The internet created a world where barriers went away. Back and forth the conversations go not knowing what color, gender, politics, beliefs are present as words flowing past your eyes do not reveal anything about the above.
Words flow across the page and we become attached or repulsed by what the words say, how the phrases are strung together, and words coming at you pluck a certain string that resonates. Or push a certain button, perhaps call attention to a certain feeling, even generate something meaningful that you have been waiting a long time to find.
Those words, each one, one after the other, seem to flow towards a positive realm of possibilities. Hope springs awake and you think, maybe this time?
And then something happens. You or they trip over certain words-black, bi-, deaf, liberal, trans, and so goes the list.
Words then become frozen meanings related to a certain viewpoint that triggers a moment of surprise. Then emerges other words starting with ‘should’ or ‘must’ or ‘can’t’ and it all comes to a pause and then…
Oh, sorry…
I didn’t know…
This is awkward…
I should have known better.
And then, well, it was nice knowing you. Have a good life.
Shouldn’t the words that once resonated within you simply, on their own, be sufficient? Couldn’t you just trust that plucked string that resonated for one beautiful moment?
Because words come from a place that is beyond physical appearances, deeper than the superficial world of social conventions, more meaningful than what gender represents, and help us get past a lot of things that need to be unlearned. Words come from what we may call soul, heart, a certain good vibration, a chakra, something that is beyond what the eyes can see or the ears hear.
Could it…might we not…should it be possible?
Or is it?
Oh, Sorry…
and then
that’s it.
Writing Downstream-Aaron Kelstone 
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