“The tired person no longer has any (subjective) possibility at his disposal; he therefore cannot realize the slightest (objective) possibility. But the latter remains, because one can never realize the whole of the possible; in fact, one even creates the possible to the extent that one realizes it. The tired person has merely exhausted the realization, whereas the exhausted person exhausts the whole of the possible. The tired person can no longer realize, but the exhausted person can no longer possibilize. ” — Gilles Deleuze, "The Exhausted"

At this time of relentless ecological and emotional disaster, I reckon we all feel a little exhausted. Inundated by images we didn’t ask for, fine details we don’t need, zoomed in videos we have no control over, there’s a surround sound like quality to this haplessness. It presses upon you like the ambient, sweetly poisonous car perfume many taxis come ensnared in.

For a hot minute, the digital world was a marketplace for the urgent beauty we encountered in our everyday meals, walks, shopping sprees, readings. Now we rage — at the books we hate, the movies that gaslight us, the scandals that don’t end. We’re slapped thousand times a day with excruciatingly that home in on details of a myriad forms, all of them of a negative character. Online discourse is its own form of NOx emission and there ain’t no effective and efficient reduction of those pollutants

At the time of writing my previous newsletter I had a page (both sides) full of ideas about the upcoming editions. But I spent 10 minutes on the news this morning which immediately sucked that life force out of me. I had a couple of ideas I sorely wanted to go into, but here I was seething at something that didn’t even bother most. Almost in an instant. After marinating in that broth for a bit, I decided to heed to my own advice and cut off (whatever version of that applies to me) from the relentless cycle of news, texts (also news), emails (news, really), newsletters (what else?), the world (just news).

To quote Deleuze once again:

“Does he exhaust the possible because he is himself exhausted,or is he exhausted because he has exhausted the possible? He exhausts himself in exhausting the possible, and vice versa. He exhausts that which is not realized through the possible.He has had done with the possible,beyond all tiredness,for to end yet again.”

What happened to finding community online? What about shared spaces that Sarah Schulman wrote about? Turns out the critics were right. These things are only possible in person. And so I turn my back to the black mirror digital eco chamber and walk to the nearest building (a church, a library, a mall, anywhere really) and observe people typing away on laptops, thumbing on cellphones or contemplating the glorious stained glass.

We humans have worked this corporate life thingamajig form for years before, but we’ve never been this busy. This exhausted. Busy checking one crucially pathetic update to the next pivotally galling one. We’ve always found time for wonder, awe and beauty. One that was not limited to (and by) other humans. Where we check-in be it by the balcony, gaze at the comings and goings on the street below, or stare at the puddles of snow yet to turn to slush or just following a snail in its journey on a solidly bored summer afternoon. Now, we only glaze through (what sometimes can also bleed into the slightly more important days and times).

One month into the year, I have my physical forms of writing, reading, journaling, more on its way and I crave to spend more time yapping with myself than with any other form of constant, incessant outside noise. Nonfiction beckons me this year — from the movies of Bela Tarr, to the just arrived Set Margins titles. There’s an unending display of wickedness in the multimedias around and I’ve not control over that.So, I turn myself towards the physical media I own, have borrowed when indoors. And forge on outside on my walks without the internet annotating the city one footstep at a time.

Dipping my toes into the intrewebz’s simulacra every now and then is a function of my job as a journalist and communicator working in climate tech, change. But beyond that my guard rails are up, for I cannot seethe and rage and echo everything everyone around is coo-cooing about. It’s all just noise, everyone wanting to have an opinion on everything, anyone really having a megaphone-esque opinion on everything around without a single shred of a consequence.

While they will very well continue to air their disproportionately vile sentiments and presentiments into the ether, I will just quickly excuse myself out of their NOx emission-like posts, thoughts (really all conveyed in the form of texts) and listen to the music that’s a private succour, while reading, writing, walking the self away, far away.