[L, diary, ephēmeris] 1) BLOG
Intermission...
So I will insert into this fertile pause between posts a small, family story which, hopefully, will make a full-and-inclusive-circle by the time I finish:
I have a cousin that, ever since her father moved the family from farming in South Dakota to urban life in Southern California, I’ve been exceptionally close to. I was twelve at that time, the eldest of four girls, and she was fourteen, the youngest of my Aunt’s two daughters. It wasn’t just my awe of someone older than myself, a real Teenager. that drew me to her, Vicki had and still has, a mesmerizing sparkle about her. Whenever our families got together, ALL of the cousins tussled to sit next to her at meals, fought to be on her team for badminton, and longed to share our beds with her for midnight girl talk. It wasn’t just her sense of fun or her great beauty that drew us to her. It was something more open and generous than that, something more trustworthy. Vicki's ever-present laughter held an enchantingly seductive slow-drawl that poured out of her and bubbled into us like…like 7-Up in tall glasses; she was a kid’s Shirley Temple-Champagne.
As we both matured, Vicki and I continued to stay in touch, exploring and hammering out an ever-deepening richness during “meaning of life’ conversations—conversations which strongly influenced the footsteps of my own path taken. Vicki knew, long before I did, that we all do the best we can; that food needs to be colorful to be fully enjoyed; that a home filled with objects you’ve made yourself is a worthy life-goal.
So now, still, I listen seriously to whatever views she offers, or requests she makes, to me. Which, last week, was to get a Facebook account.
I had a Facebook account, once. Well, actually, twice; I was confused and thought I could just take a look, see what it was…then couldn’t remember what name…oh, never mind…
It was in the early days of Facebook, just before Facebook went viral. When it did, I killed it, murdered it forever in a cold rage after finally seeing one-too-many pictures of somebody’s sandwich.
Facebook has since gone beyond epidemic and become endemic to every cell-phone citizen in the world, I think. Increasingly, it seems, simple daily conversations consist of references to, and comparison’s between, individuals’ Facebook exchanges. Initially I was touched by the sense of connectedness these people seemed to be gaining. I saw it as a positive demonstration of our intrinsic human need for Community; a healthy reaction/rejection of the ‘Me First’ individualism spawned by Capitalism. But something significant hit me one night at a dinner gathering, while listening to the others discuss mutual friends they had on Facebook. My friend had said casually, ‘Yup, I really like Facebook when I don’t have time to write an email.'
HUH?? “…don’t have time to write an email???” Wasn’t it EMAIL that everyone used to love because they didn’t have time to write ‘real’ letters? Suddenly I saw my warm-fuzzy ideas about people reclaiming connectedness falling apart, getting edited down to sound bites of ‘catch you later, we’ll do lunch…'
I discussed this the next day with my friend who’d made the statement, told him how stunned I was to graphically see the abbreviation of connections, not of increasing them, in what he’d said. His sincere and rational explanation was that just seeing the posted snippets of his friends lives, even if he doesn’t reply to them, still keeps him up to date and feeling involved in their lives. Connected.
Which was exactly what my cousin had said about Why she wanted me to have a Facebook account. She wants me to see the photos she posts of her canning and gardening and the people in her life that have significance, because Facebook is quicker and easier than emailing to me separately.
So, Okay. We struck a deal but I’ll leave it for later because an important piece of Anais Nin’s mosaic that I’m trying to create with written words needs to be inserted, first. It is an editor’s introductory note to an essay published in an issue of SIMPLE LIVING, a large-format, newsprint paper newsletter of collected writings and poems presenting views on the choices we make, of how to live meaningful lives:
Sanity is Knowing What Story You Are In
Introduction to A Dialogue Between Gurney Norman and Lee Swenson
SIMPLE LIVING, Vol1, Number 7, Fall 1976
(Editor’s introductory note: Underlying this discussion is the use of an important distinction from Robert Bly (he got it from Philip Slater) between network and community. What many of us do is confuse the networks we are in with community. A network is where people “understand us,” they think like we do. A network needs, or has, no territory. For example, I know more about WIN magazine in New York, or War Resisters International in Europe than ai do about whole parts of Palo Alto. I confuse my network with county.
Community has different people in it, people who are old and young, straight and freak. Community has “dolts: in it, people whom we don’t like, or who are those parts we don’t like in ourselves.
But it is community that heals, while a network cannot sustain us for long. We are healed by the fresh air of life diversity brings us—others who are different from us can help us fill out, roundup ourselves. We need both network and community, but we would do well to know the difference, and get on with living in our community as well as our network.
One other problem we must face is that many of us want to be “flying fragments,” to roar back with wisdom to the community. But if everyone wants to be a flying fragment then there won’t be any community left to return to. Some of us have got to start staying home, building with others a wisdom of our common place.)
Growing up in Southern California (ages five to twenty) then further maturing in Northern California (twenty to forty-three), I never really knew much about the neighbors, was never really aware of being any part of a community until starting to build a boat and, later, joined the cruising community. Although, even so, by the very nature of it being transient I still felt slightly on the periphery of really belonging or being integral to other people’s lives. That feeling only began to change after arriving in the Philippines, fifteen years ago. It’s been gradual, the awareness that even though my culture, language and personal history is different (even ‘doltish’ in some ways) to the people around me, they see and appreciate me as a valid member of their community! I belong! I have gotten to know the families of the children who were at the One Candle Schoolhouse, as well as others from other projects, and I care about them, want to be a helpful part of their choices for enriching and sustaining everyone’s life here, as well as my own. We need each other!
And, because I have gotten to know and build an intimate working relationship with the people of where I live, I am no longer a Tourist. No longer superficially sampling the smorgasbord of foreign experiences. (Not that I often don’t wish I still were, after encountering one of their ‘doltish’ habits)
Having said all that (and still worrying I’ve said too much, need to shorten it, make it quicker to read so no one gets bored) I will now close this sincere plea for patience with my slow processing of adding to this website, by adding my final thoughts about the solution to Vicki’s Facebook request.
And, probably alienate everyone on the planet on Facebook in doing so.
So! As I said, we came to a compromise: I willingly acknowledge times when Facebook would be handy (I need to post pictures and find homes for four (SPAYED) female dogs on a Facebook account for animals) so, I signed up again. But with a false name. No info. No friends. I can now visit Vicki’s whatchamacallit—WALL?—and see (some call it stalking) what she’s doing.
I willingly also acknowledge that I know I will enjoy having the added input from her, but the revealed truth for me is this: without our wonderfully-long, weekly Skype conversations, plus numerous and even more lengthy political/social/psychological email round-robin discussions that continue to nourish us between the phone calls, Facebook for me is the cyber equivalent of hors’d’oeuvres at a cocktail party. Tasty, attractive, momentarily stimulating, entertaining or even potentially significant, but with no real staying power for the depths needed to truly enrich and endure meaningful relationships.
It is while you are patiently toiling at the little tasks of life that the meaning and shape of the great whole of life dawn on you.
~Phillips Brooks~
--Zadie Smith--
ahh...but as Thomas Mann said,
"Speech is civilization itself.
The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact
-- it is silence which isolates.
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