Pollyanna Rainbow Sunshine and the Needles of Doom

Lyda here. Maybe I’m too involved with the blogiverse. With the people whose blogs I read. Frank, for example.

Maybe it’s weird, how much I care about Frank, considering that I’ve never met him in person. I read his blog almost every day, and I post comments, and we’ve talked a bit via email. I know that I don’t really know him, but I do know that he is talented, funny, kind, and a fabulous dad. And while I cannot really know what he’s going through, and I cannot bring him chicken soup or offer to babysit Oliver for him, I do think that leaving him a cheerful comment might help right now. Why don’t you leave him an upbeat comment too? Hey, couldn’t hurt.

The Cosmic Innernetting is like that. It creates a community of people who may never meet in person. 

Technology sometimes drives us apart – keeps us in our separate little cell-phone/drive-through/369-cable-channels/chat-room bubbles. Sometimes it insulates us from each other. We hear on the radio that x number of people were killed in an earthquake, or y number of people lost their homes in a fire – and it is just numbers. We have instant information – but there is too much to digest.

But technology can also pull us together. Human beings float in space above our planet – and we can watch. Soldiers hold their children tight before heading off to war - and we can weep over the pictures and then write our representatives in Congress.  A fiber artist finishes a sweater, or a quilt, or a sock – and we cheer with them. Fiber artist = anyone who creates something with yarn or fabric or fiber. Yes, I’m looking at you.

On our blogs, we tell each other about books, projects, ideas, problems, hopes, disasters. We write about obsessions and pleasures and pitfalls. With our rants and musings and silliness, we share part of ourselves.

We start to feel as if we know the person who wrote that.

In a way, we do. Sometimes we even become friends, because of the Cosmic Innernetting. There is more than one person for me to visit in Colorado now. Shiny!

In another way, we don’t. I’ve read all of Crazy Aunt Purl’s blog, and I read the book, and I even met her in person. It doesn’t mean that I know Laurie, any more than I know Terry Pratchett or Eric Idle. A writer’s work, an artist’s work, may be a glimpse into the person behind the work, but it is a distorted glimpse.

This partial imperfect connection is part of the joy and the danger of the Cosmic Innernetting. Finding someone who shares your obsessions? Awesome. Imagining a deep personal friendship where there is none? Not fabulous.

Take your zombie-loving Pollyanna here. I don’t tell ya’ll everything. I hold some things back because they are dark or embarrassing or just plain boring. That’s right. My life is even more boring than you think it is. Scary, kids.

Sometimes I email Anna-Liza to ask, “Should I post this? Is this too raw? Is this too personal?” Sometimes I write a post and it sits there as a draft for a week or a month or… well, I have one I wrote in April that is still sitting there.

And I edit things. A lot. I try to make myself sound funny, profound, together - or at least semi-coherent. I try to keep the whining to a minimum, which unfortunately I don’t always do in real life. I know, I don’t always do it on the blog either. Sorry about that.

All in the hope that ya’ll will read it in an idle moment and smile.

Not such a bad motive at that.

And while I do not know Jane, or Red, or Kelly, or KarenM, in “real life” – Marin, I’m pleased to say, I do know in real life  - I know enough to want to.

And I know enough to care about Frank.

Maybe that’s not so bad after all.