Where is the bank of common knowledge? I see it across the screen, and it disappoints me. The arguments – they are so small, so minor and yet I have seen it before, a metamorphosis of the original. SHOUTS at the whisper of a posted comment. The conversations are unaccounted for. My words lack the spit which punctuates every syllable of a tabled conversation, so why not say the deep seeded? He did, and I can too. As I supposedly read my feed, the shock interferes. I compare it to the face-to-face conversation, a social interaction which calls for a degree of active questioning. To speak is a kind of thought. Figuring emphasis alongside rhetoric in attempt of the idea. For the most part, I am aware of the sentences I string, and there is also a second thinking, following the moments a word leaves its chamber. It is an opportunity to adjust the actions that follow, to either wane or close an opinion. I can SHOUT the word or warp my lip to stumble something I’m unsure of. I feel a part of the conversation, capable of apology and refinement. If I feel strongly? Scream it. If not, don’t. I know what I am doing and in many ways I can be sure of a word’s direction, of its landing and the reaction. It all plays out before me, to listen and see the other. Although right now I can’t see the other. The closest thing is a mirage of my face in the black square ahead of me. My chin lined against the edge of a home button, eyebrows slunk between the volume and an off button. A microphone stalks the centre of my forehead and small whisps of hair imitate scratches of a sharp finger. There is nothing in the screen, only a reflection of myself and record of my action. The rest is simply light through glass. A membrane of an imagined back and forth. And let the spit dissolve. The word and the idea dies with it too. I miss the face and the sound. Without it, the second thinking I often to disregard is outright missing. When the face is removed from the commune, so too is my role in auto-editing my words. In painting the The comments which leave me agasp are here to stay. Pixels are light, they exist beyond a measure of mass and decay. They are here to stay. I like that. The idea I propose, I want it to stay. No one will question the usefulness of my words. That time has passed. Freud or myself, someone will listen, maybe only to the unqualified latter. The qualification is no longer a requirement for opinion.