Twitter suspended me days and days ago and promised to look into the reason “soon.” When I call, I’m given an impressively long “case number”, but then nothing happens. There are some reasonable reasons: I changed my name on my email, but not my provider, and there is no provision from my provider for moving messages — they just get dumped. Those who are resourceful, simply go to the Valier phone book and call me up on the landline that is another reason for Twitter trouble. They will only accept the restoration of my Twitter account if I give them my cell phone number.
I do not have a cell phone. I have never had a cell phone. I have no intention of getting a cell phone. There are some very subtle and sinister aspects of cell phones, like being able to trace your whereabouts and travel. Not that this last affects me since I don’t go anywhere. Cell phones are vital to writing a modern crime series for the screen. But they have an effect something like watching traditional theatre movies on a TV screen. They make life small and over-accessible. They promote business but not actual achievements.
The upshot is wanting to live without Twitter. I am curious about why I was suspended. Was it my quick quips at the expense of Trump? Or was it being on the verge of exposing a hoaxy Indian? Didn’t everyone know Mr. HWM was really just Sterling Schildt, raised in the resort town of East Glacier where his dad ran a laundromat and his mom was a bank clerk? Or was it just me, who taught both his parents in my English classes decades ago? They were good kids. I know several Schildts. They are all ambitious, wanting fame and fortune. Even Rinks, his mom’s family who were stable workers, much respected, have come upon hard times two generations later. Lots to write about for those who aren’t pursuing a white-facing identity.
The main reason I was on Twitter was to publicize my blog, prairiemary.blogspot.com, which is where I do my main work: a thousand-word essay daily. I just posted the title and subject each day. I still haven’t figured out how to make them automatically email to people, unless I create an email mailing list. I resent having to spend so much time on machinery rather than writing. This is why I don’t publish.
But the pandemic has changed everything. My living circumstances are deteriorating rapidly, partly neighbors, partly wall-to-wall salsify weeds and volunteer poplars, and partly a colony of cats that scorn kibble. At the same time my level of energy and strength is sinking. Death is all around and sometimes it seems a good thing that the world has shrunk so much, that the government — which wasn’t doing anything helpful in the first place — is doomed.
It doesn’t seem like smart remarks on Twitter are useful anymore. The simplest transition, like buying more toner ink for my printer, is made complex by popup suggestions I don’t want, promised gifts good for secretaries with a sweet tooth, and refusal to operate a simple website.
My Mac Operating system has become an arm of Apple. My formerly trusted and convenient Pages App has become a pseudopod of the company, pitching “Apple Books” and structuring jpeg storage in ways I don’t use. Things I thought were in this computer, like my address contacts, turn out to be in theirs. I have never signed up for iCloud, considering it unreliable and insecure by its very nature. I’m glad I’ve printed out on paper so much of what I keep, but even what’s on CD’s is useless without using that app. If Apple discontinues Pages, it all dies. Apps mean vulnerability to chance.
Today’s mercantile and governing systems aim to leave no one free-standing. Noticing that we cocoon instead of visiting, they want to guide us all into organized cocoonery so we don’t even know others exist. I’m glad I’ve kept my typewriter, but it’s electric and the grid can go down. Luckily, I still have a pencil and a stack of legal pads.
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