Stalking Hasan Elahi: TrackingTransience Delusions

“He’s just a media whore.” said Rajesh, my best online friend. “Why are you so infatuated?”

“I just want his data, that’s it mostly.” I said, trying even to convince myself. “I thought it would make a good Grad project. I’m wasting time, I should just forget it.”

It’s been over four months since I first spotted Hasan Elahi on Yahoo! News. His story was just another blip found in passing and I almost ignored it. But wait, I thought, is that a DESI with hydrogen peroxide splashed through his hair looking like the prototype of an ABCD? Interesting. So, I read his story. Then I checked out his videos. Hmm, he’s a professor, easy to find. So I e-mailed him, and e-mailed again. And then I called his hotel room. Whoops!… Uh-oh… rewind!!

Hasan says that the main purpose of his website, TrackingTransience, is to keep the FBI, INS, and all the other ‘three-lettered bureaucracies’ off his back and up-to-date on his frequent and highly unpredictable movements. The website’s design is gratifying as it pinpoints his exact location in real-time along with a photo of the locale.

His idea for the website dates back to an experience where he was apprehended for suspicious behavior not long after 9-11. Since then, he has been proffering the authorities his whereabouts in the hopes that he won’t be further detained and subject to interrogation.

In theory, the project is simplistically brilliant, but for the regular online blogger like myself, Hasan’s site is like a trip down the wormhole if visited often enough. I would personally reckon the experience to the time I tripped off acid at a Phish concert. I felt perfectly fine for the longest time and thought that the blue plastic-like tablet I had taken earlier was defunct, but why was everyone scowling at me? The stage was full of colorful lights and spinning things orbiting all around. Everyone was in a trance, and I seemed to be the only one who was missing something. Where are the musicians, I mused. I never did see them peek out through the thick smoke. For all I knew, they were at home in Arizona!

Needless to say, I got sucked into TrackingTransience. Hasan offers a psychedelic porthole into his life without really giving the observer a glimpse of what lies behind the world of placid and oftentimes ordinary scenery.

The intangibility displayed is the only thing that the observer has to embrace and I was left to yearn for more. Who is this Hasan, and why doesn’t he clean his house? That’s a nice restaurant, I wonder if he’s dining with anyone. What circumstances would cause someone to drive clear across the country and then fly somewhere else? I had to know more.

I waited patiently for him to appear on chat. When he finally did show, he came up with almost laughably dry comments like, “My life is boring.”

“You seem very superficial,” I said.

“Well, I try,” he said, in response.

My hyper-sentimental self was weary of an emotional cripple. Why wasn’t he asking me any questions? I don’t even think I got a “how are you?” out of him. Of course, he had no problem talking about himself. And that’s when I realized I was really talking to every ex-boyfriend I’ve ever had and my memories of one in particular, (who I’ll call Specimen J here) a local DJ sensation, came back to me.

A typical conversation with Specimen J went as follows:

Me (speaking loudly above deafening house music): Hey, what’s going on?

Specimen J (crinkling nose while halting his head bop): What?

Five minute lull in conversation.

Me: That’s great, who did that song?

Specimen J (turning down the music, clearly annoyed): What

It is important to note that in this case the word “what” is not intended to be a question or to initiate a response. By my provocation, I was clearly breaking some kind of unspoken rule of cooldom that I was apparently not attuned to.

“Help! My regular appeal and flirtatious chatting behavior is not working on Hasan,” I complained to Rajesh.

“I don’t get it, just get over this guy,” he said while I envisioned him at work in his Manhattan office. Rajesh is a magnificent listener and multi-tasker. He can chat with me while talking to his boss on the phone, writing two Word documents, and grooming himself, but he has a terrible long-term memory and would probably forget me altogether if I didn’t pop up now and again.

I realized there is something all these people have in common, however, besides the obvious lack of emotional response. They all offer an experience beyond that which can be gathered out of my own mundane life, and in that way, they can never fail. Hasan creates a world where the common is instantly art. It makes you yearn to be somewhere more interesting, even if just a baggage claim in a Utah airport.

“I feel safer this way,” Hasan told me.

“Wow, that’s disillusioned,” I chatted. “What if someone has the urge to commit a hate crime? You’re a pretty easy target.”

“Yeh, I guess,” he said, like the thought had never crossed his mind.

I can’t fathom how someone can feel safer in this way, but somehow my emotional reflexes understand. In some ways Hasan is like the perfect ex-boyfriend. Who wouldn’t want to check up on an ex-fling every now and then without really having to contact them directly? You could just go online every once in a while and affirm that, yup, he hasn’t changed.

“Dude, I’m breaking up with you,” I said.

“What.”