Finally. A moment to write. To quickly swiftly wiggle my fingers over the keyboard. When I took this job – did I think it would slow down my writing and research? Yes I was warned. But I also knew that if I did not write I would stop breathing…. So I cannot stop writing.

But I stop to think – is it because of the busy schedule of being Graduate Coordinator that stops me from writing in response to Adrienne’s call that we start to focus on disruption of family secrets – or is it – yet again – my mind refusing to reveal secrets to my typing fingers?

This morning as I chugged away on the exercise machines – first running on the treadmill and then moving on the elliptical runner – with my ipod trinket playing in my ears, my mind seeking out words of wisdom, some sign perhaps from all the songs I’ve heard many times before over and over again. Hoping for the random shuffling of the songs to talk to me – knowing I have embedded my father’s voice and his poem for my mother in the midst of a medley of old and new bollywood songs, South Indian and North India classical music, Western Classical music, a bit of remix and desi rap as well as some other mixed music from the 80s and 90s…. Every morning its pretty much the same – I seek to get a sign from all these technologies I use. Perhaps this is the root of my fascination with technologies – they are my modern day spirits. Like Samantha in Bewitched and Jeannie in I dream of Jeannie – I will twitch my nose or blink my eyes and my family and friends will teleport towards me – converse with me, laugh with me and give me words of wisdom or sarcasm to live and laugh by….

So I entered second life again and clicked something and found myself on a boat with a guy who was cursing about lag…

“Hello” he said

he said….

Dorothy is not in Kansas anymore, I thought.

Darn those English metaphors again

But I am writing in English … .my audience wont get my linguistic twists and metaphors from another language and context – and if I tried to explain they would be no fun any more…

Yes that is why I disappear into techno-spaces. That is why I am so aware of technologies – for you, my audience, here and now are the technologies shaping me and speaking to me and giving me a “sign” –that I must interpret as either validation or rejection or neither through my own lenses of understanding and affect…

You sit around me… and I think – what are my secrets today?

I click on your profile button – but it tells me nothing I want to know

I set my profile button – to tell you nothing you need not know

But we must establish some bonds of trust if we are to write together like this….

So I will start my narration….