I can't remember anyone bringing this idea up, but then, I don't read online as much as some.
What I see here on dKos and other blogs is people writing to/at each other like we used to tell each other stories in person.
And yes, that doesn't adequately describe everything I read on dKos, but there is always that thread, that theme, that oral history thing.
That oral history thing that we create here, we bloggers. We have our fingers, our minds, our computers, our photo links, hot and otherwise.
The old oral history thing is about gone, what with people like us around.
It's not about tongues anymore, it's about fingers and minds.
I live in a very small town, and I spend most of my social contact on the net. I think I have friends, but they're on the net. I have acquaintances, but I see them in the grocery store.
I go to the grocery store when it's least likely I will run into the locals. Now and then, I do. Two recent results:
- I ran into someone I knew at the post office. I spoke to the woman. I found myself literally tongue-tied. It was a pleasant conversation but I was screwed up in a physiological manner that I don't understand. I wasn't used to talking to people. I type, that works. Random access in the 3D world is harder all the time. I can't type. I can't wait. They want it right then; I can't work it out first.
- I ran into a guy I've known since 1999 or so. His wife contracted Alzheimer's in 2001 or so. I ran into them at the grocery store. He takes her there. He's always taken her there. She was really cool. Great lady. Liked me.
They're cool. In a way, his wife is still cool. Yeah, she was there.
I wasn't tongue-tied. Eight years since the nice lady who used to be my friend, got sick. I talked with her husband. She talked about levis. Her husband takes her into town and she talks and points about levis. She wants jeans.
Funny what sticks with you.
I talked to her and her husband about levis. And style, and about not giving up style.
Then, finally, for the first time, since all of this bad mind loss descended upon these really nice people, these great, great people - one of whom is just Ghost Wife - for the first time, in all of the times I've run across them in the grocery store - the times I've run away because it was too painful, and the times I've had a chat with the wonderful kind husband - for the first time, I got with the program. I talked to my old friend, the ghost wife, about Levis and staying with style.\
And then, just before I walked up along another grocery store aisle, after I told the great husband guy it was nice to talk to him, I gave his poor, wonderful, lost ghost wife a hug, and said "And it was nice to talk to you too, dear."
Then I went off to another corner of the grocery store and I don't think I started crying again until I got home.
This is a poem I wrote when I saw them years back at the grocery store. Their horses had died from goldenrod poisoning.
horses
I ran into some friends at the grocery store today. They are in their fifties; she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's several years back. I have known them for about nine years. They are nice people, smart people.
He leads her around, now. He is stoic and cheerful, calm even. We spoke of plants, she spoke mostly with body language. He told me about their horses, which she had loved. She had taken on Arabian rescue horses. I visited them a few times and once I petted the horses, stroked their necks, avoided patting on the noses too hard, so as to avoid the echoing in the head bones that might startle them.
The horses, it seems, had eaten goldenrod this winter, the day before the nine inch snow. Goldenrod is poisonous to horses. I had never heard that.
The first day the eldest horse, 30 years old, died. It was not thought that he died of unnatural causes.
The next day, the other two horses died.
Goldenrod poisoning involves paralysis and thirst. The animals cannot move to obtain relief. There is goldenrod all around where they live, several miles from here. There is little or none in this vicinity. Apparently no one knew this was a problem until now. There are cattle. Some cattle died too.
They had been feeding the horses alfalfa, but they ate goldenrod in the snow anyway.
While we were speaking, she looked intently at my shirt, a rayon Hawaiian shirt. She reached out with her index finger and very gently touched my left breast just above the nipple. "That's pretty," she said.
"Thank you," I replied.
mro