Thank you for the heads up, no-to-illegals. I got pinged more than once to the thread, and I pinged about 100 FReepers from my lists as well. Thank you for pinging the UT list, too. I didn’t double up on that one.
People may not know, but MestaMachine is a Jew, but I’m sure she will not be upset by “God” rather than “G-d,” or people mentioning Jesus.
Now is a good time to let her know how much her tireless work is appreciated by all of us as well.
Amen ... twenty thousand Amens TOL.
I’ve also been made aware that Tiamat isn’t doing well.
Multiple organ failure, and docs say prognosis isn’t good.
[Understatement of the year.]
Kingprout
Quote:
AERE PERENNIUS
"I have built a monument more enduring than bronze... I will not utterly perish - a great part of me shall slip Death's grasp..."
- Horace, Odes, Bk III:XXX
While driving with my ex (and still beloved) to supper, we were discussing the development of internet friendships and the ways this has changed the notion of interpersonal relationships.
The subject grew out of the fact that a very dear friend of mine is at death's door... that I have known her for over a decade... yet have never met her or known her real given name. Our interaction has been entirely online, in the form of text conversations: Yet a friend I name her, and a friend she is.
Our discussion in the car led me to propose that the internet has not brought a novelty into the world, but has instead revived (and accelerated) what once was common practice among widely-removed literate people, before the advent of the telephone and mechanical transport: Interaction by correspondence.
In times past, when distance had greater meaning, people of like mind carried on quite interesting, intense, intimate, lasting, and complete relations by the written word.
So much so that compilations of such correspondence forms its own literary genre, and novels were written in the very form of serial epistles. Even the Journal or Diary can be considered a series of Letters to Posterity, and had much the same form and content.
The advent of the telephone and automobile all but ended the Art of the Letter. Both offered an immediacy of spoken-word interaction the mailed letter could not provide, and both were relatively easy. Ease and immediate gratification have ever been a potent drug. Letter- and Journal-writing fell into disuse.
The personal computer, the internet with its chat-rooms, blogs, message-boards, email, and even text-messaging devices, these novel tools have revived the ancient practices. They remove most of the inherent labor of writing, and the material cost.
They also offer an immediacy of interaction the mailed letter cannot, in combination with the option of delayed attention and reply that telephones or in-person interaction cannot allow.
What was old is new again.
As I often do, I have been mulling this idea since.
It struck me this morning, when I read the latest update concerning my dying friend, that the written word is greatly different from speech. Spoken words are ephemera - things of the moment, largely unskilled in practice, easily misunderstood, often misremembered, and frequently soon lost past recall.
The written word, depending on the skill of the writer, can be crafted much more deliberately, constructed much more precisely, remains unchanged for easy reference, and -if published- has the potential to last through the ages. The written word is by its nature a record, a monument of and to the writer.
I suppose it is to be expected (though remaining sad) that the overwhelming majority of the monuments of the Internet Age are composed of dung rather than bronze, bear closer kinship to crude graffiti than to the artful elegance of preserved letters from prior times.
It is why one simply does not equip baboons with grenades: They will get used, and badly. Grant everyone the undying written word, combined with an ease and immediacy like unto speech, most will use it as carelessly and crudely as they do the noises they emit from one or another gastroenteric aperture.
It is, I suppose, inevitable... yet a pity so very many shape such a shabby immortality.
Nevertheless, among the ruck of duck-faced idiocy and plastic flamingos, one can find palaces. Conversations spanning years, built of and by the worthy writings of many correspondents, threads of pure gold. Friendships as deep as the skies. Families of mind and heart, woven by (and of) people who have never met in the flesh. Monuments that dwarf the Pyramids. Monuments that would beggar kings.
Monuments worthy of immortality.
These exist, and I have walked in their gardens.
I like to think I have contributed to a few such monuments. Over the fifteen years I have been online, I have published uncounted tens of thousands of thoughts, and some small portion of these have been, in my opinion, quite delightfully excellent.
I have, now and then, entertained the notion of combing the internet and harvesting what I consider my best works, to collect them in a form of compendium, a monument of my own building.
However excellent some of my tracts and scribblings may have been, I cannot claim to have done more than addition to the works of others. I have, here and there, added an embellishment or pilaster, shored up a wall with a structural brace, added a door or a room, at my best have cut a window onto a new buena vista... but I have never been the architect, nor laid the foundations, nor have I taken a merely habitable space and turned it into a home.
Here, if I may, I will indulge in Encomion.
She who is now passing, who at the time I write these words may well already belong to the ages, did the latter-most, above, as a matter of course. She ran the kitchen, moderated the great hall, set out the welcome mat (with beer and cookies), and tended to hearth... and hearts. If ever I compile my works, some of the conversations included therein will be with her.
If ever I publish this collection, the dedication page will be very densely packed - the list of those I must thank for their friendship and guidance is longer than I could have expected (and have ever before really appreciated) and grows ever longer... but I know now how it will end:
"...and for Tiamat"
Prayers for MestaMachine. Thanks for the heads up.
Prayers and best wishes for sure.