Permanent Record

Interpol, meet Jeff Donaldson:  It was bound to happen at some point.  All the stamps in my passport, boarding pass stubs in the bottoms of random bags, or used as page-marks in books I never finished just increase the odds of me running in to a bit of trouble along the way.  Until now it has manifested in the form of lost luggage, cancelled flights...  the normal benign hassle that people (me included) usually complain too much about.  But now I'm red-flagged in the system.  That system: the matrix that all of us long-haulers who've taken the red pill know is there even if we can't see it yet.  Everything about me that is camping out in that little barcode on my passport just got a little more exciting.  

Turns out I have been traveling to Australia with the wrong visa for a while now--I'm here to work, not to be a tourist--and only this time did the customs agents pick up on it.  And like the chronically honest dipshit that I am, I gave this information freely.  I was detained at a desk just the right side of the passport stampers, and just short of the baggage carousels, Purgatory, slightly elevated so I could see my bags going round and round as the rest of my plane's passengers collected their items and moved along.  Would I be let through the pearly gates of the Sydney airport to the land of milk and honey (murderous biker gangs excluded) or would I be cast back into the pit?

Well, here I am watching the Pacific waves crash in on rocks and sand from my eighth floor balcony bike shop, so you know how the story ends.  But the agent who helped me along did a little "official counseling" and informed me that I would be noted in "the system."  She was very polite, but gave me one of those looks that your fourth grade teacher gives you that instantly lets you know that pulling hair is not ok and you will be sent to the principal's office for discipline if you even give a crooked look to another pigtail ever.  For as long as you live.

As a cool-shades-wearing red-pill-swallowing long-hauler I can imagine what this means and I'm not looking forward to the working over in customs I'm sure to get on the way back home.  Now, whenever my passport is scanned, disembarking at whatever port of entry, I'll know that the agent will see something like, "not really a tourist"  or "too dumb to keep his mouth shut" in my permanent file. 

20-20-20-4-hours to go, oho...

...I wanna be sedated.  One of the first things you must embrace when setting off on a trip halfway around the world is that there will be a few setbacks.  Setbacks and grouchy travelers.  Setbacks and grouchy travelers and panicky, overworked airline agents.  My destination today is the Sunshine Coast of Australia. Already, there has been some confusion to the nature of my visa, increases in baggage charges, ($250‽) and some decidedly grouchy co-travelers fighting for the front of the line.  Laisse tomber.  These are the  precious moments that I will practice patience, kindness and complimentary in-flight drinking.

Bottoms up.

Interrobang

‽-- Beginning with the way E.E. Cummings screwed with punctuation to the way we use it or do not use it now with abbreviated words, in bodies of emails, text messages, it is clear that somewhere along the line efficiency becomes important.  It could easily be just that.  This thing, this hybrid mark, could have popped up with the significance that someone, probably with a fancy phone and callouses at the ends of her thumbs, could have an easier time simultaneously expressing uncertainty, surprise and confusion.  WTF‽ (Interrobang)

But that doesn't satisfy me.   It is a mark, and a hybrid, like the rest of us.  If I have learned anything, or gleaned something that maybe I wasn't supposed to learn, it is this: A thought, about anything, even something as insignificant as punctuation can reflect something else that has more power to drive us, our society, the world.  A living metaphor.  Allegory.  You pick.  

A philosopher named Sassure suggested language, words--these words, any words--exist always in a system of differences without positive terms.  That is, the words can never be identified by what they are, but by everything they are not.  Through just a small part of the 20th century, other thinkers came up with different ways to apply this principle.  It became a tool in the kits used by scholars, feminists, individuals.  Jaques Derrida, along with giving us all a good mind-thrashing, took this idea and played with it--yes played.  He calls that play Différance, and he said it is the stone that is close to signifying the death of the dynasty.  Derrida's meaning is the dynasty (the traditional search for authoritative meaning) and no one can tell you exactly what he means by that statement because the words do not specify exact meaning, only differences, therefore the play therein is the stone.  What a great challenge and charge to a person:  What you think matters. In this way,  I come to the interrobang.

Let's go back to the calloused girl with the fancy phone.  What if she's not trying to express uncertainty, surprise and confusion?  Say, she'd like to express disbelief and anger instead.  Well, the interrobang is just fine for that, too.  It plays with the way we use both the question and exclamation marks, only now it is played with and mashed into one funny looking mark.  Refer to différance a few lines up.

In a sense, this mark is a syntax cyborg--not question mark, not an exclamation mark, but having characteristics of both, yet not fully either.   There is no way of getting around this:  If we follow our philosophical bread trail, we meet Donna Haraway and do actually land on the topic of cyborgs in their very own manifesto.  After all, cyborgs are people, too. And other stuff.  And who should tell them what they are or are not?  Do they not deserve rights like us?

If we can think of the interrobang as a cyborg, can we also think of people like an interrobang?  We are all hybrids.  Mechanic+student+drinking partner+dog owner+motorcycle rider+writer+sweetheart+royal pain in the ass+etc=me.  How about you?  Seems we might all have a bit of the interrobang inside us.  And maybe through some oddball reverse engineering, the use of interrobang signifies our cultural realization and embracing of our true and complicated natures.

So, my new friend the interrobang gets some credit.  But, here's the rub:  In order to make the mark on this page, I have to switch the language on my computer and perform a key stroke that involves pressing 5 more keys in sequence.  Could it get any harder to use this little bastard‽  I don't have to spell out that irony for you, do I? Someone talk to The Man and tell him that the rest of us hybrids are running the show now.