Planet-Like

This blog, I am telling you in advance, will not attempt to save the world. It won't say anything deep or very interesting. Instead, it will reveal a troubled recess of my mind, most likely shaped by a childhood of petty bourgeois values and pointless poetic training (and behind the Iron Curtain too, where no one trusts anyone and drafts kill.)

So be it, if it avoids a life of crime. To explain: I am writing this instead of hurling a heavy bag of groceries (cans of beans, olive oil, red wine) at the head of a beauty-on-the-bus (let’s call her Bob). Bob's head is glued to a silver phone. Words tumble out, merry and sharp like atoms of asbestos from a crumbling wall:

"I was like 'why would you, like, even do that?...' 

And she was like, 'what?'

"Yeah. Can you believe it? It's like, unreal... 

And she got millions of ‘likes’ for that crap…

Naah, exactly, that’s, like, IT: he didn’t, like, see it!

So I was like  'aren't you gonna, like, tell him'?

and she was like 'none of your business biatch. 

Yeah-like! Fuckin' YEAH."

Bob is in full blast. She curls a strand of hair around a finger. There’s a skull painted on her fingernail. 

"Like, who does she think she is? Dude... 

No, nooo - how can I, like, tell him? 

'Cause, like, every time he sees me he's like, 'what’s up, babe? You wanna, like, hang out?'...

It's like, Oh my Gawd!"

I am banging my head against the glass, softly at first, then harder, faster.  If it rained kittens, that's the sound they would make. 

People don’t ‘say’ things to each other; they don’t whisper or shout or murmur or mutter or roar. They can only ‘be like: blah-blah’. Talking robots would sound more riveting - and do you know why? Because at least they would be saying "X", not saying 'something-like-X". They would be clanging their little iron fingers together in a hand shake, or even pouring olive oil into each other’s rusty joints, instead of ‘like, hangin’ out’ - which is only pretending to do something extremely vague at best.  

I get it: 'Like' is in fact a lens - it keeps you safe from both extremes - less misery (‘he’s was like, see ya’ later’ instead of ‘he left me’) and smaller ecstasy (‘I, like, dig you’ instead of ‘I’m burning with love’). 

It keeps the world ticking too.  When you say ‘polar bears are, like, dying’, perhaps there isn’t any death involved.  Things can never get too bad (or too good). Words that can hurt are padded up and put away. You live in the narrow tundra of your beloved planet Like. 

As for the fact that life itself depends on daily foraging for Facebook ‘likes’? Dislike, dislike. My bag of groceries is already swinging alarmingly high.

Wake up, Bob(s). Resist, fight back. The word 'like' is a grey blotch flooding your rainbow.