Sometimes I think I'm the craziest dreamer yet, and other times I think I'm the only one awake in these preciously wasted moments, and I want to grab my sleep-walking pedestrians by their proverbial ears and shout, "please, oh please WAKE UP! This wasn't how it was meant to be, you KNOW this isn't right!" But that is being pushy, and/or causing a public disturbance. And we can't have that. All our disturbances must be private. There are other times when I sit guru-like in some anonymous computer room and watch spellbound as average members of the human race act, well, human... I use my pc-repair job as a sideways excuse to notice how people live, how they relate to computers (and thus the rest of their life). I have always been fascinated by people, all people... there's enough inside each one of us to fill a book, and I swear it'll make you laugh and weep a lot more than the latest blockbuster. My friends, we stand here alienated from ourselves, in a grave way we have lost most of our identity. Why else would we live in illusion? Why else would we let chaos and concrete lure us away from the eternal beauty of the land beyond the city gates... My worldview now is a kaleidoscopic fracture of Douglas Coupland, Matthew Good, and Jay Firestone. It is typical, then, that we conclude with no conclusion. The viewer is hanging, just a scene away from revelation, jumpcut fade... To Be Continued, perhaps, but outside the surviving trees are turning green with the first scent of spring, and maybe, just once, you can leave the room with out hearing the punchline. The answer isn't in my fingers, but it just might be somewhere there behind your eyes... wake up. -J March 3 1999