on the spectrum of anonymity (poem 005-2021)

on the spectrum of anonymity

riding heard

on blueberry trill

suspended between me

and me

and you

and them

glissando

obligato

abrigato

oh me oh my

o mio 

 

 

scarf it up

A parade of scarves. Each on a sapling branch. Winter. Franklin Square. Solar and Plum. Fuzzy scarf. Skinny stringly one. Double-crocheted maroon orange olivered yellow lavender scarf. That one. Reserved. Proffered. Homeless. Plastic bag fastened with a safety pin. Inside it, a piece of notebook paper, roughly 3 x 5, lined in back, crayoned: "You're Blessed You will all ways Be" in cursive within three cumulus clouds. Shiny sun upper right. Blue sky. Green grass and trees, the bottom landscape.

Pick it up.

Wear it.

Keep it.

Why not.

For now.

Gleðilegt nýtt ár!

anonymous

Literally without a name. Or without a literal name. How about a metaphorical name. Nameless. Not "name known but unspoken." No, not that. No name at all. Was there ever a name. Was a prior name shorn and shucked, offering a new self. Or was the anonymity there from birth. Did the anonymity serve as a blank canvas to paint on, to create an identity, a self. Dead to me. They say this or that one is "dead to me." A phrase nurturing either resentment or detachment. Take your pick. But who are "you"? Who is "me"? The power of anonymity. What exactly is that power. The unheralded secret, random kindness. The so-called selfless act that is never truly selfless despite what they say. Who are "they"? Anonymity as a shield, a shelter. Anonymity as a brandishing (surely not a brand name). "Anonymous" being the author. "Anonymous" being the donor. Handy for purposes of humility. Purposeful for adoptions. Anonymous the voyeur. Anonymous the spy. Anonymous the unknowable divinity, the unspeakable divine, as the ancient chosen tribe resorted to an acronym rather than utter the Sacred Name of No Name. That power of anonymity. Protector. Refuge. Savior. No name. Before name. Beyond name. Beyond noun or pronoun. Beyond adjective.

Just verb.

hoopster hoopla

Three tall young men. SU Orange jackets. People posing with them for pics. Mall food court. Presumably SU basketball players. Affable and accommodating, from all I can discern. Hoopla over hoopsters. Not a tidal wave of celebrity commotion, just a ripple. But likely more than if the 14th Dalai Lama or Nancy Pelosi or Anthony Doerr or Stephanie Miner or Daniel Berrigan or the city's best teacher strolled by. Maybe that is how it should be. Maybe it should not matter, either way. Maybe. Maybe not.

They Are Watching You Watching This

"We never don't know anything about someone."

-- John Nardone, chief executive of [x+1]

de-anonymization

Have you been de-anonymized? You probably have been de-anonymized, a victim of de-anonymization. I too have probably been de-anonymized. No, this has nothing to do with having one's anonymity broken in Alcoholics Anonymous or another 12 Step anonymity program. As reported this past week in The Wall Street Journal, this is about what They know about us. We learn that only 33 "bits" of information are needed to identify someone. stuff like ZIP codes, gender, birthdates, income. The WSJ article tells us how a data-mining company called [x+1] in a fifth of second, one click, tells Capital One a whole bunch of information from your computer so that Capital One offers you a credit card tailored to that data.

So, if [x+1] does this we can only imagine what Blogger, Yahoo, Google, the Department of Homeland Security, Tiffany & Co., ESPN, HSBC, ABC, MSN, Apple, USPS, Facebook, et alia can discern, ascertain, intuit, estimate, suggest, guess, or retain.

Identity theft?

How about the theft of anonymity, the loss of the loss of identity? How about the loss of the illusion of privacy?

Surprised, anyone?

Dear Anyone,

We know who you are.

p.s. "De-anonymization" is one of those nouninization words that tend to annoy me; one of those words carrying a freight-train's worth of syllables, Germanic-like, trudging along and running over a bunch of crisp and simple verbs.

A Simple Twist of Fate

This will be hard to explain, but I'll try. I solipsistically did a Yahoo search of my real name (not my nom de plumage). Results? 2,000 hits, most inaccurate in their attribution, which I find amusing. Around hit number 700, there was a link for a poetry magazine I had long ago forgotten. The link apparently provides digital archives (or maybe just an index) of all the issues of the magazine, going back over 40 years. My name shows up, on an endlessly long and unreadable litany of names, many of them literary lights, right next to a former poet laureate of the United States, side by side, as if we are rubbing elbows, literarily and metaphorically speaking. (I actually met the guy about 18 months ago at an event, and he signed a book of his poems that a friend had sent me as a gift. You already know I am a shameless name-dropper, but not as bad as my brother, methinks. Isn't it a sign of neurotic low self-esteem?) I had something published in the magazine in 1967, the datastream tells me. A poem. A vague memory tells me that contributors had to pay to get into this poetry press's anthology. I would probably cringe now at what I wrote, but I'm still curious. Then, after my name, the website reports that the celebrated poet published something in the magazine in 2006, if I'm reading the streaming run-on river of data correctly. Earlier in the stream is the maiden name of my son's new bride. Sheeeesh! What next? The date, hour, and minute of my death? On the surface, none of this is the least bit noteworthy or remarkable. It is so obvious: We all have K at the outset of our last names. A simple-enough explanation. So what? you say. Big deal. But it all struck me as eerily coincidental, even providential. It creeped me out, as if it was fore-ordained that these connections should occur. It reminded me of the saying "Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous." But if I allow that the connections and their discovery may've been providential, why did it scare me? Is my faith that shallow? And, after all, are the connections more alphabetical than coincidental? Are they more alphanumerical than providential? Or is it all a modern personal message of the Alpha and the Omega? And, if so, how do I decode it?

Photo by Matej "Dedek" Batha; at least, I surmise as much.