I was not so well when for no particular reason I typed “Thomas Pynchon” in the browsers search field. I had no reason to search for anything Pynhon-esque and it’s been a while since the last book from him I’ve read, which was Inherent Vice, by the way.

I start writing this blog post pryor to actually checking out what the browser returned to me about Pynchon. Well we all know the first results will be wikipedia and a Facebook fan page. But what would page 9 or 13 of the search results show me.

Actually I don’t care at all because, as I said, I’m not researching anything or even curious about Pynchon. What I’m doing now is some sort of reverse engineiring of my own feelings leading to the typing of Pynchon’s name on Safari.

I’m at an Hotel room, arrived here about three hours ago, will have to live in one hour. The room is beautiful and comfortable.

Suddenly I decide to see what Google got me back about Pynchon. I expected no surprise. Instead, surprisingly, I got the web page you see above (if Hi allowed pictures in the middle of the text, you would see it below).

Why did I get these results in some Arabian language I can’t even recognize? One second later I understand what’s going on. I’m in a hotel in France, and being in a hotel I always connect through a VPN. I have no idea where my VPN was tunneling me but that Google page gives me a pretty good idea.

I wasn’t in a good mood when I typed “Thomas Pynchon” on Safari and I was in an even worst mood when I started writing this. But the Arabian version of Pynchon (sorry if that is some other language, I really don’t know and I really mean no offense to anyone), the surprise, the closeness to a sureal result produced a shift in perspective.

Maybe I invented a new form of oracle, sort of a Western, literary I-Ching. Just type “Thomas Pynchon” and change your day.