This place

I keep wondering what we're doing here.... how we reached the point when technology overlaps intimacy. This medium has become so much the place where dreams and fantasies are played out; since we dare not do so in our real lives. That's a good thing in some respects, but I'm struggling with the implications. Has the internet become our lover, our collective mistress?

So many words flow through the medium every hour, every minute. I've had to learn a new vocabulary: it's a kind of slang that is found only on the blogs... a kind of urban slang which, therefore, requires an urban slang dictionary. You can find it online, as you can find everything else. I've been thinking about research, and how the old timers used to slave through those huge massive County registrar books that contained property records (slaves included), birth and death records, marriage license information.... Is that time past? It was very tactile. It presented itself as a physical connection to the past, to the fate of your ancestors.

To all my friends from the RUG, I miss you all and wonder what a true meeting would be like? Are we so ensconced in the technology, so comfortable behind the facade, that we would not recognize each other without the digital barrier? Many of us have met each other, but do the same subjects emerge in our fleshy conversations; or do we resort to the age old standbys: weather speak and career choices, and how's the husband or the wife? Fine, thank you. We're all fine! I do not mean to wax cynical here in this forum that has given me new life, a forum for immediate expression. I question the technology even as I cling to it as a child to his mother's breast....

I simply don't know the answer. Perhaps that's the point. All new technology has brought with it profound changes in how humans relate to one another. I don't understand web speak, but I do understand our need for connection; dare I say, our need for acceptance and self expression. I do love you all. Elaine, you are a delightful academic who does not flaunt your degrees and your great knowledge. Eve, you are a wondrous mystery, a deep well of thought, the great interrogator. Mark, you are my friend, even from a distance; thus proving that the ether can pass along great affection. You have taught me things that men should know. Susan, you know how I feel about you, despite the fact that we've been in the same physical space a portion of perhaps seven days in our entire lives. Tim, et. al. I am intrigued by you. I have never met you; but the internet brought us together.

So, what now? I am along here tonight, relishing the soft amber sunset and the song of chicadees, mockingbirds, nuthatches..... neighbors..... the smell of cut grass... the fading light of a South Carolina day in the heart of spring. Given these gifts, what is my complaint? IT is that so many on this planet struggle just to live another day; and I have the nerve to question my life's choices? So many in Haiti eat dirt pies to live. They are closer to the essence of life than I could ever imagine. So many in the Congo, in Darfur, live in fear of the death squads.... their children live in the moment, with little hope of hope.

Billions go hungry or live under the oppression of an old man regime in China that survives by suppressing the truth. Their mega growth is capitalism gone wild.... a convenient subterfuge. See how free our capitalists are to get rich and to inflate the price of steel for all the world? Pay no attention to that man blocking the tank in Tiananmen Square. He is of no consequence.

I've said enough. I've rambled without purpose, without intent. Isn't it delicious?