what are you looking for?

I mean "we". (Or me...)

What are we looking for when we're hitting "refresh"?

Maybe you're on Lifehacker, Jezebel, The New York Times, Twitter, your favorite message board. (For me, it's usually my google feeds.) Maybe you're waiting for your crush to PM you back or I'm hoping that one of my favorite bloggers has something new up her sleeve. Whatever it is, wherever you are... what do you really want?

Do you want to feel like a kid again? Do you want something to really grip your attention and hold you? Are you trying to connect? Do you ache for human contact? Do you just want to hear that someone else is feeling what you feel, thinking what you think? Do you want a little hope, a little sign that things aren't as bleak as you fear? Do you want to feel like you're a part of something bigger? Do you want to help somebody? Do you want to push someone down?

Boredom isn't a good enough answer, by the way. You're not just bored--nobody is. Boredom is one of the many feelings you might get when you're not satisfied with what you've got available to you or with what you're doing right now. But it's only a raised flag, that's all.

Maybe there is no immediate visible cause sometimes. Every drive and stimulus and desire we have can get all twisted up into one big ball of tangled stuff.

---

It frustrates me now and again how we keep visiting the same places we've visited before. I grapple with something and learn how to deal with it, then I forget partway. When I next see the same challenge, I start having false epiphanies, making the same connections as before. Learning how to do something that I feel I should already know by now.

At the same time, I recognize that even when we visit the same places and go through the same challenges as we've gone through before, each time we're coming at it from a different vantage point.

That's what the spiral in "Lateralus" has always meant to me, privately, from the first time I heard the song. I envision life like a winding path leading up and down, narrow on the bottom and wide at the top, like an inverted cartoon snake all coiled up perfectly over itself in a conical shape. You walk up it (or down, if you like) and every time you're facing north, it's a slightly different north from the last time you faced it. You're a little higher or lower. You're looking at things from a new angle and you can see more than before, if you want.

So, yes, you've been here before. You'll be here again. And at the same time, you're spiraling outward to someplace completely different.

NGC4622 - The Backward Galaxy