If we continue treating art like this, nothing will ever be timeless again. Creation will go hand in hand with immediate irrelevance. Pop-culture fixations and tag words puff and burst as new ones follow, collectively building, with no materials to create anything tangible, beautiful, reflective, helpful. It seems too dangerous to step outside of the illusion these days. The all powerful illusion glowing on bright screens, captivating our eyes like moths to an anaesthetic flame. Type, re-type your password and look inside of your box. Next to the empty letters, you can have the secret to whitening your teeth, or the one necessary step toward flatter abs. You can watch the videos, you can vote with your cell phone. You can read a book on a stupid little machine. You’ll never have to touch anything again. The profound sacrifice of trees for templates on which to lay the human soul, will no longer be necessary. Your conscience can burn like coal.  You can be one of the half-humans watching the other half-humans live out the lives you wanted. On the couch, sit and stare at reality, while your own passes by you uneventfully. Get drunk on Friday and wake up hungover and justified in living life to the fullest. Talk about how much you drank. Talk about the funny things you said. Talk about what’s on tv later. Talk to no one in particular about anything in particular. Lose yourself in gossip publications and give your opinion on so and so’s marriage. You can go days without making eye contact with anyone around you. Eye contact with the person staring directly into the lens, telling you how he felt when so and so went behind his back with the other people in the house. I do research on mates I haven’t met and I’m sure they do the same. We never have to live the experiences with one another if we can realistically research and calculate the odds of our eventual demise. Avoidance of pain, seems the name of the game and there is no shortage of methods to do fairly well at this game. Test your compatibility before you risk time away from the bright screens. Time away from the bright screens can be very scary. Luckily, most settings have bright screens to nurse on while away. Test your compatibility, your IQ, your sexual prowess, and never exercise any of these actual realities. Shadow people, a bunch of shadow people, you can’t touch your shadow. You know that right?