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30 May 2002 (Thursday): flotsam
I'm going to have a hefty cell phone bill this month. Ava and I had a roommates' talk last night, only this time across several thousand miles instead of up and down the bunk bed.
- For the longest time, I couldn't understand why exes can't stay friends afterwards. If you still fundamentally liked and respected the person, of course. I mean, it seemed so silly. Just because you dated, you can't have a good conversation anymore? Why does everything have to be so complicated and irrational?
- Well...relationships are intimate things. Otherwise there wouldn't be a point in getting involved in them, right? You see the most vulnerable, secret parts of a person, and he sees the same in you...after that things can never quite be the same. You can't be "just friends." You've witnessed something that very few people in the world get to see about someone, and that leaves its mark on you. You know? It leaves a scar.
Zach is currently recovering from his trip back home to Colorado, trying to make peace with the fact that he isn't living there. I used to encourage him to make plans to move, even as I was terrified of being separated from him, of him choosing love for landscape over love for me. But we broke up over half a year ago, and though we've been following each other's lives through these online journals, it'd be a stretch to call our current state a friendship. So why this twinge of hurt, even now? What's left to be scared of losing?
Nothing. It's the ghost; it's the scar. The memory of the hold he once had on me.
posted by enjelani @ 02:23 PM PST
Replies: 10 comments
Wow... Quite an entry.
(bear with me if I go off on a tangent here)
I'm not sure what I want my blog and its entries to be... When I first started blogging a few years back, it was literally my diary. I would write anything and everything I was thinking. Often naming names and deeds done. But then you realize you can't just keep blabbing everything you want, at least if you intend to maintain any sort of intimacy with those you care about. And therein lies the issue for me... If I only share 50% of my thoughts/feelings, am I really cheating myself out of the whole point of having a journal/diary/blog? If I can't be as open as I want to be, why for art thou blog?
It can be a big oxymoron. I'm such an open person. I could care less what ANYONE knows about my life, because, well... that's just who I am. But when the lives of others (be it ex-lovers, co-workers, friends & family) intersect with my life, that experience is no longer just mine to do with as I please.
Not sure what i'm trying to say :) I *REALLY* enjoy (and admire!) anyone else who can share their thoughts and experiences as readily as you do here. I personally think people are far too concerned with how others will view them, but then again, that is not my decision to make for others. (brain running around in circles)
Thanks for giving me thoughts to ponder... :)
posted by syndromes @ 30 05 2002 07:56 PM PST
As always, the questions are sublime. Answers deserve more time. Thanks for visiting the Pub.
posted by theo @ 30 05 2002 10:48 PM PST
well, i don't always reveal everything here. :) some tirades and personal conflicts are off-limits. i figured this particular thought was fair game, but the karma points seem to indicate otherwise...
they are strange creatures, these blogs. somewhere between diary and newspaper column. hard to determine what's appropriate and what isn't, except by trial and error.
posted by enjelani @ 30 05 2002 10:57 PM PST
How would you know? I mean the trial and error thing. What is the measuring tool? To blog or not to blog . . .
posted by theo @ 30 05 2002 11:17 PM PST
you'll know if you do something wrong. i.e. people will flame you, your parents will call, you will lose friends. it's all happened to me.
yes, this blog isn't quite the same as a diary. it doesn't really have to be "equivalent" to anything else, right? it's simply a blog, and we're all finding out the nuances of the beast.
posted by dardi! @ 31 05 2002 12:50 AM PST
The amount that can be "safely" revealed or chronicled in the public domain seems to be inversely proportional to how public one's persona is on the rest of their site.
Although... I've seen some people do both, and it's very impressive.
I'm too afraid to write anything personal on my journal. I've run into a few problems:
- morons exist on the other side of pipe
- stalkers start thinking they know you very well
- an occasional friend misreads something and freaks out -- silently -- harboring something inside that catches me by surprise later. Or... this could be because I may not be able to communicate what I feel effectively enough.
You know, I really miss the community aspect of journals (with comment systems), even though the content on my site tends to be more superficial than most. I'm less inclined to post now that I've had to shut the system down (due to the moron problem). :(
posted by echeng @ 31 05 2002 07:59 AM PST
yeah, what's up with the negative karma points?
> it doesn't really have to be "equivalent" to anything else, right? <
there was a little piece on an NPR program (i forget which) about the word 'blog' a few weeks ago. someone had complained that that the correct term is 'e-journal'. but in the opinion of the commentator, no, the blogging phenomenon isn't quite like anything else, it isn't something else transposed into a new medium. it deserves its own word. (though he expressed reservations about the word 'blog' itself ... ) as time goes on, we'll forget that a technology is new, and it will find its own lexicon that is free of attachments to older technologies. (think 'car' instead of 'motorized buggy'.)
er, anyway. almost-but-not-quite on-topic.
too bad about the Moron Brigades, Eric. :( makes me glad that i'm still kind of out there in the uncharted backwaters ...
posted by zach @ 31 05 2002 09:36 AM PST
Hey, Zach -
Did you see the lenticular cloud shot I posted the other day?
I tend to avoid using "blog" because I don't use blogger.
When I was in Hawaii a couple of months ago, everyone kept saying that they had "RoadRunner." Time Warner has a monopoly on the cable modem service there, and the terms have become equivalent.
But I kept calling it "cable modem." :)
posted by echeng @ 31 05 2002 10:45 AM PST
A Wired magazine writer recently called blogging the New Journalism. His point being that it's a medium for disseminating ideas free from the filtering influence of editors and publishers. I think the writer must have forgotten what he learned in Journalism 101, but he's right that blogging has become a huge phenomenon with the rules continuing to be re-written.
Probably a good rule of thumb is that if one is going to be deeply personal, one's blog, e-journal, whatever, should either be anonymous (like yours) or hidden (like mine).
Although yours is the former, seems lately that the veil is being lifted ever so slowly. There are consequences to that.
posted by soren @ 31 05 2002 01:39 PM PST
I know that one of my biggest lessons-in-progress right now is to not let the twitches of my scars affect others - to be able to see D holding a rock while building a fence and not instantly react with the fear and anger brought to surface through the ache of a scar caused by someone else who had a rock and threw it instead.
posted by Moonpuddle @ 02 06 2002 11:08 PM PST