Opalescent Ghost, Issue Four

Instagram, Your Window on the World

No, no, we’re putting it off. I was about to describe all the boys’ shirts.

One shirt was navy with a dark yellow diamond pattern.

You can see the color and pattern so easily, which is why it stood out to me. We’re putting off being with the man sitting on the ground, the one everyone is gathered around.

This is the place with a man sitting on the ground, on the tiles, in the dust, the man covered in what’s become a familiar-looking dust. Everyone’s wearing it. This dusty look…a modern person of the internet might ask, is this dust played-out? You look back on certain fashions that seem like a good idea at the time and later you can see that they weren’t a good idea after all. For example, I used to work hard to make my bangs as tall as possible. 

The man, a big man, a solid man with big soft features, is sitting barefoot, legs open in front of him, slumped, with his arms resting on and between his legs, his back arched over. Light grey sweatpants, a white t-shirt peeking out at the small of his back under a--what color was his shirt when he put it on this morning? that’s hard to say. I would guess black, or dark blue, or charcoal grey, but that damn dust is in the way again on his shirt, his pants, his feet, the back of his neck, in his close-cropped hair, on his face.

It’s not all dust, though, in this color story. 

Pantone released their color of the year for 2024, by the way. It’s called Peach Fuzz, a light glowing peach. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s very good. I’ll check again what it’s supposed to do for us in 2024. The new color is always supposed to do something for us. (I checked. Peach Fuzz wants to help us feel connection. Give us what you got, PANTONE 13-1023.)

The slumped man sitting on the ground has a shade of dark, vivid red around his left eye and on his forehead and on his whole left cheek, and that red stands out against the rest of his dusty look. 

Artistically that blood red is, what…foregrounded? 

I don’t know the word for it. 

He’s looking at the ground, well, no, he’s not looking at it. His face is aimed downward but yes his eyes I see now are closed. So whatever he’s looking at, he’s looking at with his mind’s eye. I can only see through one square window on my phone, and beneath the window, on my end, is, from left to right:

• a heart symbol

• a cartoon shape that symbolizes speech

• something that looks like a paper airplane

• a short, vertical ribbon with two pointed ends facing down

and underneath that is a man’s name in bold and next to that is some Arabic text I can’t read with a red broken heart emoji after it  and underneath all that it says see translation

He came out from under the rubble to this square I’m talking about that I can see in my phone. Me, I came out from under my electric blanket this morning, reluctantly, and I’m still halfway under it, I only got my top half out so far, here writing to you. I looked around my phone for a while, first lying sideways with my head on the pillow. I looked at the easy places first, my normal circuit: email, Substack, Facebook. I looked briefly into Threads but I get mad fast in Threads so I shut it down and then I did it, I opened Instagram.

“Instagram” 

when you say “Instagram” 

the word sounds dumb.

But it’s really quite magical. You wouldn’t believe it—if you plucked a person out of two hundred years ago and showed them “Instagram”, they would honestly die. 

“What am I seeing?” they would ask.

“It’s everybody, it’s their real lives”

and then you’d decide how much to explain about that, the phrase “real lives” you used, which in relation to “Instagram” for us modern people would probably make us laugh          “Instagram”  “real lives”

Your visitor from two hundred years ago is asking “What’s so funny?” and of course it’s not worth it to explain     “Nothing, nothing”  and then you get on with it and show this person what you think is important from Instagram, you make some choices, what way you might want to wow your visitor

But as a modern person who’s used to Instagram, you can still wow yourself, 

because of course you don’t have a visitor from 200 years ago with you (or if you do they’re dead and you can’t see them)

you can still, rightfully, wow yourself

because you can go on your phone practically anywhere you want and see real lives from the whole world.

Now, when I woke up this morning, I didn’t want to go anywhere, including partially vertical, up and out of my electric blanket. I didn’t want to rush to Gaza. I knew I’d be going there in my mind’s eye later today. But how fast did I have to go, though

I have some questions for someone.

I don’t know who can answer.

The questions are about being a person.

Don’t answer if you’re also a person*—I’m not asking you. 

*People love answering questions that can’t be answered well by people, which is why I threw up that roadblock. The temptation is too strong. I get it—I get excited when I know an answer, too. My sons and I get excited when we know an answer and we usually start talking over each other with what we know. It’s fun.

My question is for someone more objective than a person, wiser than a person, more alive than a person, kinder than a person. 

My question is something like

no really, not joking!—not the muscle that pumps blood but isn’t there a thing where the brain handles one kind of thinking, and sends out impulses, go here, do that,

and if I’m planning on getting more vertical and leaving my blanket, my brain has to say “go” so my limbs can move but then the heart, which…you have to, I think, be extremely careful talking about, people get stupid and bored and frankly immature—maybe we’ll lose the word

isn’t there another command center, lower than the brain, center of the chest

and this is my question, I mean it, I’m not fucking around

 

There are things I know with my brain, and the grasp there, in my brain, isn’t palpable or visceral. My knowledge collection is there but I can’t feel it. It just sits there. 

But this “other command center”, lower down, in my upper torso

It wasn’t mad at me. The voice had energy but it wasn’t scolding me.

I could see it!

Those tiles he’s sitting on aren’t thousands of miles away, he’s actually right there

photo one: Opalescent Ghost, Issue Four

Instagram, Your Window on the World

There’s a place in Palestine, a dusty square in Gaza—dust, dusty, again with the dust—maybe you know it? It’s the one with a rusty orange brick building with arched windows trimmed with tan bricks, and, behind, at the edge of the square, are two mature palm trees with long, sturdy, arching fronds. The palms are bystanders, too, like the young men and boys in front of them arched in a semi-circle around someone else. 

It’s the place with fourteen boys’ faces visible but a few more boys or men tucked among them whose faces we can’t see? 

photo two: Okay now we can see better what the man is looking at, or we’ve found a doorway, at least, into his mind’s eye. It says He came out from under the rubble and refused to go to the hospital where his three daughters were taken out. They were preparing food for him. Unfortunately, his three daughters left life [and then there’s the red broken heart emoji again]

photo three: what is the human heart? what is it?

photo four: how does it know things?

photo five: what I know there I know viscerally and with more clarity and with force

photo six: like the knowledge I have there, any knowledge I have there, wants something

photo seven: it doesn’t just sit there being dead knowledge. It wants something.

photo eight: It’s even pushy but in a way I never object to It has a quiet communication style that I never feel moved to fight with. Honestly as a leader I’d follow it anywhere, just on vibes. I love the vibes. I’m not kidding.

photo nine: Like this morning it said

photo ten: Get up, Get up we’re going to Gaza! we live there, too