It’s weird writing with a pen instead of a keyboard. It’s making me have to slow down. I’m thinking in chunks. Just like in dreams, my wrist doesn’t want to bother with transitions. I bet in ten years kids won’t even learn how to write. Instead of practicing their letters, they’ll start doing keyboard drills in kindergarten. And writing stuff by hand will be this old-fashioned thing that only a few people know how to do anymore, like sword fighting and speaking Latin. And then when technology fails and all the computers explode or whatever, no one will know how to communicate and we’ll lose our written language and be like cavemen again drawing pictures instead of words. And maybe that’s when the artists will take over, when what we do will be important, when everything has to be said with symbols.
It’s impossible to tell how crazy everyone is in here. This one guy looks fine, dressed up like someone’s dad you’d see mowing his lawn on a Sunday afternoon, khakis and a sweatshirt, psych-ward casual. But then you realize that you’ve never heard him speak. Then you see the forest of scars up and down his forearm. Then you’re walking down the hall and hear a whisper of pain, like a movie with the volume turned low, and it gets a little louder as you walk, and then you’re standing next to the Room, and you look inside the little window and there he is thrashing around, throwing himself against the padded walls, screaming at the top of his lungs. But you can only hear the muted version; you can only see him on this tiny screen.