Not what I meant at all.
We're finding it hard to work out what we're doing here - whether to write at Tricks or here, why we're writing anything anyway, and whether we spend too much time online hurting ourselves. What are we here for, exactly? Don't answer that.
Everything I say about it becomes false upon closer examination so I can't even trust my own judgement. See this post as an experiment. Most likely at the end of it I shall say;
"That's not what I meant at all."
It's been years and years now and still so easily misunderstood. It's always so astonishing and strange. It always hurts fresh. I never, ever get used to it. I don't know whether I have a limit. I don't know if there is a point at which I'll say this hurts too fucking much and I can't do it any more. I guess I'll know when I get there.
Cast into sharp relief it was, yesterday, as Mia chanced to meet us online. Mia who has met us. Mia who was an online friendship at first - we were introduced to each other via our blogs and then emails and then, we met in person. She came here, with Stephen, for summer. For New Year together. It seems wildly unfair that those few rather tense days together, of good manners and shared meals, have as much and sometimes more power than years and years of love, but it seems that they do. They had the power to transform us both to each other. No longer were we creatures of the written word, and unlike other transformations I've experienced with online friends, it couldn't be undone. Once I could push myself, my cheeks and nose and chin, through the text, through the screen, rub up against a beloved cheek, claim a kiss quick before dissapearing back to my continent. I remember my darling A. so close to me, I would swear I heard her breath. Yet even such a great love as that, in the height of its power could only bring us to the same level of belief in each other that I already have so effortlessly with Mia. Who I like very much but do not love and with whom I have no years and years.
Effortless it was, a few days in a house together. What is that compared to what I went through with people I loved at DP? Why is it that those few days make a foundation for Mia and me, give us a bit of earth to stand on? Why is it that without those few days it is so viciously simple for online friends to rewrite each other? I have felt my history dissolving against my will, to a predictable swill of black on white or white on black and blah blah blah and in a stroke of belief or disbelief or in a lashing of spite, suddenly I'm not real any more. Except that I am. Real. And right here.
Everything I say about it becomes false upon closer examination so I can't even trust my own judgement. See this post as an experiment. Most likely at the end of it I shall say;
"That's not what I meant at all."
It's been years and years now and still so easily misunderstood. It's always so astonishing and strange. It always hurts fresh. I never, ever get used to it. I don't know whether I have a limit. I don't know if there is a point at which I'll say this hurts too fucking much and I can't do it any more. I guess I'll know when I get there.
Cast into sharp relief it was, yesterday, as Mia chanced to meet us online. Mia who has met us. Mia who was an online friendship at first - we were introduced to each other via our blogs and then emails and then, we met in person. She came here, with Stephen, for summer. For New Year together. It seems wildly unfair that those few rather tense days together, of good manners and shared meals, have as much and sometimes more power than years and years of love, but it seems that they do. They had the power to transform us both to each other. No longer were we creatures of the written word, and unlike other transformations I've experienced with online friends, it couldn't be undone. Once I could push myself, my cheeks and nose and chin, through the text, through the screen, rub up against a beloved cheek, claim a kiss quick before dissapearing back to my continent. I remember my darling A. so close to me, I would swear I heard her breath. Yet even such a great love as that, in the height of its power could only bring us to the same level of belief in each other that I already have so effortlessly with Mia. Who I like very much but do not love and with whom I have no years and years.
Effortless it was, a few days in a house together. What is that compared to what I went through with people I loved at DP? Why is it that those few days make a foundation for Mia and me, give us a bit of earth to stand on? Why is it that without those few days it is so viciously simple for online friends to rewrite each other? I have felt my history dissolving against my will, to a predictable swill of black on white or white on black and blah blah blah and in a stroke of belief or disbelief or in a lashing of spite, suddenly I'm not real any more. Except that I am. Real. And right here.
posted by Polysemous at 10:44 AM
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