Datkham

Tara Thomas, 2000; revised as an excerpt from HERSTORY: An

Anthology of She (2008)

"All my life I'd been looking for God and he was right in my
pocket." - Chris Rock

Civilization has yielded

to cities, the likes of u.s. people
in pockets --
PalmPilotspagerspaper
We are 2(PDA)
publicly personal, digital displays
of assisting one’s affections, width
pinched Psalms
mass-produced prophylactics
pens
pluralized pennies
plus keys...

They arrived at the gates of ghetto heaven, greeted on clouds of

smoke, criticizing each other's inaccessibility but warmly
welcoming by name. They toke a little advice and notice that the
block is, has been, uncharacteristically NYPD-free. Suckas! Time
for plan B ‘cause we recognize your d’s, they think. The men don
fades, locks and braids. The rides? Rimmed to hooprocked.
Unless we’re talkin’ video chicks, the gear is comfortable and
self-styled. Which homicidal, overpaid expert said tinted, multi-
antennaed Chevys and Crown Vics, crew cuts and tight jeans
made effective disguises? The logic tickled them and they
choked. Just then, another approached the gates, preoccupied
with a friend on the unseen end of a camera phone, all eyes
seemingly closed yet at least one surveyed the land. The funny
cloud and great date subjects the ads suggest aren’t available for
capture on this clear day. Oxidized metallic address numbers,
stairs that need fixing, the neighbor’s dog, a few folks getting in
where they fit in on a porch, however, were. Damn. The joke’s on
us... Some take the advice to go and head home, where they
attempt to close Big Brother out for a bit. I don't know about
them, but I am an only child and that illegitimate bastard is no
kin to me.

*******

Here we are, a few thousand years later. Scattered, sordid and

still at the task of getting God in the ring, hoping to compensate
for the extensive spiritual vacuity witnessed in today’s media. In
many ways, we are told that knowledge grants bargaining power
over itself and others. If there are two things we, the people,
love, it’s a bargain and the wherewithal to affect it. To be in the
know, essentially. Maybe it is mere coincidence that Jupiter,
planet and mythological lord of (over)abundance, conceptual
cousin of our great nation, bears a Hindi translation of ‘guru,’ for
"teacher." Maybe it isn’t, but what lessons! Class is all-ways in
session. Monitors have left the halls and made their way to
bulbous sidewalk fixtures that never emit light, our general
routes of traffic, elevators, online activity, train platforms, ATMs,
SUVs, our hands... Get caught on the wrong side of “right” during
their watch and detention or a demerit of some sort is almost
assured, sometimes depending upon your degree of celebrity
and/or melanation. So, how ya like dem apples? They don’t get
you where they used to.

Excuse me as I make no more excuses and kiss the sky, courtesy

of the lift I get from the digitally remastered live music of
clinically dead artists. Bless them. But speaking of live, just how
organic is “live” TV programming if you can pause and rewind it
with TiVo? Seems real-time can stop-and-go and old is new is old
again so long as the advertising minds behind it say so. QUICK!
What’s today’s date? Hope you didn’t have to consult your cell
phone for that information. There were times when skygazers and
schoolchildren could be entrusted to keep the flame of such
abilities, but that was then. My spoiled rotten memory can’t seem
to say exactly when, though. Our machines and pained prosperity
have our perception of a collective grandeur called God by any
rightful name and the time-space thang in a chokehold; so tight
our bulging eyes are daily forced to watch little more than a
glossed-over reality just beyond reach... to death; like self-
sacrificial sheep of sorts. Lamb puts me in a Middle Eastern state
of mind and that could place me in violation of the Patriot Act,
right? Oh well. Allow me to continue. Um, the following
presentation is made possible by the theocracy of technology,
under which the children don’t have to pray or pledge but they
better know the art of modern sigils (read: text messaging or
graffiti gang signs per your neighborhood); eliminating
superfluous letters, usually vowels, and arranging at will for the
sake of the matter’s heart and what matters most to the heart of
the sender.

Texting has become a rather popular mixed bag on the collective

campus: parental check-ins for the elementary set; sex,
socializing and terrorizing for the teenage angsty; crisis alerts for
post-Columbine high schoolers as well as the college-bound per
the Virginia Tech and related subsequent tragedies. The instantly
MTV-gratified pleasure principle somehow suppresses the fact
that journalists and quote authorities endquote are free to act
lustfully towards your information. When the silent presence of
the telecommunications companies’ short message service (SMS)
archives makes some noise (as in the 2007 criminal trial of
former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick whose sex text with his
Chief of Staff Christine Beatty was conjured as proof of their
perjury of adultery accusations), the ‘sealed’ intent – harmful or
helpful – of the sigil is reiterated in a modern context.

I have my own work to do, information to acquire quickly, long

losts to find or acknowledge, creative offerings to share, bills to
pay and better to seek from within the slivers of time clipped by
my Fates. My inbox is full of quick prayers, links to holy books or
verses. For the pleasure of chuckling at the (in)accuracy of the
prediction, I have been known to follow my Ra through all the
horoscope's signs at 11:59 p.m. Even Benedictine Monks have a
web presence now, but they’ve been pretty tech-forward at large
since 1994’s critically acclaimed Gregorian “Chant” CD. People
thank God for the internet medium but can easily find the devil,
with power and influence “of the air,” in its details. I have done
both, mostly because of the efficiency boost it gave research and
work mixed with those crucial times it didn’t always link me to
the Earth the way it was supposed to. A dead line! Good thing I
wasn't one of those seeking a hit or home from Craig’s List. But
who am I gonna call to bust this ghost? Why, I’ll use my cell
phone’s day minutes to dial technical support, which the films
Vanilla Sky and Bruce Almighty contrastingly tried to convince
post-millennial audiences is divine.

On too many occasions, after being held hostage to 10 minutes of

easy listening, aimless transfers, having to repeat verification of
my name-billing address-part of mama’s pre-marital magic and
explain the full story twice, I spoke to “the guy next door”
associate who sounded very far away only to have my concern
slip through the cracks of his trusted script.
“Hello?”
“Yes, I can hear you. Can you hear me?”
“Yes, finally! The problem is – and please don’t transfer me
anymore – my internet service and digital phone aren’t working?
Well, actually, the internet service comes and goes, but the
phone is dead.”
“You do know there were no guarantees with emergency
call connection right, Ms. (screen reading pause) Thomas?”
“Yes sir, I do, but what do I – ?”
“So the internet service is fine, but the phone service is the
problem?”
“Like I told you, both need help. The phone is completely
dead and the internet seems on its way. Please help.”
“OK, Ms. Thomas. I am sorry for your inconvenience. Let me
consult my supervisor…”
“No please! That’s one of the disconnection modes. Get the
supe on three-way, please sir!”
“I am very sorry for your inconvenience today, Ms. Thomas.
Please hold so I can better assist you.” Cue music. Two, four, six
minutes...
“Hello Ms. Thomas?”
I stopped washing the dishes and deactivated the
speakerphone. “Oh. Hi! Didn’t know if you were coming back.”
“My supervisor says it appears the system was
overcharging you and listed you as delinquent in payment for a
while, so we disconnected. There’s also a network problem in
your area. We have created a ticket for a tech to service your
home between now and noon tomorrow. Please prepare to write
your ticket number. It is… .”

And cut! My phone time, patient mind and the lifelines I’ve made
of the web and its connections were blown away for a momentary
eternity. No blogging. No e-mail. No new music. No one to show
me “luv” or chide my song choices and assumed voices on
MySpace; poke me, send me drinks or help tend my garden on
Facebook. Without cable service, the broadcast news, TMZ and
other national public volcano footage of some sort became prime
fare. Woe unto the technologically staid on the day of digital TV
conversion c. February 2009! Had the Hopi people’s Grandmother
Spider gone through all this drama in creating her world? Force
outcomes as I might, I had no choice but to be still and know that
I’d done what I could as help made its way to The Palace. It
wouldn't be that sweet and my tower of power is far from ivory.
That just happens to be the encouraging name of my clean and
comfortable ghetto abode, made taller (and more affordable, I
presume) by the involuntary cap of cell phone towers. The mere
thought of living among potential carcinogens in addition to those
already plaguing our mass-produced foods, treated water supply
and health & beauty aids is increasingly disturbing.

What defenses do our less active elders, speechless babies or the

many incarcerated brothers in particular have against this
appendage of the invisible enemy that has already disrupted the
frequencies and function of hives across the U.S.? Without the
workers’ cross-pollination of our plants and flowers, the
production of natural foodstuff will suffer largely, leaving us to
rely even moreso on the technology behind genetically modified
products. President 44 is a beacon of hope, intelligence and
tenacity. Was he chosen for his ability to help free us from this
catch-22 or the corporate disbelief that any One can at this point?
Who will bail the people out, nourish our bodies or emerge to our
aid for those times if our finances fall behind, there is a hold on
food you don’t have an RFID (radio frequency identification) chip
to purchase or, paraphrasing Flavor Flav, 911 starts telling jokes.
Good Lord, Tech Support, please HELP! I traded my boiling “b”
attitude for a quick turn to the Beatitudes, receiving “Blessed are
the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth” linkage they pay for.
With a deep breath, I bypassed the dot-com and embraced the
calm of living -- to wait another day.

Stay tuned…