The Gap and the Line

An epistolary tale of hyper-association. Go ahead, do a quick google.

Photo by inyoung jung on Unsplash

This is a submission for SUM FLUX V.4: Fragmentation. Find more episodes, here.

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Hey. How are you? I know it’s been ages since we’ve chatted and I do feel bad about that. I just don't understand how any uncomplicated good thing can so easily turn into a forgotten task these days. My guess is, you feel bad, too. 

I finally opened this email to you because the absolute, most bizarre thing happened. I figured, you have an ear for strange tales, though honestly, this kind of thing is what I need to intentionally get in front of my email. Tell me what you’ve been up to, and then tell me if something like this has ever happened to you before? Like a weird dream, I can’t stop thinking about it, and the more I do, the more I believe its meaning.

I just went to Hawaii. It was great, blah blah. I’ll tell you all about it when we’re dead. I know that sounds flippant, but that’s the attitude I have to take these days—the attitude I adopt to get anything done. I read somewhere that all this tech doesn’t make life easier, it just makes it faster. Isn’t that so true? It seems that there are the details that matter, the ones that belong to the things that must be said, and everything else might just be a complete waste of time. Do you care to know that I saw whales in Hawaii? No, you don’t. You know there are whales in Hawaii and would only care to hear about them if I made the details as extraordinary to you in my telling of them as they were to me in Hawaii. Were the whales in Hawaii extraordinary? Yes, they were. But, dear friend, that’s not why I’m writing.

To get to Hawaii, I arrive at the airport before dawn, running on the shards of a full night’s rest. I am delirious, on edge, and most people around me are just as raddled. I get in line to cross through security, and several paces ahead, is my college roommate, staring into her phone. I see her long, wavy hair, her pointy chin. She looks up and scans the space to see how much further she has to progress, how many haggard people make up this snot-string of a line. We connect eyes for a split second. She looks back into her phone. Shuffles forward. 

Fourteen years ago was the last moment I saw her in real life, and some years less since I saw her activity online. As you know, I do not participate in the internet soirees anymore because I understand this abstention to be good for my brain. So anyway, I let it all pass. She steps up to a beckoning security officer and the line groans forward.

I am moving. I am seeing. Hearing, too. I feel aware that there are people everywhere all around me, but my delirium has me in some state of disengaged participation. You know this type of tired: you could be there, but you could also be dreaming.

On the other side of the machines and the people yelling in uniforms, I move toward my gate. I am hot. As I walk, the breeze on my cheeks is enough to keep me in the moment. I arrive at the gate. The mob of people yawn and stare into their devices. Everyone is unkempt. Do you ever wonder, what has become of us with all of this hardware and all of this athleisure?

I turn away and find myself in line for coffee. Behind the register, I look up and see a person, who is not just a person, but a boy I used to babysit as a child. It was once my responsibility to suncream his skin and squish his floaties onto his tiny bronzed arms during our daily trips to the swimming pool. He is now wearing an apron and a matching hat and when I tell him I would like a vanilla latte, he takes my money and shoves me off. He proceeds to the next blob of a person in a hurried rush. I stand and stare. I soon take my latte and absorb myself into the mob of people at my gate. The latte is terrible. I throw it away immediately. I look back to the boy at the register. He is not there anymore. I decide I should sleep on the plane. 

I am then in another line, the line to board and take a seat. Most everyone is wearing headphones or is in some way disengaged, but the woman behind me is speaking loudly to her partner beside her. They discuss the logistics of the boarding process, the mechanisms of advancing through the airport. She is shouting obvious grievances as if they were her unique opinion. I turn my head to look at her. She is fat. She has stringy blonde hair. She is wearing several unflattering layers of cotton clothing, which is exactly how she presents herself at our office. I don’t know her name or anything about her other than her identifiable features and unbecoming nature. I often see her waddling about, usually with one or two silent victims and always vocalizing these complaints of hers at too high a volume. I turn my face away quickly, concerned that my staring may invite stiff interaction. 

I find my seat on the plane. I feel frazzled, bewildered; I urgently want to sleep. I cannot relax because as I sit and watch the stream of people flow through the aisle, I see not one, not two, but seemingly every odd person is a face I have met on Zoom. The profiled entrails of my video meetings have formed a chain; they have paraded themselves in front of my discombobulated mind like some hallucinatory joke. They’re walking by too fast for me to register. My jaw and eyelids fall lower and lower as each passing face flicks a tiny light bulb on and off, jolting my brain. I feel I should be screaming out, but cannot connect the dots as to why. 

An old man and woman take their seats next to me, and I’m telling you, these two people are Pat and Pat. Pat and Pat are my old neighbors who lived on the end of my childhood cul-de-sac. Here they are and they haven’t aged a bit. They’re probably dead now. Pat and Pat go to Hawaii every year they tell me, nodding and smiling. They have travelled to the island for decades. I look stunned; I am stunned. I keep asking Pat questions about Hawaii to keep her talking so that I can keep staring. Surely, I participated in the conversation somehow, but I have no idea what I said.  

When we land in Las Vegas, I feel possessed into silence. I’m doing double takes every two steps. I realize I am about to spend an hours-long layover in a remarkably bustling place full of the world’s most intriguing characters, who will all look convincingly like someone I know. Have you ever recognized the faces of a thousand strangers? It is exhausting work, let me tell you. I am hiding poorly behind my furrowed brow and have to coach myself into staring at the floor. My second cousins could very well be at the slot machines. Of all places to spend a layover. I don’t look up.

Have you ever heard of the term “hyper-association”? I had not. At least, I hadn’t heard it since I earned my Psychology degree--I have forgotten everything I learned before I had a smartphone. But this is how my bizarre experience was described back to me by an older woman who probably spends much of her free time at her therapist’s office. Our brains can afflict hyper-association upon us, or, connect memories and concepts to places they do not belong. Your neighbor can rise from the dead in the form of a bartender; a stranger’s glance is your ex-girlfriend’s siren call. A state of dissociation may strike at any moment, and I wonder if we know it when we see it.

Since I know you’re reading this on the internet, I have to ask, did you just look up “hyper-association”? To be honest, I did, too. Anytime I hear or read something unfamiliar, my hands move to define these things in another window. These are what I call “the gaps”. Do you get “the gaps,” too? Sometimes it feels like my brain is inventing these gaps to be filled, because the more information I seek, the more things I find unfamiliar. This is what my mind wants more than any kind of answer: more gaps. Like I am always looking up to see a stranger’s face.

When I use the internet, I am standing in line as if I am waiting to get to the information I need. But I’m kind of there, I’m kind of not; I don’t even know why the line exists and what it is I’m hoping to pick up at the end of it. I suppose I am aiming to be somewhere better soon, but for reasons I feel I cannot control, I am always waiting in line. And for reasons that are controlled by someone else, I think of many, many things, as many as the line is long, and urgently look to fill the gaps in between. 

Any thoughts on this? Perhaps you’d rather I told you about the whales.

How’s your mom? 

See you soon!