POPTIMISM

She liked anything orange: leaves; some moons; marigolds; chrysanthemums; cheese; pumpkin, both in pie and out; orange juice; marmalade. Orange is bright and demanding. You can’t ignore orange things. She once saw an orange parrot in the pet store and had never wanted anything so much in her life. She would have named it Halloween and fed it butterscotch.

And I realized today that back then the internet was kind of my Narnia, this strange world where things were mostly familiar but also deeply strange and beautiful and terrifying, and which I could access through my own home and that I felt, most of the time while I was there, no one else would fully understand like I did, like it was impossible to express to anyone on the other side what it was like there. And that was scary but also kind of great, for a thirteen, fourteen, fifteen year old girl. So I definitely felt like what I did online, music-downloading included, was very private and sacred and mine.