Jacked In

”The sky above the port was the color of tele­vi­sion, tuned to a dead chan­nel.” William Gib­son, Neu­ro­mancer, 1986

Gibson’s first novel, con­sid­ered by many in the sci-fi world as one of the best in the genre, (I am have not read enough to make this claim, but I can say it blew my mind from the open­ing line above [one of the best I have ever read] all the way to the end) fore­told of a vast tech­nol­ogy and infor­ma­tion grid that a per­son could access by jack­ing in. It was the web before the web.

Now we are all jacked in, but I am not sure I feel con­nected to you. I am also not sure I don’t. I feel some­thing, but I am not sure if it is con­nec­tion. I feel jacked in. I know lit­tle bits of this and that of you, but I don’t know that I am friends with you. Through social net­works (does not rhyme with ”friend”) I am allowed to see lit­tle bits of what­ever you con­sider your best for the day. And you get to see what I have to offer – after hair and make up have finished.

Being friends though, is some­thing dif­fer­ent. David Whyte talked about this at a read­ing this week­end here in Bend. He said friend­ships are the result of acts of ser­ial for­give­ness. The peo­ple I stay in con­tact with after I have hurt them and after they have hurt me have the poten­tial to become real friends. These are peo­ple who I have released from the hurt I think they caused me. In order for this to hap­pen, this ser­ial for­give­ness, we need to be in some prox­im­ity. FB and Tweets don’t let you see my gnarly, self­ish side enough for you to love me. I am eas(y)(ier) to love on line, and so are you. I want the other parts. I want the parts of a rela­tion­ship that show up after we take the chance of blow­ing each other off at a crit­i­cal moment and then cir­cling back and admit­ting that I was not ready to par­tic­i­pate and say­ing that now, yes, it’s me and I am here.

I am not look­ing to be hurt­ful for its own sake, only human, which includes the very human traits of unre­li­a­bil­ity, sloth, decep­tion, etc as well as the other, sex­ier stuff. Putting roots into a per­son requires the pain and the plea­sure. We need, I need, both. I need room to screw up and be for­given. I need to get out of me long enough to see your side of some­thing and let you off the hook. I need that.

That part of rela­tion­ships is at risk by the use of infi­nitely editable snip­pets – like, uh, blogs, for instance. Jack­ing in is very dif­fer­ent than show­ing up. Even the act of being in each other’s pres­ence is a kind of very per­sonal inti­macy. I often trade it for the dead tv-colored light that glows through your fea­tures, life­less and beau­ti­ful and really per­fect, on my 15” screen.

Let’s go get some tea.