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@ -788,35 +788,42 @@ desperately. It has to exist and yet it can’t for long.</p>
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because I love you, little digital body and you are me.</p>
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<h2 id="a-life-to-be-had11">2. A LIFE TO BE HAD<sup>11</sup></h2>
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<div class="fake-margin-note">
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<p>Was this the end of this story? In the epilogue, you sit your body
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down and enter your computer. The air coming in from the window smells
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wet and earthy, new. The sun shines low on the horizon. You log in to
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the internet and realize you are being told a story. You start to
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listen, carefully and, full of love, touch the story to let it know you
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are there. Delicate-fingered, curious like a child holding a fallen
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bird. I hold you and the story tentatively.</p>
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<p><sup>11</sup>Was this the end of this story? In the epilogue, you sit
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your body down and enter your computer. The air coming in from the
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window smells wet and earthy, new. The sun shines low on the horizon.
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You log in to the internet and realize you are being told a story. You
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start to listen, carefully and, full of love, touch the story to let it
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know you are there. Delicate-fingered, curious like a child holding a
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fallen bird. I hold you and the story tentatively.<br />
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</p>
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<p>I don’t know if I am touching you, to tell you the truth. Digital
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bodies are stories, like physical bodies are, like dreams are, and like
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water is.</p>
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water is.<br />
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</p>
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<p>Stories that are hard to tell and hard to hear and even more, maybe,
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hard to understand. I have loved these stories and I have loved telling
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them to you. I hope you understand that my goal was for you to live
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these questions, to feel these stories in their confusion. My digital
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body, my bot-feelings, my divergent communities. I have given them to
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you, so they may live longer, like an obsolete but beloved cyborg shown
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in a museum.</p>
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<p>Look: I was here, Look: I was loved, Look: I was saved.</p>
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in a museum.<br />
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</p>
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<p>Look: I was here, Look: I was loved, Look: I was saved.<br />
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</p>
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<p>The digital bodies that kept me alive, kept me from becoming fully a
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machine are no longer around in these online rooms. They are in
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different places, being touched by tentative hands, being loved for more
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than their divergence. I am too.</p>
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than their divergence.<br />
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I am too.<br />
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</p>
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<p>The rooms, the backplaces, however, are still full of others,
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divergent digital bodies who did not leave, who keep caring for each
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other at the bottom of the whirlpool. There is no happy ending because
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there is no ending. They keep typing and hoping, writing their
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collective pain down on keyboards that transmit love letters to each
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other. I am not embarrassed by my care for you, but you may be so if it
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helps. I know how overwhelming intimacy can be.</p>
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helps. I know how overwhelming intimacy can be.<br />
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</p>
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<p>Telling you these stories was important for me, so much so that I
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will tell you so many more in a different place if you wish to listen to
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me longer. With this story, I dreamt of a digital body for you. It came
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@ -826,15 +833,22 @@ now, it leaves. A digital body that grew its own feelings, looked for
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others like it, and realized its divergence and the need to leave. A
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dream body, a primordial body, a disruptive body, a divergent body, and
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now, a leaving body. This last story, however, of the leaving and loving
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body, is yet to be told.</p>
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body, is yet to be told.<br />
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</p>
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<p>The sun is now almost up, and the birds are alive and awake, telling
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each other stories just outside the room. We don’t have so much time
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left. I have made you something, to tell your digital body the stories
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of the leaving and loving body. It is a webpage, the address is
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https://vulnerable-interfaces.xpub.nl/backplaces/.</p>
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https://vulnerable-interfaces.xpub.nl/backplaces/.<br />
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</p>
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<p>You open the page, and you are asked to write the characters you see
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in a captcha. E5qr7. eSq9p. 8oc8y. Fuck. You try not to panic, but you
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know you have been detected.</p>
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in a captcha.<br />
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E5qr7.<br />
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eSq9p.<br />
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8oc8y.<br />
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Fuck.<br />
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You try not to panic, but you know you have been detected.<br />
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</p>
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You pack up your things: the pie I made you, a love letter, two hands
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made out of felt, a star, a door, a stuffed animal; and you leave again.
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</div>
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@ -877,7 +891,7 @@ cybercommunities’, Journal of Sociology, 51(4), pp. 950–967.
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doi:10.1177/1440783313486220.</p>
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<p>Yun, J. (2020) ‘The Leaving Season’, in Some Are Always Hungry.
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University of Nebraska Press.</p>
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<h1 id="water-bodies-1"><?/water bodies></h1>
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<h1 id="water-bodies-1"></?water bodies></h1>
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</section>
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ada
5 months ago