A lump in the throat, butterflies in your stomach. Shared glances across a crowded room, secret letters and half-made promises. All of these things and none of these things. Passion, playfulness, and delicate liaisons, we are more to each other than just the words we endlessly exchange. Let the love speak in the silence and the blank spaces. In the moments when I wake up and you are asleep, breathing softly. Your shyness fades, replaced by rawness and empathy, but also a mysterious gulf that I can never breach; always separate but curious nonetheless.
I search for you in your face, in the trivialities, trying to read the signs, but it is not in the secrets we divulge. It is in the elegance of your limbs that slowly move, dark eyes soulful and deep. But when looks fade, there will always be the gentleness you showed to me.
When the brown leaves fall, gathering in country lanes among the cows, the frost-bitten ground and isolation, there never was anyone but us.
Love defies description precisely because it teases and vexes, slips from your grasp as soon as you catch a glimpse of its ethereal face. As soon as I think I know you, you reveal yet another side to you. Just as clouds form themselves into features of what we recognise, so does love sneak into our hearts and make its home.
Even if you said nothing or just lay there, crying, I would hold you until you wanted me to stop. I never want you to feel afraid of telling me anything. An argument now is something we can laugh about later.
The reason why I am surprised when you notice things about me is because I believe we are the same person. I assumed you already knew. That is why difference in our desires is so very painful. Entwined with intimacy: this is the knowledge of another's inner being, their interior state, a flight of feeling and thought, perhaps, ephemeral though significant.
And despite that fact that it cannot be seen, heard, detected, physically, it nevertheless spins itself into the quiet frenzy of desire, pulse quickening at the thought of you.
And no one would have said it was special. No one, that day we walked along the dock, one foot in front of the other, barely speaking. Bright white sky towering above us, birds wheeling. My heart realises it has finally opened, and it is in response to you. No one could have guessed, you're not particularly impressive just to look at. But there's something in those quiet moments, as our breaths match in rhythm.
I sat on the top deck of the bus, aware of the beauty in everyone, whereas before I had only seen difference. Diversity puts the wrong focus on the issue of how different cultures are when really we should be celebrating our shared humanity. The aroma of beer fills the deck, people chat among themselves as the scenes of nighttime London flash by. Women totter in their high heels and the men strut about with their chests puffed out. And yet there are those from lands far away, in their denim and sandals, woollen hats in summer, slightly sallower skin than the english milk white. A young couple flirt by the tube stop sign, next to a man with a paunch smoking an e-cigarette who could be the boy in ten years. The circus plays out, and reminds me we are all the same. I feel connected to everyone.
Does technology control you, or do you control technology? Technology is an extension of the mind. Circuit boards intertwined with neurons. We are the hive mind. Like the flap of a butterfly's wings. Algorithms are mating with synapses, the infinite scroll merging with the present moment, as engineers react to data and build systems born of the endless feedback loop. We are the technology, and the technology is us. Technology is the endless mirror, reflecting ourselves back at us, an evergreen snapshot of the past crystallised in comments and likes. Megabytes never gather dust but are stored virtually on machines, on ships bobbing gently on the ocean. God is in the machine, the component parts that weave and dodge and misbehave and seem to possess that spark of sentient life. Viruses are ghosts in the machine, haunting us until we pay attention to the error of our ways. We create the technology, and the technology creates us. We can't avoid being influenced by the technology because we are influenced by everything. We must get to know our own minds and harness the technology for our own ends; if we fall in love with circuit boards and LEDs and noughts and ones then the technology controls us. Technology exists to further the human goals of life, laughter, love, and art. The engineers are angels spinning life out of electricity, out of dead hardware. Software engineering is magic; no one understands it and that's the way we like it.
