Doomscrolling

It happened again last night: I was doomscrolling¹ through the endless feed of trash videos the algorithm serves to me, and I scrolled right by it. The video: this time, it was called “do you want to be free?” No thumbnail, no channel, no view count: just a black rectangle, and the title: “do you want to be free?” Before I could react, my thumb had already scrolled past it; I scrolled up to look for it, but it was gone.

If you look up “do you want to be free?” on youtube (or for those following along at home, try: “how to be free”), lots of random junk shows up, among it gurus and sages, ready to dispense the wisdom of ages. All the world’s philosophies are recommended and available; you can learn how to break free of debt, the past, attachment, and all manner of things: an endless stream of content to watch that’ll, hopefully, liberate you. None of it was what I was looking for.

This video—If I can call it that—wasn’t like any of these. It wasn’t an answer to anything; it wouldn’t teach me anything. It had no transcendent wisdom to offer, none of the distilled teachings of eons digested into bite-sized videographic chunks. But as I scrolled past it, I knew that it was what I was looking for—something I didn’t even know I was missing until it’s too late.

This keeps happening: an article in a periodical will flash by and disappear, a book will be on a shelf as I skim by and gone when I go back to pull it out, or I’ll over hear snatches of a conversation whose participants I can’t find. Each time, I know immediately that this, whatever it is, is what I’m looking for; but by the time I realize it and go back to look, it’s already gone. It’s like something out of a weird story: I spend my time agonizing about what I’m going to do next, what I’m doing now, and what I already did and didn’t do. I’m so caught up in my own garbage that, when an answer appears, I don’t notice it. And when I do notice it, when it seeps into my thick mushy brain that this—​this!​—is what I was looking for, whatever it was is already gone.

But as I say, it happened again last night on the phone, while I was doomscrolling, burning out my retinas with 1080 by 2300 LCDs programmed by a distant algorithm that knows me better than I know myself. It was at this point that I gave up and went to sleep; the sun was long gone, and I had work in the morning. Still, my thumb seems to scroll of its own accord whenever I pick up the phone: it takes an active effort to put it down.

I dreamed that I was young again—a common recurring dream. I dreamed that I visited my childhood and walked through the halls of my old school just as they were when I walked through them for the first time. And I knew that I was an interloper, but my friends and teachers were there and welcomed me back, as if I had been away on a long trip. In some sense, I was coming back from a long trip: across the years, I reached back and touched the memories and the places in my heart where the memories are lodged.

I awoke to the sun: morning. Zhuangzi dreamed that he was a butterfly, and when he awoke, he asked whether he was a butterfly dreaming he was a man. I dreamed that I was a child, and when I awoke, I asked whether I was a child dreaming I was an adult. Still, my body is no longer a child’s, and I have seen too much of the world to retain a child’s innocent hope.

Like an adult, I went to work: I tagged clothes, took payments, and counted people coming in and out of the thrift store. I moved lazily, floating through the day. My thoughts ran in one course: “do you want to be free?” Free from what? Free from this? The tedium and the condescending managers and the obnoxious customers? What would I do instead?

“Joseph!” I came to, staring into space while I was standing at the cash register, “we’re closing.” I smiled and nodded: another day gone. I went home and stared into space until it was time to make myself dinner. I can’t say that I thought anything at all.

Sometimes, I try to read; but the more I read, the more my reading list piles up: every book, every story, every poem, carries with it hundred other books I should read but I haven’t. I’ve never even read the classical Chinese text that Zhuangzi’s butterfly parable comes from: I just know the anecdote from other sources. Another one for the list.

It’s easier just to doomscroll—there it was! Damn: too slow. Another video, asking: “who are you?” Again, no thumbnail, no channel, no view count or likes: just a black rectangle and the agonizing question: “who are you?” But it was gone off the top of the screen, and when I scrolled up, it was nowhere; I reached the top of my feed without finding anything besides cooking videos, video game let’s plays, and make-up community drama. An underwear model is starting his own CBD company. I put the device down and slept. “Who am I?” I ate my dinner and went to bed without coming up with anything in the way of an answer.

I dreamed that I was in a beautiful old city. Cobblestone streets wound around the bases of megaliths erected in a by-gone era to the glory and hubris of humanity. I walked along the twisting ways; around each corner, I found a vista more spectacular than the last. It seemed to me that these dizzying towers and cathedrals whispered to my heart: “be like us,” they said, “the patience of centuries is settled in our chinks and crannies. What nameless masons toiled to carve our stones, each one of which is a sculpture? What master plan arranged our design and construction? What hands and backs pulled and strained to put each stone neatly in its place?” The scent of the ages was unbearable: centuries, millennia wafted through the streets on the soft evening breeze.

I awoke with my face in my pillow and the sun in the window; its rays were just beginning to hazard their way into my room. I went to work again, where I thought of nothing except that ancient city and those ageless monuments. The sun marched inexorably across the shop floor, making of the mannequins and the clothes racks a sundial that testified to the passing day. When the sun shone across the shop at a steep angle, the manager emerged to close the door that I had been guarding.

“Stand here, Joseph, and let the last customers out.” Very well. After I saw them leave with their used fast fashion and garish plastic fascinators perched on top of their piggish heads, I left, too.

As I walked home, I passed a book shop—closed. In the window, nestled among the cast-off best sellers and the computer-generated romance novels, there was a void that opened onto an endless expanse of spirit and dreams. I almost didn’t notice it as I rushed by. As I passed it, I stopped and my eyes were pulled to it: before I knew what I was looking at, I was watching my dreams of cities, of my child-hood, of everything I didn’t know I lacked until that very moment, as they called to me from the abyss balanced delicately on the cheap shelf; we were separated only by a pane of glass. My heart rose within me.

I heard footsteps approaching, and I turned to watch a passer-by. When I looked back at the window, the void was gone: no more hope for me, just the mass-market fantasies they sell to palliate our aching and lonely hearts. Needles began to prick the back of my eyelids; I blinked the tears away as I walked home.

There were no interesting videos that night: I scrolled slowly and carefully, just in case. No dreams, either. Wake, work, repeat. So my days pass. I try to read, but I can’t focus; I try to write, but the words come out all wrong. What am I looking for? I don’t know—and when I realize I’ve found it, it’s too late: it’s already gone.

“Joseph!”

“Huh”—I’m at work, apparently. I can no longer tell waking from dreaming, not that there’s much to tell about either: I glide through both as a passive observer.

“Can you cover the register for a second?”

“Yeah, sure.” I assume the position behind the counter. Cash flows back and forth; I take clothes off of hangers and fold them into bags; “will that be cash or card?”—“would you like a receipt?”

“Joseph, I’ve come for you.” A voice, like trumpets and timpani, cuts to my innermost parts and wakes me from my stupor.

“Excuse me?”

“I said: are you taking donations?” A perfectly ordinary little woman with a perfectly plain voice peers up at me and holds out her black garbage bags of cast-off junk.

“Oh…uh, yeah. Just dump ’em back there.” I point to the overflowing bin of random bags, piled up absurdly high: people donate anything that they want to get rid of but which they feel guilty about throwing away. We throw most of it away, anyhow. She thanks me and totters off with her gifts of precious junk.

That voice echos in my dull head: it knocks against the cotton candy stuffing between my ears. Where did it come from? Where was it going to take me? A customer steps up with their proud haul of last year’s fast fashion trends. I don’t think anymore while I check them out.

The store closes, and I walk home in the early evening breeze. The sun casts gold on the street from its comfortable perch on the western horizon. The bars and restaurants turn on their strings of electric lights that ornament the tables and awnings, all of them glowing gently like so many voltaic fireflies. At one of the sidewalk tables sits an angel, their wings folded behind them and their countenance outshining the afternoon sun and the electric lights, all of which dim in deference to this holy one who stepped down from heaven for a quick apéritif. They calmly sip white wine in the hazy warmth of the summer evening. I can’t help but stare, but nobody else seems to notice the messenger seated among them: the other tables are full of laughing, noisy people, all of them focused on what a great time they’re having.

The angel looks at me and smiles; they wave to me and gesture to indicate that I should come and join them. In a daze, I walk over to the host and say,

“Excuse me, I’m just going to join my friend. They’re sitting…” I point at the table at which the angel calmly sits calmly sipping wine but which I now see is empty, “there,” I finish lamely; I chuckle nervously as the host gives me a look. “You know, I must have been mistaken: I’ll go check next door.” I scurry away, leaving the host to deal with the sunburned and wrinkled good-time retirees who stumbled up to the entrance behind me.

I ponder these things as I walk home—was it the angel whose voice I heard? Or was it the one who sent them who spoke to me? I enter my little apartment. I put peanut butter on bread: my hands feel too swollen to cook—not an actual swelling, but they feel huge and numb like oven mitts.

In my dream that night, the angel and I are walking through the halls of my old school; the trees are green and the light filters softly through into the old building through the windows. I say, “isn’t it the wrong time of year to be playing the ghost of Christmas past?” They smile. We sit down in the dining hall, which my memory has embellished with chandeliers. Teachers and students gather for lunch. Nobody seems to notice my companion, but they’re happy to see me, as always in these dreams.

Together, the angel and I leave the school building and walk out into the streets of the ancient city, which I know to be the angel’s home. They seem as much part of the city as the cobblestones and the megaliths. I long to be here with them, but I know that I am only visiting from a long way off.

I awake feeling satiated: with the sun streaming into my room, the dream of another day begins again. Work is slow and uneventful. I go to the bathroom and doomscroll absent-mindedly as I’m on the toilet. There it is! “What do you want?” The video’s there, and I stop my thumb from scrolling past. It sits still on the screen, waiting for me. I hesitate: do I want to open it here, now? If I don’t open it now (toilet or no), then I might not find it again. I tap it with my thumb. It loads, slowly. Damn the shoddy signal in this pit! Finally, it begins to play:

“What do you want?” Yes—there’s the voice! It’s not the same coming out of the tiny phone speaker as it was when it pierced my heart out of the ether, but it’s the same heavenly voice nevertheless. The screen’s still black. “Do you want to be free?” Oh yes, voice, I want to be free to join you in the eternal city of my childhood. “Is your life a dream, and your dreams only memories?” How does this voice know me and my innermost self? There on the screen is the angel—its is the voice that speaks. It says: “come to the Holy Mountain Retreat Center; we’ll take care of everything.” Plinky piano music starts up as a mock version of the stone city from my dreams fades into view. “We offer many services, including…” I close the video in disgust. Damn advertisers—they always know just how to get to you.