I went for a year and a half without a computer of my own. I didn't read much during that time – I was repairing key parts of my nervous system and couldn't use those functions very much.

I didn't have a smartphone. I'd walk to the library to use the computers there, and that was it.

I'd been trying to reclaim my own body from technological substitutions for some time. I didn't want an iPhone or an iDentity; I just wanted eyes. I let my eyes recuperate by giving them a break from blue light and using amber lights in the evening. I'd try to sync my schedule to sunrise and sunset as much as possible. The fatigue lifted for the first time in a while.

I didn't want speakers, I wanted to figure out what the fears were that stopped me from speaking when I most needed to. I wanted my voice to be the main speaker I thought about.

I didn't want an ARM processor, I wanted my arm to work properly.

I noticed that whenever I was typing, I was actually being silent – I wasn't using my voice, I was using a complex series of actions that substituted for the creation of human sound. This felt important.

I didn't even want a router, I wanted better routes in my life. Things that felt like real choices.

Eventually I did begin trying to assemble a desktop computer because it felt like something was missing. Something I couldn't do without.

I wanted the experience to be as ergonomic as possible since computers have a way of demanding you spend a lot of time on them.

I put together various pieces, always dimly aware that most of the remaining objects in my house seemed to be taking the place of a relationship that had disappeared. (Even the Vitamix, whose packaging celebrated my entry into "the Vitamix family," and which I gave away because I wanted a family more than I wanted a Vitamix.

Now, after having spent some time with my family, I wish I'd kept the Vitamix.)

I considered whether the computer needed a mouth (speakers) or eyes (camera), always noticing how much my behavior changed whenever the threat of being watched was present.

After I'd assembled it – a small Linux box, a vertical mouse, a monitor propped at eye-level on the built-in 90s desk in the townhome I was renting – the last piece was the keyboard. I looked for one that would let me stretch my arms as wide as possible.

I also noticed how cold and passive the Linux box was, and I could see why men like them. No feelings. It's just infinite space for you to do what you want. The ultimate yin.

I had only one chair left – a kneeling chair that I'd gotten when I wanted to be as engaged as possible while teaching online English classes to kids in China. But using the kneeling chair in front of the computer was freaky. My posture gave me the kind of bottom-up shift in awareness that would later come from EMDR. I realized I was kneeling before a god.

Fuck the gods of technology. Fuck the gods of men. I moved the kneeling chair back downstairs, and began to stand when I used the computer.

Then I had the last postural revelation in relationship to this thing. The arrangement of parts was almost like a human, and when my arms spread wide at the keyboard, I got it – I was just trying to hug my missing dad. I'd reverse-engineered an approximation of a person, and it was my father.

I deleted this website originally because I didn't want it to be a substitute for that connection. I felt so pathetic trying to communicate, even indirectly, with people who didn't respond.

If there was one sound I would associate with my dad – from very early on – it's the click of a phone call going to voicemail.

Now this website (brought back in 2025) feels okay, like it's just an experimental space.

Anyway, I dismantled that computer, and the electric grill – another example of something concretized. So much of my childhood experience was navigating my parents' unspoken anger. I wondered – if I got rid of all the things that were helping me work it out in some way – if it would be possible to just channel the energy through my own feelings and clear them up. I have a relationship to painkillers that is very specific – I don't like them. I don't like anything that takes me away from what I'm actually feeling. This puts me at odds with a world that seems to function through not really feeling what it's feeling.

Can I just move the feelings? So far, so good.