"Zombie Cicada", Stephanie Dogfoot
Someone in my mushroom group has shared a video about cicadas
whose bodies have been eaten away by a fungus which keeps their
brains intact and the result is a video of a hollow, half eaten cicada
with no internal organs walking across a forest floor. There is a hell
of a lazy metaphor here but I will not take the bait. Not today. I could
tell you about that one friend who I never thought would get married
who just got married, or the ads from the home nursing company
that my family uses that take the form of surreal memes. Instead I’m
thinking about my grandmother and how she begged my mother to stop
her subscription of the Straits Times because it was taking up too much
room in her flat, then a month later begged my mother to re-subscribe
because she wanted to keep track of her friends’ funerals and I think
perhaps this is a perfect metaphor for why I can’t quit the facebook
and sometimes I can’t believe I’m old enough to remember when
we called it The Facebook, made jokes about The Facebook Is Watching
You. Who is the Facebook? Who Isn’t the Facebook? and sometimes
I can’t believe I’m old enough to remember when the only way to meet
poets in a new city was to type ‘poetry slam’ into a google search bar,
old enough to remember when writing on your friend’s facebook wall
was just a silly alternative to writing on the whiteboard on a room door
and somewhere in a dorm room fifteen years ago I am describing
the facebook to Singaporean friends as the American Friendster
and somewhere in a dorm room sixteen years ago a boy creates
a ritual, his last name to be shorthand for what will happen to your
little internet community of freaks you’ve never met if someone
types out a bad word and the reason they don’t stop you from
deleting the app is because they know you’ll be back one day
and somewhere the kid played by Andrew Garfield in the movie
sits at an outdoor table of a a good class bungalow in Singapore
at sunset and all he hears is cicadas and the other day I opened a
newspaper and wondered why none of the ads had anything to do
with my last conversation and all I know is I haven’t logged out
on purpose in years and I tell myself I need it to sell my art, tell myself
I need it to sell those two kitchen chairs I don’t use any more, tell myself
it’s for science. Social research. Tonight I’ll finally get to the bottom
of my newsfeed, decode the meaning behind the pattern of the pictures
of vegetables and the milipedes shared by my classmate, my classmate,
my other classmate. Look at all these bodies we’ve accumulated, it hums,
Stay, it whispers, stay.