the search is the engine

"find an expert," i said.

she nodded. a few moments later, i realized that she was still staring at me.

"i'm sure that i can find some leads for you" -- a reassuring comment, though i was not at all sure of anyone in my circle who could provide search engine optimization [seo] for her professional networking organization's website.

either become an expert, or hire one... and so the game began.

my new tech company, a testing ground for the development of my pitifully lacking business acumen, consisted of a rather catchy brand name and a hastily html'd web site. the transformation of some old server space paired with a new domain name has become my virtual office lobby. inside that lobby sits a cobwebbed marble pedestal in dire need of dusting, atop of which sits a cellphone that doubles as my work and personal number. nothing legal yet, but of course, image is [nearly] everything at the conceptual stages and this is a test run for my 'virtual' office; since this is a tech services firm and i am sourcing[?] most of my talent from independent consultants, what real need is there for a physical office?

this transparent functionality was at the core of the clever maneuver that i was about to perform. my client needed an seo specialist and i have other things to do that don't involve massaging google's eyeballs, so it was necessary to find someone who was an expert in that messy business. but of course, i wanted a piece of the pie as well, because, quite plainly, if you can do it, why not?

i found the head of seo for a rather monstrously large-scale internet headhunting agency who was willing to freelance under the aegis of my fledgling brand. i promptly referred him to my client. my client, however, was not to know that i was pulling the strings -- i was merely referring a friend of mine to give her a helping hand. once she had given my seo man's name to her professional organization's web director, she would no longer play a part in the game, and i would have access to my first seo account through the sterling efforts of my seo guy.

now, of course, the plot thickens and twists a bit, so pay attention old man, there are details here that you may have forgotten.

my client, an independent psychologist, had been trying to find a coveted spot on the board of this professional organization of which she was a member. this required her to endure months and months of interminable ass-kissing and rather excruciating antics to come to the attention of the board. but all this effort would give her a very prestigious position on the organization's web site, which in turn would boost her visibility to potential clients. the search engine optimization project, innocently suggested by her tech specialist [moi], became her holy crusade towards recognition and riches.

unbeknownst to me, she had decided to take this project as her own and connive her way into a new place at the table as a board member in the process. very clever indeed, but this placed her as the very visible middle[wo]man, which would place the whole project in jeopardy if the organization knew that i also was profiting from the deal. the conflict of interest created by my working for both her and the organization would be too egregious to ignore.

none of this would have been an issue, of course, if it hadn't been for the fact that any contract negotiated between the organization and my seo guy would have to include the name of the consulting firm that he was working for so that the fees would be sent to the proper entity for collection and redistribution. now, since my client had placed her opportunistic little nose right into the thick of things, i could no longer use my company's name in the contract because she would see it, give it one sniff, and have my head on a pole by the end of the business day.

my client and i only became aware of each other's schemes at the last possible moment, and it disappointed me quite deeply to be on the brink of closing a rather lucrative contract in such a spectacularly crafty manner -- so close as if to taste it -- only to be cancelled out by someone who needn't have been involved at all. the real sting is that she is already quite affluent and yet still craved more; i, on the other hand, have only my wits and a couple of ideas to my name.

it was nearly a day before i decided to withdraw the name of my poor company-child from the contractual agreements; quite a difficult decision to tell my seo man not to represent my firm. part of me wanted to kill the deal through a scare tactic, but my seo man would have lost out, and so would my client. the client, though, would have found no remorse from me -- she seemed overly greedy and rather distastefully absorbed in the machinations of this professional organization. she was doing well enough; why not let me play too?

and yet, at last it seemed wiser to give my seo man the job at least; we had never met in person, only over the phone and through email, but i had helped him to draft an acceptable proposal for the work ahead. in a final, almost tearful email, i formally ceded control of the project to him as a "gesture of good faith" looking toward a future relationship, which he graciously accepted. through all this, he remained blissfully unaware of the javelin that had splintered my professional armor as a near-deadly blow in the maddening-yet-exhilarating joust between myself, the client and her organization. my horse was still intact, and i limped off the field, gathering these broken ideas and holding them close to the tattered chainmail of internal fortitude that protected me as a last resort.

i sit here, reconstructing those ideas, piecing them together, creating a stronger foundation to draw from in the very near future, finding the chinks and sealing them to be both more resilient and more flexible.

---

a small trinket of information that comes as another unexpected turn, a dirty little gem that makes my concession and loss somewhat more palatable: my client was in the midst of a personal tragedy in the form of an elderly, ailing father at the time; her unpredictable behavior seems to stem from the stress of such unsettling events. to care properly for him, she may need the money, or at least find a proper use for it. so although i lost the account, it would seem that the ability to relinquish control, in this and similar instances, has both personal and professional value. the unforeseen speaks loudly, even if incompletely; had i acted out of spite and destroyed the deal, she may have suffered much more than i... of course, maybe not. but as it is, i have found an experiential referent for the otherwise pedantic axiom that it is best to know when to stop before becoming consumed by the often destructive urge to win.

Hax0red by saru.

0wnz0r3d by ???

empty packets, cold wires
the disembodied mind does not exist?

to express with words. verbalize. to limit with constructions of language. the instinctive restriction of sensory experience to typeface, conceptualization, dry interaction between individuals over the phone through the blind modulation and demodulation of ones and zeros.

i depend on being able to see my interlocutor. i can't tell how the other person feels through a chat window, whether or not they understood what i was trying to say. they can't see my face -- was i joking? i can't see the rise and fall of the rib cage -- are you flustered or unaffected? "lol" says almost nothing.

i am left with an afterimage, reconstructed memories of face and mannerisms, half-alive shadows that fade by the day. hot and cold, gazing at the screen, trying unsuccessfully to conjure a simulation of what you might look like right now, smell like, feel like. i can only read your thoughts if i can read your lips.

...

suddenly the 'conversation' was over. i was forced to pretend that i hadn't felt that suppressed flinch, the sharp burning sensation that demands to know why the moment was so brief and the end so sudden. on some level, these unformulated thoughts began weaving a path through my mind.

...

i've played this role all too often. quietly waiting, using silence to stir emotional reaction; being the one who was pursued, sometimes by a woman, sometimes a man -- the game never changes. offline becomes online, the real world is condensed into a time-lapsed facsimile of google-searched witticisms and heartless emoticons.

the easiest way to hurt someone is to leave them alone, the simplest way to create frenzy is to feign absence and disinterest. it bores me to think that people actually enjoy being strung along this way, baited by the romantic image and switched for a lesser reality, always at the sweet, climactic moment of having nearly captured the object of one's fevered infatuation. the cycle of disappointment continues, stripping away all feeling until every encounter becomes a calculated game of "can i hurt you before you hurt me?"

circumspection and emotional distance are so easy to forget in favor of feeling something. the constant acculturated reminders that "passion" is the only transcendent value, fever is the only antidote to the dull solitude of self-consciousness. to be alone is to feel a desperate separation; to think of oneself before others is an insult to the group.

the crowd forms as they recognize that they, as individuals, are alone; the mind is inseparable from the body that contains it, rendering direct communication between minds impossible. there is always the intermediary of language, the encoding and decoding of symbols in which only the stronger signals are kept, while the imperceptibly rich meanings that lie in the background are swept away. the result is an apparent exactitude in the transmission of compressed ideas, but something indefinably crucial is lost. why cling tighter to the illusion of shared dreams?

the answer seems to lie somewhere beyond explanation. the butterfly dancing among the petals becomes a moth settling on a dusty windowsill.

audio: boom boom satellite . push eject