Facebook Ghosts

So, hi, you are on my Msn contact list but I can’t quite remember who you are?

Hey, don’t know you either... But how are you?

I’m okay... Life has turned out a lot different than what I had planned in my childhood, but okay... :) You?

No, I have always known I’d be an artist. But why do you say that?

Ahahaah because I never knew what I was going to be or in fact who I am but I thought I would have it figured out by now!

But it hasn’t happened yet, ah? It will come at some point.

Yes... (or not)

So now I am curious to know where I know you from. You are also on my list. Any dating site you have been on recently?

Uhm... yeah... loads. Let’s just establish I know you from one of them then.

You see this is what bugs me about the virtual world.

What is?

We met online at some point. We probably liked each other at some point for exchanging emails and adding each other on Msn... And for some reason it didn’t work out and we even forgot about each other. The thing is: Would we be part of a more meaningful story if we had met in person?

I doubt it.

?

When I meet someone in person it is destined to fail. I read the other day about first love damaging you for life. And I fit the profile. I have been damaged. For life.

(long silence)

So, are you going to keep me on your Msn list?

What do you want? Be Msn friends? I don’t think that will be possible as you don’t fit the criteria. I am only friends with a guy when either he is gay or unattractive to me.

That is a weird way to compliment someone... Calling me an attractive straight man.

You’re welcome.

So when I was a teenager, about seventeen years old, I met this girl at a party and damn she was beautiful, gorgeous and smart and funny... We spent all night talking to each other. I mean nothing happened. I wouldn’t dare kissing her that night and perhaps spoil it. But I left the party imagining that something could develop from there and my heart was all warm inside and I was just happy. Right?

Right, I’m listening.

So, I moved out of town shortly after and we never saw each other again. She was just a childhood memory. One that would make me smile at times... You know the feeling... But then, last year she added me on Facebook. And destroyed my childhood memory with her wall posts. The mystery is gone and I am now aware every day of her boring life. I get to know about her boring husband, see her boring pictures. All ruined.

Wow, I’m sorry. That really sucks.

So are you going to keep me on your list?

Why do you want to be kept on my list?

That is not what I am saying. I am just asking if you are going to delete me.

We delete people from Msn contact lists, from Facebook friends, from Skype or from our minds like it happened to us. But they come back like ghosts. They always come back one way or another, for real or not. It is just how it is.

But are you going to delete me?

Good night, Matt.

Winter Magic

So the story has never become a novel or reality. Practicality has won. It has won me over. And in the end dreams are where they belong: in my mind while I live the busy city life. Trains, tube, yellow lights, winter velvet pitch black darkness after 6. Twilight falls when I am still sitting behind a computer, inside a building on the 19th floor. The difference between in and out after 6 is the fluorescent lights all over, as far as my eyes can reach, light after light, and pitch black where I can barely feel my breathing—where it doesn’t matter whether my eyes are open or closed—where I hear an open wind instrument from the past, or from now, or whatever sound that brings me back to the present moment.

In the end the story doesn’t get to be written, or stays behind and makes me wonder whether it really happened... ten, twelve, how many years ago? Has it happened at all, or were all those people living characters from an nonexistent world? Ah the nonexistent world... outside my window with the trees, the mud, the moon, the wind, the night. We are apart. But we dance together sometimes when I close my eyes... and I count every freckle of your face... and I kiss each one of them... and you disappear like magic. Winter magic.