I cried looking across the table today
With you
Looking at your computer screen
Active and alert
And not a thought
Of your loss

I cried for other reasons
To be loved,
To be missed,
To be my father’s son
To be the thought of an hour
The punchline of a joke

I suppose it is like Pittsburgh
Or Cardinal Mooney,
Or what ever other school
I attended

But they could care less
My image across the table
Knows why I am here,
Why I have to explain myself
A million times a day,
Why I doze off when I shouldn’t,
Why day seems like night,
Why art is as real as Federico imagines it to be,
Why structure is unimportant
If one has facility.

Why do I love my father, my mother?

Is it because of my birth? I doubt it.

They have done so much since then.

I love the moment, so I write.
I feel empty, so I drink.
I escape the biological, so I think.

What can not be minimized in sequence?

That does not explain the tears of Puget Sound, of Lake Erie, of Tiffin, of Connecticut, Seoul, or the like. That explains nothing.

Tears are what they are. They explain nothing.

By Michael Gallagher

My name is Michael Sean Gallagher. I am a Lecturer in Digital Education at the Centre for Research in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh. I am Co-Founder and Director of Panoply Digital, a consultancy dedicated to ICT and mobile for development (M4D); we have worked with USAID, GSMA, UN Habitat, Cambridge University and more on education and development projects. I was a researcher on the Near Futures Teaching project, a project that explores how teaching at The University of Edinburgh unfold over the coming decades, as technology, social trends, patterns of mobility, new methods and new media continue to shift what it means to be at university. Previously, I was the Research Associate on the NERC, ESRC, and AHRC Global Challenges Research Fund sponsored GCRF Research for Emergency Aftershock Forecasting (REAR) project. I was an Assistant Professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (한국외국어대학교) in Seoul, Korea. I have also completed a doctorate at University College London (formerly the independent Institute of Education, University of London) on mobile learning in the humanities in Korea.

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