Until then. Of course, that could be tomorrow.
The impedance of the interior phone line in the apartment is high again. It happened soon after violent storms last year and we had violent storms last Wednesday or Thursday and it apparently has affected the line again. The signal between myself and the dial-up is affected to the point where it is hard for the computer to make out what is coming over the connection, and hard for it to send out understandable communications to the Internet.
The phone line is damaged, or perhaps only overly wet.
Continued signals sent over a falsely impeded line build heat. That heat can eventually damage the lines physically.
If I use the line too much at any one time, I risk burning it out altogether, and damaging the computer, too. I can’t say it killed my last computer, but something broke the wire last year under almost the exact same circumstances, and I don’t want to do that again, I think. Let’s learn from an experience for once, neh?
How ironic, considering that for the last week, I have felt almost no need to sign on at all.
Somehow, I feel I am nearing the end of my Internet experiment. What started with such wonder, with so much possibility, is now a strange mixture of small obligations to self, failed illusions on my part, unfulfilled wishes, and failed expectations. So strange. The Internet is like a balloon that cannot pop. When it was new, and but partly inflated, it was lovely and wonderful and a happy thing. It grows and grows and grows, but in the end, is just the same, save bigger. And the walls of the balloon, as it grows, get thinner and lighter, and more transparent, and now as I stand here, looking at it, I wonder, can I even see it at all? Like a balloon, it grew ever larger, and yet, for me, more empty.
I called it my Internet experiment here, and all experiments, if designed properly, should tell you something new. Experiments can only fail if you fail to learn anything from the effort. What did I learn?
I have learned that just about every effort I have placed into this experience called Internet is directed at other people.
Again. I have learned that just about every effort I have placed into this experience called Internet is directed at other people.
My early attempts at web pages were for ego. My travels through clubs, they were ego again. The things I have studied, the places I have been, the games I have played, the blogs I write such as LJ, even the stories I have written, they were all for one thing.
They were knocks on doors. On occasion … rarely … those doors opened, but they never stayed open, which is life. Always has been. But the newly opening door has become quite rare, unless I become willing to be a person I am not, or maintain an attitude longer that is wise, or say things that never cross the line, or say things that have no meaning, have no personal commitment, that I really would rather have not said, but the chat is just out there, more of the same, the debt to the vapid world.
As the world has embraced the Internet, the Internet has devalued to become the world.
My Yahoo profile says I seek the clique of the unwanted. The table by the window where those not understood gather because you have to sit somewhere in the lunch room. It’s a rule. But the cafeteria has become so vast and there are so many seats that you can sit just about anywhere and still be so alone. You can’t even see anyone remotely in your situation.
And no one is excited about it anymore. You could talk to people about things on the net because everything was so new, and there were only a few places to gather, and you could feel the energy and share so much. It was, you know, dude, a happening thing.
Now it’s as exciting as the mailbox.
As I have been an egoist, so powerfully driven by other people’s approval, I know that my studies of Thoreau and Zen and Quality long ago were, it is true, just so much a part of my secret goal of approval by the community at large. I gave up on those studies when they failed to produce companionship, as so much else has failed.
Now, I think I shall return to them. Not to be an expert, or to be one with a private knowledge that some small part of me hopes to share, but to examine these thoughts with the new-found understanding that, quite simply…
I am not necessary. I am not needed.
Oh, there are things in my head many people could use, and I am sure they would be grateful for the brief moments they remember where they got the information or insight. But it is the person, it is I, who has sought for so long to be the inspiration, the thing in and of itself sought out. I have seen so many have the ability, but have never learned the trick myself. I suppose it is my fault. Of course I have no clue as to how it is my fault, or else I’d have fixed it. I am like that.
So.
If the connection shows sign of improvement, I will wander on. If not, I’ll do what is needed via the library machines, holding off over-taxing the home connection. This end of July, this end of a chapter, is the start of perhaps finally finding the discipline I have always needed, and the maturity I have always lacked. I would rather have found a group of kids like myself and played. Played forever. Let’s stay together, itsumo. But I am not the person I need to be to find such a group. I must become even more Tenchi, and much much much less Jay. I can no long be bound to the hope that when I log on, I’ll see someone new in the neighborhood, someone I can run over and hang with and have fun with. The neighborhood to too vast, too impersonal; too dark, too mechanical, too packed together, and everyone so far apart. It’s too big for a little kid like me. It is the world, and not the better off for the transformation.
Understand that is not a complaint. It is simply the fact. I cannot create a new net, a place for the wonder-full people who learned what to take and what to keep and what to hide and protect, being able to choose from anything, anything the mind could create or conceive. Those who dare to dream. Those who dare to fly.
All the wonders I have seen, all that I have grasped, are memories, they are inside me. Now I must take the long overdue step, and make sense of them, to make them not some dusty scrapbook of the mind, but a part of my actual life, make them stay alive through me. I may be sitting by myself in the cafeteria, but it is a window seat, and it is a perfect day outside, and the song in my head is such a beautiful melody, with the lyrics perfect to allow my heart to sing. The food, it’s all right. Heh! The notebook on the table is cblank and clean and I am free to put upon it whatever I may choose, without fear any more. And there are no afternoon classes. Ever. I shall sit here, looking friendly, for I doubt I will ever hold so much self control that I can banish my dream of someone else sitting here. But I have connected to the world these last few years. To the entire world. And the five seats about me are empty still. I hope I can become Tenchi enough to understand, every day, that those empty seats are truth. Stone cold truth. Unforgiving stone cold truth. Stone makes for good foundation. It’s time I built an appropriate dream on my foundations. A dream in keeping not with seats waiting to be filled, but in keeping with the one seat all ready occupied.
The phone line is damaged, or perhaps only overly wet.
Continued signals sent over a falsely impeded line build heat. That heat can eventually damage the lines physically.
If I use the line too much at any one time, I risk burning it out altogether, and damaging the computer, too. I can’t say it killed my last computer, but something broke the wire last year under almost the exact same circumstances, and I don’t want to do that again, I think. Let’s learn from an experience for once, neh?
How ironic, considering that for the last week, I have felt almost no need to sign on at all.
Somehow, I feel I am nearing the end of my Internet experiment. What started with such wonder, with so much possibility, is now a strange mixture of small obligations to self, failed illusions on my part, unfulfilled wishes, and failed expectations. So strange. The Internet is like a balloon that cannot pop. When it was new, and but partly inflated, it was lovely and wonderful and a happy thing. It grows and grows and grows, but in the end, is just the same, save bigger. And the walls of the balloon, as it grows, get thinner and lighter, and more transparent, and now as I stand here, looking at it, I wonder, can I even see it at all? Like a balloon, it grew ever larger, and yet, for me, more empty.
I called it my Internet experiment here, and all experiments, if designed properly, should tell you something new. Experiments can only fail if you fail to learn anything from the effort. What did I learn?
I have learned that just about every effort I have placed into this experience called Internet is directed at other people.
Again. I have learned that just about every effort I have placed into this experience called Internet is directed at other people.
My early attempts at web pages were for ego. My travels through clubs, they were ego again. The things I have studied, the places I have been, the games I have played, the blogs I write such as LJ, even the stories I have written, they were all for one thing.
They were knocks on doors. On occasion … rarely … those doors opened, but they never stayed open, which is life. Always has been. But the newly opening door has become quite rare, unless I become willing to be a person I am not, or maintain an attitude longer that is wise, or say things that never cross the line, or say things that have no meaning, have no personal commitment, that I really would rather have not said, but the chat is just out there, more of the same, the debt to the vapid world.
As the world has embraced the Internet, the Internet has devalued to become the world.
My Yahoo profile says I seek the clique of the unwanted. The table by the window where those not understood gather because you have to sit somewhere in the lunch room. It’s a rule. But the cafeteria has become so vast and there are so many seats that you can sit just about anywhere and still be so alone. You can’t even see anyone remotely in your situation.
And no one is excited about it anymore. You could talk to people about things on the net because everything was so new, and there were only a few places to gather, and you could feel the energy and share so much. It was, you know, dude, a happening thing.
Now it’s as exciting as the mailbox.
As I have been an egoist, so powerfully driven by other people’s approval, I know that my studies of Thoreau and Zen and Quality long ago were, it is true, just so much a part of my secret goal of approval by the community at large. I gave up on those studies when they failed to produce companionship, as so much else has failed.
Now, I think I shall return to them. Not to be an expert, or to be one with a private knowledge that some small part of me hopes to share, but to examine these thoughts with the new-found understanding that, quite simply…
I am not necessary. I am not needed.
Oh, there are things in my head many people could use, and I am sure they would be grateful for the brief moments they remember where they got the information or insight. But it is the person, it is I, who has sought for so long to be the inspiration, the thing in and of itself sought out. I have seen so many have the ability, but have never learned the trick myself. I suppose it is my fault. Of course I have no clue as to how it is my fault, or else I’d have fixed it. I am like that.
So.
If the connection shows sign of improvement, I will wander on. If not, I’ll do what is needed via the library machines, holding off over-taxing the home connection. This end of July, this end of a chapter, is the start of perhaps finally finding the discipline I have always needed, and the maturity I have always lacked. I would rather have found a group of kids like myself and played. Played forever. Let’s stay together, itsumo. But I am not the person I need to be to find such a group. I must become even more Tenchi, and much much much less Jay. I can no long be bound to the hope that when I log on, I’ll see someone new in the neighborhood, someone I can run over and hang with and have fun with. The neighborhood to too vast, too impersonal; too dark, too mechanical, too packed together, and everyone so far apart. It’s too big for a little kid like me. It is the world, and not the better off for the transformation.
Understand that is not a complaint. It is simply the fact. I cannot create a new net, a place for the wonder-full people who learned what to take and what to keep and what to hide and protect, being able to choose from anything, anything the mind could create or conceive. Those who dare to dream. Those who dare to fly.
All the wonders I have seen, all that I have grasped, are memories, they are inside me. Now I must take the long overdue step, and make sense of them, to make them not some dusty scrapbook of the mind, but a part of my actual life, make them stay alive through me. I may be sitting by myself in the cafeteria, but it is a window seat, and it is a perfect day outside, and the song in my head is such a beautiful melody, with the lyrics perfect to allow my heart to sing. The food, it’s all right. Heh! The notebook on the table is cblank and clean and I am free to put upon it whatever I may choose, without fear any more. And there are no afternoon classes. Ever. I shall sit here, looking friendly, for I doubt I will ever hold so much self control that I can banish my dream of someone else sitting here. But I have connected to the world these last few years. To the entire world. And the five seats about me are empty still. I hope I can become Tenchi enough to understand, every day, that those empty seats are truth. Stone cold truth. Unforgiving stone cold truth. Stone makes for good foundation. It’s time I built an appropriate dream on my foundations. A dream in keeping not with seats waiting to be filled, but in keeping with the one seat all ready occupied.