Our Selfies Are Not Us

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The Things that never can come back, are several —
Childhood — some forms of Hope — the Dead —
Though Joys — like Men — may sometimes make a Journey —
And still abide —
We do not mourn for Traveler, or Sailor,
Their Routes are fair —
But think enlarged of all that they will tell us
Returning here —
“Here!” There are typic “Heres” —
Foretold Locations —
The Spirit does not stand —
Himself — at whatsoever Fathom
His Native Land —

Emily Dickinson

Food is necessary, so we obsess on it. Breathing is too, but like wind hitting trees, air needs something besides itself to be noticed. Ritualistic dinners may be like incense, turning the elemental into the mystic, and food is often made to be an event.

An AI artist (I guess) created images of ancient lives that attempt reality. The Last Supper (above) is a faux selfie of Jesus and the apostles on a night before Jesus was betrayed.

But it’s earnest absurdity is not then, it is now. There is no time travel. The joy of gathering is human, timeless. Like food. Or wind. But the composed rendering of a ritual is lost when done.

“The things that can never come back are several” is the written thought of the AI attempt. And like the food of The Last Supper, the food of a friend’s coconut cake recipe was the physical basis of Emily Dickinson’s words, written on a shard of recycled paper among hundreds of others that Emily employed to think upon. She used the tool of correspondence to connect with others then reused the paper involved to connect with herself, in written words, the internet of the era.

But the internet is nothing but projection. Emily instructed that her hundreds of “beautiful nothings” be burned upon her death. The need to have them until her death became “things that come back”. Because they are her.

Our Selfies are not us. They are who we want to be. Or to be where we want to be. “And still abide.”

We desperately want legitimized lives. We ritualize the essential – food, air, words – to project meaning beyond ourselves.

Emily Dickinson was reputed to be a gift giver of food she made. She would lower baskets of goodies she made to neighborhood children, Her cooking life and her gardens were in the world. But her words were to just one other, or more frequently to just to herself.

Holy Week in Christianity obsesses with projection beyond ourselves, the stories told of events that fulfill biblical prophesies, legitimizing the faith in what we cannot know using our understanding of events that have been. Our fully conceived, wrought and performed rituals consume some. But fewer and fewer are consumed by those rituals as selfies replace them. As the AI artist attempts to do. Our rituals are becoming personal. But projected.

Emily often considered death. “The Things that never can come back, are several —
Childhood — some forms of Hope — the Dead —” We all do. Jesus did. And Good Friday is part of Holy Week. And it is messy. Human. Inevitable.

But Easter is not the human selfie we make. Empty crosses are not memes or a brand. Everyone feels faith in something beyond ourselves, beyond our selfies, no matter the justifications we use to legitimize the unnecessary love we feel.

Surrounded by our constructions, including AI, memes and selfies, Easter is as undeniable as the spring. Despite all the rituals, we did not make Easter. It is given to us.