one’s sched­ule is dif­fer­ent, so it’s dif­fi­cult to be in the world at the same time. Usu­ally, you’ll just log on and see what oth­ers have done in your ab­sence. Con­se­quently, there aren’t many struc­tures that we build col­lec­tively, al­though Chris and I re­cently started build­ing a col­lec­tion of sky­scrap­ers to­gether. Maybe ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion would help, but it’s hard to com­mu­ni­cate with only text chat­ting. Not every­one agrees on de­tails and aes­thet­ics ei­ther, so peo­ple usu­ally avoid a po­ten­tially hairy sit­u­a­tion.

Does your group have a forum?

We send text mes­sages be­fore we are about to play to see if the other per­son can meet us in the world. We also leave short notes in each other’s homes.

Do you share re­sources? Do you have a col­lec­tive re­source stor­age area?

We ini­tially had pub­lic chests of re­sources, but it was hard to re­mem­ber to fill it, so they often ended up empty. We built them so peo­ple who weren’t pre­pared could have basic liv­ing sup­plies in emer­gency sit­u­a­tions. That fell by the way­side, but it’s an un­der­stood rule that every­one’s per­sonal stash in their home is open to any­one. For rare items it’s cour­tesy to ask or to leave an “IOU” note by the chest().

Is there a de­ci­sion-by-con­sen­sus ap­proach to new struc­tures?

Right now Chris and I are col­lab­o­rat­ing on build­ing a col­lec­tion of sky­scrap­ers, which took some plan­ning, but usu­ally no, and it’s caused prob­lems in the past. One time, my friend built a giant mon­ster-har­vest­ing ma­chine in the sky(), but he un­know­ingly built it over Mario’s house, which caused a deep shadow to fall on the prop­erty. Mon­sters ma­te­ri­al­ized in this dark­ness and roamed the prop­erty, and trees couldn’t grow. Both in­di­vid­u­als re­fused to de­stroy their cre­ations, and for a while Mario stub­bornly lived in per­pet­ual dan­ger. He even­tu­ally left and started build­ing a cas­tle, but it caused some drama for a bit.

Mon­sters and roller coast­ers aside, this vir­tual world re­sem­bles the ide­al­is­tic mus­ings my friends and I have about form­ing an in­ten­tional com­mu­nity. I have al­ways been fas­ci­nated by all things civic, the dy­namic that oc­curs when in­di­vid­ual minds come to­gether to cre­ate some­thing be­yond any one per­son’s po­ten­tial and the so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion that must take place. This game of­fers many of these pos­si­bil­i­ties for col­lec­tive in­vest­ment in a shared com­mu­nity ideal, for cre­at­ing through com­bined ef­forts by like-minded in­di­vid­u­als. Minecraft ac­cesses a deeply buried and very real de­sire we all share about com­mu­nal liv­ing.

I play be­cause I get to par­tic­i­pate in this vi­sion, and be­cause I can spend time with my brother, who lives 2,000 miles away, and the friends we grew up with that are scat­tered across the na­tion. Al­though there is noth­ing tac­tile about our in­ter­ac­tions, my mind fills in the gaps from past mem­o­ries: he might have cat hair on his clothes or smell like grilling meats. These pro­jected mem­o­ries are sat­is­fac­tory and there are enough out­lets in the game for in­di­vid­ual idio­syn­crasies to be ex­pressed. All in all, I can run around this vir­tual world with a sem­blance of a brother. His friends’ per­son­al­i­ties are like­wise ac­cu­rately por­trayed by their cre­ations in this game that of­fers lim­it­less cre­ative po­ten­tial.

The Car­mena Waltz, com­posed in 1902, fea­tures a smit­ten girl caught up in deliri­ous in­fat­u­a­tion. The song is staged at a soiree where music and moon beams in­tox­i­cate.

Amid the throng,
many, many are fair.
Bright flow­erets twined in raven hair!
Dark eyes sparkle and gleam,
soft lips breath ten­der sighs…

We imag­ine our­selves swoon­ing in cho­rus amid the lush pageantry; the plot thick­ens.

Ah! Now rings a voice I know from every voice apart!
Through the or­ange grove he has­tens, he is com­ing…
O, my heart!

I have a friend who’s been seek­ing a lover. She uti­lizes dat­ing sites and does a cer­tain amount of Face­book stalk­ing. Often our con­ver­sa­tions me­an­der to the next step in her mis­sion to re­trieve a lover. True to our cul­ture of im­me­di­ate sat­is­fac­tion, she wants the dirt tout suite. Even be­fore the first date, when she’s merely ex­am­in­ing prospects, she seeks the rich­est caches of in­for­ma­tion. Who are they? What are their goals? How much in­vest­ment are they will­ing to put into a re­la­tion­ship? What are their in­se­cu­ri­ties?

One can so quickly dis­cern mul­ti­ple lay­ers of a per­son’s per­son­al­ity in today’s dig­i­tal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of so­ci­etal net­works. The weeks, months, or even years-long work of ask­ing around with the bar­keep, your mother’s cousin, your neigh­bors, or the town gos­sip has taken a back seat to the dig­i­tal gos­sip reel. When my friend signs in, she re­acts to these po­ten­tial lovers’ im­ages, sta­tis­tics, gen­eral out­look, sense of humor. At once you can see sev­eral styles of a per­son’s two di­men­sional fac­sim­ile, their body and ges­tural stance in photo. You can see the in­ter­twined streams of their his­to­ries: em­ploy­ment, fam­ily ties, un­named re­la­tion­ships. You’ll see towns they visit, hob­bies they pur­sue. Some list pock­ets of in­for­ma­tion as teases, while oth­ers still in­flate their pos­i­tive traits with bias. Some chose to re­veal the very crux of their per­son­al­i­ties: their hubris, their deep­est de­sires.

It’s not that the ma­jor­ity of hu­man­ity now starts the great ro­mances of their lives dig­i­tally, but the in­ter­net is a tool we now use for love among so many other in­ter­ac­tions. We talk, plan, and scope each other out via the in­ter­net. We have the op­tion to see our so­cial net­work through a fil­tered view un­avail­able to our lady in Car­mena. If she did fil­ter out peo­ple in her com­mu­nity (he should love the smell of or­ange blos­soms, adore my sparkling eyes, be be­tween the ages of 23 and 35, iden­tify as a ‘ca­sual so­cial drinker’ and non-smoker, have no chil­dren, and live within 100 — no, no — 150 miles of zip code 98501) would she have had any­body left? How many peo­ple did she have to look through to find love? How many dif­fer­ent part­ners and cities did she live in as a sin­gle in­de­pen­dent woman? Could her choices have in­cluded four hun­dred new “friends” she made after at­tend­ing a year at a uni­ver­sity?

When I sing the waltz, my senses vol­un­teer them­selves to in­ter­pret the lyrics. I am ex­cited by the sen­sual fra­grance of the or­ange grove, my eyes de­light in think­ing of or­nately styled black locks. I imag­ine the moon’s beams seem­ing to high­light the el­e­gant de­signs of human faces. When I am using all of my senses to be pre­sent in a mo­ment, my emo­tions swell and it seems nat­ural that love would fol­low, or so we are told in songs like Car­mena. But through the ad­vent of dat­ing web­sites and dig­i­tal so­ci­ety I have to won­der: is it an­ti­quated to have to be phys­i­cally pre­sent with some­one to have the bio­chem­i­cal in­ter­change of falling in love? Will we even will judge our next mates with the phys­i­cal world as pri­mary cri­te­ria?

Ul­ti­mately it takes a mix of every sen­sual and log­i­cal in­ter­pre­ta­tion mech­a­nism work­ing in a mad frenzy to fall in love as hu­mans. We know that soft lips breath­ing ten­der sighs are in­fi­nitely more sway­ing than a poke, an email, or a sext. But the dig­i­tal so­ci­ety and our dig­i­tal pres­ence al­lows us to flirt and show­case our charms like no other species or gen­er­a­tion of human has ever been able to.

Seven days in the bot­tom. Land of the hoodoo stone, the Col­orado River, and noth­ing much of human form or func­tion. Down the Bright Angel, quickly leav­ing those mule-shit stained and well-tram­pled miles be­hind, off over the rolling Kaibab Plateau, with a dis­tant no­tion of ex­it­ing up from through the wild boul­ders of the New Hance canyon. Af­ter­noons in the cool creek beds worn smooth by ages of slow sea­sonal trickle, idling in the shade while our clothes dry in the sun. Morn­ings spent climb­ing the same rocks to greet the warm­ing sun. We could live here, all agreed, at each camp. Nights spent watch­ing the dis­tant cliffs flare up and then fade to re­veal a star strewn sky bounded only by the dark lines of the canyon’s dis­tant rims.

The top. We wan­der the Grand View Point Gro­cery and Gift like lost chil­dren of some never-con­tacted tribe on an acid trip. Our eyes flicker madly from brightly col­ored ob­ject to shiny doo­dad. We stand frozen at the doors of the re­frig­er­ated cases. We oc­ca­sion­ally stop in the mid­dle of the aisle to gape at the flo­res­cent lights while the mid­west­ern tourists stare at us. (But there is music com­ing out of the ceil­ing here). They found us in the ed­dies be­tween the over­sized tshirt racks and led each of us out by the hand to the bus bound for Phoenix. I don’t think any­one man­aged to buy so much as a candy bar.

On the bus ride across the steam­ing as­phalt slapped over the rolling desert plain most of us are still a lit­tle out of sorts. Ex­cept Josh, who only yes­ter­day was cheer­ily lead­ing us all through an end­less af­ter­noon of wa­ter­less canyon. At the mo­ment I’m in no great shape my­self, but across the aisle of the bus Josh is dying. His heart is still down in the canyon and he is star­ing out the win­dow to­ward it with mourn­ful eyes and a pulse that is get­ting fainter by the mile. Due to some va­gary of time and bus sched­ules we hadn’t got­ten a chance to say a proper good­bye to the canyon, and it seemed that this sin of omis­sion might be mor­tal.

By evening we are talk­ing with gusto over food (and water, with ice) of the tri­als civ­i­liza­tion had in store for us. Josh, how­ever, re­mained in crit­i­cal con­di­tion through the evening and the whole trip home. Only mo­men­tum car­ried him back to his life in the city, where his heart re­turned to him a few days later.

Climb­ing out of the canyon seven years ago began my fas­ci­na­tion with the ques­tion “Why do we re­turn?” to the human-built, the tech­nol­ogy sat­u­rated (and pol­lu­tion and strip-mall rid­den) thing we call civ­i­liza­tion. We are seek­ing some­thing in the wilds that can­not be found in our cities and towns — much has been thought and said about this among the semi-feral. But why do we re­turn? I began to hunt for an­swers in books and con­ver­sa­tions. I watched the process of re­turn more closely in my­self and in friends. I left be­hind my own heart a few times. (I couldn’t tell you where — you’ll have to go and find it for your­self). I began to see the pat­terns.

At first the an­swers I found fo­cused on some re­stric­tion of the wilds:

We are out of food. –Ed Abbey

Mother na­ture’s quite a lady but you’re the one I need. –Johnny Cash

Wilder­ness … where man him­self is a vis­i­tor who does not re­main. –US Con­gress

and while these an­swers are prag­matic and po­etic, they are re­spond­ing to ex­treme cases. Abbey couldn’t get more food in his sheer-walled river canyon, but cer­tainly there are wild places where hu­mans can ob­tain food (say by hik­ing to the store in the near­est town). Cash’s croon­ing brings to mind the cow­boy era, but today there are plenty of ex­am­ples of com­pan­ion­ship in the wild. My wife is my part­ner on most ram­bles. Josh’s sweetie was with us on the Grand Canyon trip. Ray and Jenny Jar­dine have been ad­ven­tur­ing to­gether for decades. Wilder­ness has a fixed de­f­i­n­i­tion for the US gov­ern­ment but there are plenty of semi-wild, non-pub­lic lands that are not in­cluded How­ever, note that stays on Na­tional For­est land are lim­ited to 60 days in one place. This reg­u­la­tion has been used to evict (among oth­ers) Russ­ian home­stead­ers in Alaska try­ing to stake their claim in 2003.

After more se­ri­ous think­ing I re­al­ized that we re­turn be­cause civ­i­liza­tion pulls us back, not be­cause the wilds push us out. We are drawn to the bits of human beauty in the city, the bea­cons of the fu­ture, even though they are nested amid human-wrought de­struc­tion. The wilds have merely sharp­ened our artist’s eye, re­freshed our hope, topped off our soul’s abil­ity to be­lieve in a place where we can live in close prox­im­ity and in a fu­ture of well made and use­ful in­ven­tions.

On the great moun­tain (or desert plain or deep for­est) we ex­pe­ri­ence a place so un­touched by peo­ple and ma­jes­ti­cally in­dif­fer­ent to mankind that by sheer con­trast it brings us into focus. The wilds wipe clean the can­vas of our imag­i­na­tion (spong­ing away an over­flow­ing gray-tinted mess of roar­ing traf­fic, the old man with hat-in-hand on the cor­ner, the war on tv, and other pow­er­ful im­ages of world­sick­ness), and give us the abil­ity to start dream­ing a new mas­ter­piece. We are ready to find a bet­ter use for as­phalt, to re-chan­nel the the flows of power, to remix our mythol­ogy. We re­turn be­cause we be­long in both worlds: the wild and the fu­ture we are build­ing.

Sarah Stephens

I can­not talk to peo­ple; what I need has out­paced the spo­ken lan­guage. I com­pen­sate by drop­ping words, build­ing sen­tences like air­planes or beer cans, hand ges­tures all the time, a new apoc­o­pa­tion. Link­ing verbs, prepo­si­tions, ar­ti­cles, and most ad­verbs have dis­ap­peared from my speech. I talk in nouns and gut­tural in­to­na­tions. The com­mu­ni­ca­tion age has left me un­able to com­mu­ni­cate.

I’m not sure any­one un­der­stands our tech­nol­ogy any­more; every­one I’ve met who said they did was try­ing to sell me a cell­phone. I think we’re over­due for a dark age; I can­not be the only one who feels this. Peo­ple who slept through his­tory are doomed to have night­mares about it. Peo­ple like me. I used to dream about car crashes and now I dream in ring­tones. Maybe this is the year we go back to liv­ing in caves.

I went to the river park to take the aus­pices. The pi­geons were obese, the geese were dis­ori­ented and honk­ing at ter­ri­ers, a mur­mu­ra­tion of star­lings was shit­ting on every­thing. I wanted to spread the en­trails, ex­am­ine the hid­den parts, but there were some chil­dren, and a cop.

When I read the paper, I feel like a credit as­ses­sor look­ing at the bal­ance sheet for the Heaven’s Gate cult the day be­fore the comet passed. Like Cas­san­dra pac­ing be­hind the crenela­tions. The Ouija board di­rects me to web­sites whose do­mains have lapsed. If it’s all the same to you, I’d pre­fer to keep my proph­e­sies a lit­tle vague.

Trial by sea­weed. Trial by bed­bug. Trial by sur­rounded by wolves.

Scenes from a Bruck­heimer movie. Emetic tableaux. The sky­line will even it­self out, the works of man and dirt will con­verge, and it will hap­pen very quickly. There will be a lot of scream­ing. A lot of scream­ing.

I’m com­pil­ing a hand­book for the peo­ple who come out of the ashes, a Fox­fire for the dis­con­nected. The first chap­ter will be a les­son on pho­net­ics, pic­tures of dogs and frogs and logs and hope­fully a speaker can be­come a reader. Med­i­c­i­nal uses for cayenne pep­per and super glue. Syn­the­sis of al­garot and al­co­hol. Sem­a­phore and the hobo cant. Nut­meg and Aqua Dots. Germ the­ory might not make the cut. The last page will be Eliz­a­beth Bishop.

If I sur­vive, I’m going to adopt the boot­strap ver­nac­u­lar, the red­neck trochee, the hay in the cor­ner of the mouth. I’m going to pref­ace every­thing I say with “Now I think.” The over­alls I bought at Roses will no longer be in­ap­pro­pri­ate. I will not be­come a war­lord. I will not be­come a war­lord. I will be Kevin Cost­ner in the Post­man. I will not be Kevin Cost­ner in Wa­ter­world. I will try to be Kevin Cost­ner in Dances with Wolves but I will lack aplomb, though I will see all my pets shot in front of me. I may also be ac­cused of trea­son.

I will show up at a high school, pre­tend­ing to be mak­ing court ap­pointed amends, here to bear per­sonal tes­ti­mony that yes, metham­phet­a­mine is a ter­ri­ble life de­ci­sion. When I get up to that lectern, I’ll break from the script. I will tell them about Savonarola, Quis­ling, Tina Turner in Thun­der­dome, things you’d think they ought to learn and that you know they aren’t learn­ing. The prece­dent for the abuse of power in times of cri­sis. This is my com­mu­nity ser­vice, and I’ll be es­corted off the grounds for it.

I’ve been read­ing up on turnips be­cause you can grow them in the mid­dle of win­ter when there’s snow on the ground if you re­ally have to. Recipes for dan­de­lion soup; which mush­rooms won’t kill you or make you freak out. I’ve been buy­ing up hand tools at garage sales; I’ve been hedg­ing against the fu­ture.

I will be Mel Gib­son in the Road War­rior. I will not be Mel Gib­son in real life. I will be Sell­ers in Strangelove. I am Dr. Emanuel Bron­ner in Chicago in 1947. I am Howard Beale, res­ur­rected for an­other sea­son, come to make my wit­ness. The cur­rency will be blood, meted out in plas­tic shop­ping bags with ‘THANK YOU’ printed on the side.

Eric Ehrn­schwen­der