Week 4: Information overload

“Everything can be read, every surface and silence, every breath and every vacancy, every eddy and current, every body and its absence, every darkness every light, each cloud and knife, each finger and tree, every backwater, every crevice and hollow, each nostril, tendril and crescent, every whisper, every whimper, each laugh and every blue feather, each stone, each nipple, every thread every color, each woman and her lover, every man and his mother, every river, each of the twelve blue oceans and the moon, every forlorn link, every hope and every ending, each coincidence, the distant call of a loon, light through the high branches of blue pines, the sigh of rain, every estuary, each gesture at parting, every kiss, each wasp's wing, every foghorn and railway whistle, every shadow, every gasp, each glowing silver screen, every web, the smear of starlight, a fingertip, rose whorl, armpit, pearl, every delight and misgiving, every unadorned wish, every daughter, every death, each woven thing, each machine, every ever after.”

This section from Michael Joyce’s hypertext, “Twelve Blue” made me feel extremely overwhelmed. I was on a busy floor of the Ryerson University Library when I was reading this text, and all of a sudden I felt like it was forcing way too much information into my brain. The serene blue background and blue text made me feel like this piece pulled me down and submerged me into a deep body of water. With each section I read I felt like I was drowning deeper and deeper into the water. This was probably because I was very confused about what was going on in the text at this point. When I got to the above section I literally felt trapped within the blueness and as though I was being overloaded with information. (I probably had this reaction to the text because I had a full day of classes and had many tests and assignments to do that week, so was very tired and filled with information already.) The fragmented style and what seems to me to be disconnection of this section made me read it extremely fast, and by the time I was done I was so overwhelmed that I closed the window and wrote this:

Information overload

Sitting in this room

In one of about a hundred seats
 
Toes wiggling in my boots

As I tap my perfectly shaped nails on my thighs wrapped in black tights.

Chose my thighs so as to not let the sound of my nails tapping on the desk disturb those around me.

Staring at my computer screen, not so much because I am paying attention to the content that stares back at me, but rather staring blankly

Thinking, oh no, don’t allow it to seep into this brain. And then a word slips in, and then oh no again, stop! Block it out…

Worried, trying to hold myself together

Clasp my hands together instead of allowing my nails to frantically drum silent beats on my thigh
Let it not happen. May my body and mind stay intact.

Feeling the stuff inside fighting for space…

Pushing the surface, trying to escape, for each tid-bit is suffocating, suffering, because it has no room, no air, no space.
 
It has traveled to the rest of my body
Making my shoulders and back feel heavy, and my arms… I don’t seem to have enough control over them.

The stuff keeps prodding through my skin.

I don’t want it to show

Please, let there be no visible distortions in my face. Thank God for my big hair… it will hide the stuff that’s trying desperately to push out of my head.

I am a bubble of fear

But let this bubble not burst here

Let this information overload not be a complete disaster

 

-Over and out-

Signed: Sarah Gaikwad

aka Non-Analog