snow maze

Here's a link to a commencement address given at Cornell University that references Thomas Pynchon, in particular The Crying Of Lot 49.

I found this link just as a thought entered my head, in response to a friend's e-mail. This friend wondered why I had an e-mail address for one of my alter-egos.

It seemed like a weird question. Why wouldn't I have an e-mail address for my alter-egos, my characters, my personal demons and imaginary figments?

That's when I realized: I am a poor man's Pierce Inverarity.

There is no end to the deception and chicanery that I have wrought online, and there never will be an end to it. It is a part of me that I cannot seem to stop or limit.

I have an innumerable amount of My Space profiles, Friendster profiles, e-mail accounts, websites, and web pages. You can find comments from me all over the web, in forums and chat rooms and whatnot, under various names and guises. You can find letters to the editor that I wrote, or you can find someone with a similar name who happens to be a Sugar Regulatory Administrator.

For all my talk about straight talk and no-bullshit, I am nothing but a jokester and a prankster. I obscure my trail at every turn, like Danny Boy in The Shining, stepping back onto his footprints in the snow maze to fool his psychopathic father, played by Jack "I'm fucking crazy" Nicholson.

And yet, as I play my games and pull my red herrings in and out of the line of sight, I am also telling people the absolute truth. I'm not a liar, that's for sure. I have no reason to lie. I am quite capable of lying, but if you really look at everything I concern myself with, there is a consistency at the core.

It all relates to each other, and it all falls back upon itself upon closer inspection.

But if you ever hope to decode it, you have to be able to negotiate the snow maze. And if you think it's all just a snow job to begin with, then that means you won't play along, and I'm fine with that.

But I have yet to meet someone who didn't want to play along. And anyone who ever quit the game and walked away came running back after scratching their craw for a few days.

It's a blessing, a curse, and a heavy burden to bear under certain gravitational pulls.

HAVE A NICE WEEKEND...