Wouldn't it be great to know the number of times you thought about one person? It'd be a little green tally that would pop up in the bottom right corner of your brain, letting you know with little dash marks the frequency of every person in your mind-ramblings. Think of the format of the show 24, but less ever-present, and more of a fun pop-up like during the 90s fad "Pop-Up Video!" These ticks would serve two functions, both wonderful and disasterous: showing you how often a person you might have considered unimportant enters your thoughts, and how infrequent those you consider important do.
These little green dashes would instigate a world of decision-making that we would otherwise leave to our hypothetical worlds. If I think about this guy so much, what's the harm of taking the leap? (Eventually those tick marks will decrease if it goes sour, at least, hopefully.) If everything in a corner book shop reminds me of my father, why don't I call him more? Maybe I should finally stop talking about Herman Melville, whose tick marks are in the thousands and rival those of my own mother.
Maybe you could even color-code the marks to emotions, with green denoting happiness, red sadness, and blue expressing a lonely longing for an old friend. What if, after 50 blue marks, an automatic email is sent to the blue mark maker--letting you know that even though you don't speak to me anymore...I miss you. One of you would be getting hundreds of emails over the years, emails that would leap over the fields of pride that plague our present and past and gulf any hope of reconciliation. Another one of you would receiving the first one, much to my annoyance. It will be the first of two, probably, but a third might arrive thirty years from now because every so often you'll be like an eroded groove in my conscience, reminding me of your sense of humor and horrible communication skills that are actually so ridiculous they border on hilarious, but not quite. Some wild cards would be getting e-mails because sometimes I'm just a little creepy, and I hope you welcome them because we all possess a mutual creepiness? Maybe?
It would be nice to receive emails too, I suppose. Nice to know I'm not crazy, that you think of me too, or that I'm not the only one replaying bad decisions.Or good decisions. Or bad decisions that after ten years turned out to be good decisions. It would be difficult to never receive emails from those I suspected or hoped would send them--but the silence would help me all the same. Nothing is as eloquent as nothing. (David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas)
What if, after these fifty blue marks, your mind sent flowers to a grave? I'd think about entire cemeteries so everyone at once could be loved, even if only for one last time.
Not so serious addendum:
Take it a step further and imagine if there were tick marks counting how many people found you attractive when you entered a bar? Imagine the self-esteems saved, all those lonely girls who just don't see how attractive they are; then imagine all the cocky self-esteems built even higher, because the assholes are still pretty attractive at first glance.
I'd like tick marks denoting the number of writers in a room, so I could be make sure to avoid them at all costs. Writers and poets and poker players and people who describe themselves as "foodies."
These little green dashes would instigate a world of decision-making that we would otherwise leave to our hypothetical worlds. If I think about this guy so much, what's the harm of taking the leap? (Eventually those tick marks will decrease if it goes sour, at least, hopefully.) If everything in a corner book shop reminds me of my father, why don't I call him more? Maybe I should finally stop talking about Herman Melville, whose tick marks are in the thousands and rival those of my own mother.
Maybe you could even color-code the marks to emotions, with green denoting happiness, red sadness, and blue expressing a lonely longing for an old friend. What if, after 50 blue marks, an automatic email is sent to the blue mark maker--letting you know that even though you don't speak to me anymore...I miss you. One of you would be getting hundreds of emails over the years, emails that would leap over the fields of pride that plague our present and past and gulf any hope of reconciliation. Another one of you would receiving the first one, much to my annoyance. It will be the first of two, probably, but a third might arrive thirty years from now because every so often you'll be like an eroded groove in my conscience, reminding me of your sense of humor and horrible communication skills that are actually so ridiculous they border on hilarious, but not quite. Some wild cards would be getting e-mails because sometimes I'm just a little creepy, and I hope you welcome them because we all possess a mutual creepiness? Maybe?
It would be nice to receive emails too, I suppose. Nice to know I'm not crazy, that you think of me too, or that I'm not the only one replaying bad decisions.Or good decisions. Or bad decisions that after ten years turned out to be good decisions. It would be difficult to never receive emails from those I suspected or hoped would send them--but the silence would help me all the same. Nothing is as eloquent as nothing. (David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas)
What if, after these fifty blue marks, your mind sent flowers to a grave? I'd think about entire cemeteries so everyone at once could be loved, even if only for one last time.
Not so serious addendum:
Take it a step further and imagine if there were tick marks counting how many people found you attractive when you entered a bar? Imagine the self-esteems saved, all those lonely girls who just don't see how attractive they are; then imagine all the cocky self-esteems built even higher, because the assholes are still pretty attractive at first glance.
I'd like tick marks denoting the number of writers in a room, so I could be make sure to avoid them at all costs. Writers and poets and poker players and people who describe themselves as "foodies."
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