Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Here We Stand, Here We Sit

It's been a while so I thought I'd check in. How are you all? Good? All three of you? Or four? The internet is a place where you could be writing for four people, or four thousand, and yet the writing is the same labor.

There aren't any limitations on size, large or small, and yet you just never know. It's a humbling experience, after writing articles that I know were at least in the hands of 500,000 people, 500,000 copies printed and distributed, all with gigantic effort and paying jobs for many people. What I write here keeps in part some guy who sees to the server on Blogspot with a job. I am glad of that. And I appreciate what she or he is doing, wherever he or she may be. . . Singapore? The West Coast? India?

It's all so abstract, though, isn't it? Who is doing what, where, when, who is reading what, where, when, who is alive and awake in the world at any particular moment?

The definition of common terms have changed with the abstractions of virtuality, too. "Friends," for example, used to be face-to-face folks you knew, had a beer with, talked about things one-on-one, who knew your history and vice-versa. Today it can be very different that way. I read somewhere of a kid on Facebook who had thousands of friends (on Facebook) yet in the "real" world had almost none. That I guess is sad. But no different than the age-old thing called the pen pal? Those women authors like Emily D, writing for an unspecified group of somebodies. Probably not that different in terms of how it felt, but in the romanticization of hindsight, it all sounds so IMPORTANT. What's important now? Right now? Nothing much. And who is pretending? Not me. To pretend, you need to get a running dialog of horseshoot going in your head and that is stultifying, in the end. Who needs stultification? If somebody reads me, I am happy for that. And that is that. Has to be.

As the beer jingle went, "Here's to good friends, tonight is kind of special, the beer you drink, must be something more somehow...." Let it be virtual. Besides, I don't drink beer anymore. My system doesn't tolerate that amount of carbs anymore. Eh. "Ufa," as my Italian translating friend and workmate used to say.

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Thanks much,
Grego