stop making sense

Well, by darn, I feel like the boy who goes away to school, and comes back for the holidays. Except it isn't the holidays, because I'm always here, even if not, because this is a home of sorts, and we're always returning to homes.

Today I learned about the 'missed connections' feature of craigslist. If you don't know what this is, check it out at http://toronto.en.craigslist.ca/mis/. Essentially, it's a virtual confession box for people to confess and proclaim their 'missed connections' with people and pedestrians they know nothing about, but casually interact(ed) with somehow in the course of their day. This is all about those strangers (or not-so-strange-strangers), those momentary and instantaneous proximity infatuations, and the hope that they will fortuitously read about your experience, share it with you, and (presumably) get back to you about it. How interesting is this phenomenon?

One thing the 'missed connections' forum really seems to indicate is that there is something noteworthy (literally) about these fleeting social interactions. There is also a kind of universal quality to them: each confessor experiences a kind of 'spontaneous connection', presumably verging on the transcendent. Or, perhaps more accurately, the fantasy of a connection. This isn't quite 'love at first sight', although it seems to be irreducibly related to it (and yet, always reduced to it). But it is the kind of mind-blowing experience we're not wont to have within the quotidian. And yet, what is love, if not the momentary and exhilarating dedication felt during one of these moments? Can't the stranger's eye glance stir more in me than the words on my lover's lips?

There is also the sense that every 'missed connection' is in another way a perfect connection. Hence its pellucid idealization. Missed connections contain the necessity that they are always also unmissed. But what language are we speaking in when we are beguiled into believing that they are mutual? How do we ever know? At the moment of fully appreciating, of feeling a dialogue with another, I am actually in harmonious dialogue with myself. I come to terms with my experience of and with the other, even if no such thing has happened at all. But then the internal conviction must be that, yes, in fact, such a thing has happened. I have experienced something rare and mystical with another human being. It has happened against all odds. It is extraordinary.

Finally, these confessions are always highly literary. To recount these experiences is to be a story teller and a poet. "You crossed the street, and your hair was blowing subtly in the wind"; "I let you try on the medium sized shirt, but it was a little too big; I offered to order you a smaller one...; you didn't leave your name and number", etc., etc. What kind of story would a compilation of these encounters be?