The Netherworld

Leonora LaPeter Anton: ST. PETERSBURG — Walk into Starbucks. Look around. The coffee grinder is grinding, the milk is frothing, and the barista is announcing a pair of half-caf lattes.

Here, in a place that has been replicated 12,000 times the world over, it is easy to believe that nothing is going on. At the tables, people sip, stir, chat. They peck at laptops, at phones, and at those devices in between. It all seems so ordinary, even boring.

But something else is happening here, in a place we can’t touch, see, or even understand, in the mystifying netherworld where passing thoughts and deep yearnings get digitized and transmitted through the ether.

So much of life has become invisible. It’s someplace between here:

Do you still have that pirate costume?

And there:

Yup.