A comment from Claudia made me remember this fledgling post idea. She, whom I have etched into my memories of sharing, at a time I needed it most, a beautiful parable of the internet as like a dream, being a place where we hang out with friends we have yet to meet, repeated this in other words:
I wish I could remember when we met. Of all the blogs in the world… Cosmic lucky day.
I wish I had the memory of a meeting which has not been.
This thought had come earlier, when Sandy Brown Jensen visited, and we were talking about connecting sometime back in my Maricopa days, and also at conferences this year where I have met up with colleagues who I’ve traveled with down a long lane of internet highway.
It happened today, here at a project meeting in Washington, D.C., talking to David Wiley.
Many of the people whom I have gotten to know through the internet media– twitter, before that blogs, before that, email lists– people I consider not only colleagues, not only friend (as Facebook as cheapened that noun), but something more– I cannot exactly pinpoint the moment, the interaction we met.
The experiences together trail off to a horizon where I cannot see the origin point.
This seems so patently obvious, yet also marvelous.
The people I value the most are the ones I cannot remember when we met. Rather than worrying about, it tells me– it feels like we’ve known each other forever.
And thus, for people I do remember when we first connected, well then it’s just a matter of waiting until we do have more of those shared experiences, then one day we will forget when we met.
It will happen.
Top / Featured Image: I tried some searches on “can’t remember” “forgotton” even my own photos on “we met” (which brought up a rather wistful series), but I did not find the “one” image.
So I went back to the well (Google Images with options set for license to reuse) on “vanishing point” and these results were closer, a lot of converging lines of railroad tracks and country roads, but this flickr photo by JoeInSouthernCA https://flickr.com/photos/joebehr/6934297434 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-ND) license was my choice (it’s a photo of a museum painting, so here we are in murky rights water, but I’ll go with the metadata in the interest of blogging).
I cannot say if the infinite wall of chickens have any relevance.
Well, it is actually called “The Infinite Wall of Chickens and the Egg.” Because it is like a Timeline of Chickens and if you go farther into the distance of it, the chickens get younger, until they are eggs. But then if you go even further back towards Infinity, then they become Old Chickens that laid the Eggs, and then they get younger again. And Because Infinity, it is just a Circle of Life all the way down.
Lol. I kinda like the idea (u mention it often about Claudia) but there are just certain online meetings with particular individuals that you can’t forget. Like how I met Jim Groom or Dave Cormier. I remember the moment you and I started moving towards friendship but not the first time we interacted.
It’s like…in the midst of abundance, there are some people whose first interaction with you is just a daily thing and you don’t know they will be special someday..and there are some people whose first interaction with you is clearly special regardless whether you will stay friends. So, for example, my first interaction w Autumm was special only because it was my first Google hangout ever in 2013 and my first time on video w Jesse and Sean. But I never talked to her after that until 2015. I just remembered her because that event was special to me and her name is spelled differently. I didn’t know she would someday become one of my closest friends.
The best things about rules are exceptional exceptions
I like that bit which starts with “in the midst of abundance…”
I just like remembering. I am pretty sure I was introduced to Alan by this tweet of Darren’s https://twitter.com/dkuropatwa/statuses/44592132
I cannot find links to that post here, but I probably dreamt that Alan linked to it. That could be when we first, you know, met.
Anyway, when I first started blogging, it never occurred to me I would make friends. Little did I know.
You know something Claudia, i would love to get to know u! Alan talks about you so much!
I’ve talked about Alan to some of my f2f only friends. Oh, I’ve also talked to my Mom about him. They all get who Alan is, a friend.
As far as I know Maha, a friend of Alan’s is a potential friend of mine.
Looks like I linked to your post down in the comments, I am sure I was reading Darren’s tweets then http://cogdogblog.com/2007/07/make-that-9999/
Your post mentions 100,000 people tweeting away in 2006- that was quaint
Found it.
This is the moment when you met me.
http://cogdogblog.com/2007/05/tweety-bird/
“Here, everything is dreaming.”
I once startled you by saying, “I will love you forever,” but that’s how it is with some people. They enter your heart and your world, and you know that is where they will stay–however they got there. They are worth traveling long distances to visit; when they come to visit you, mi casa es su casa. You ask questions and learn from them and extend the spirit of reciprocity and friendship at all times.
Even if you never meet them in person, your domain is your house; blog comments are like visiting their house and trying to be an intelligent and considerate guest.
As a sometime student of Norse mythology, I am quite taken with their idea of “the web of wyrd.” Wyrd understands that we are connected to all other nodes in a vast web by invisible strands. It predates the Internet by a whole lotta centuries, but any of my ancient Norse relatives would quickly recognize it not just as a technological marvel but as a manifestation of one of the deepest spiritual truths there is–that we are all connected , some more closely than others.
More here–the rabbit hole I just went down: http://www.wyrdwords.vispa.com/heathenry/whatwyrd.html
Thank you for an excellent post!