If everyone I speak with just repeats my POV, I get lazy. It's the different approach that makes me stop and investigate my own sense of what is or isn't true. One of the things I appreciate most about LJ is that I am connected to a whole array of opinions, sensibilities, attitudes through the words that appear on my screen.
That was one of the reasons I fell in love with this form of discourse. The ability to read such diverse opinions, get enraged, yet not show it. Just be. And eventually, maybe, change my mind. Meet people with views and experiences that I could not possibly meet in my everyday life - partly because there's no way we could come into contact, due to distance, lifestyle, etc. Yet, as I post in this box - it feels oddly surreal, writing and getting responses from people, that I've never seen, do not even know their real names, the only indication I have that they are real is the words they send me written or pasted in a similar box.
I understand your sense of apartness; it is sometimes like a one way street when you put something out there, and no traffic passes by. Kind of feels like you're travelling down the highway at 3 a.m., all alone in the night. But every now and then a light appears in the distance, and it turns out to be a friend.
Yes, in a way it does feel exactly like that when I post. At times I feel as if I'm in a tunnel, thinking my thoughts aloud, whistling. Convinced I'm alone, yet at the same time oddly aware that there are people moving beside me, unseen. I light a match and see their shadows cast on the walls, too dim to make out faces or forms, and a few even speak, respond - I'm here! I'm listening! I'm muttering too. The feeling gives me an odd sense of comfort and connection admist the disconnection.
Sometimes I sit down at the keyboard, and what ends up on the screen is surprising to me; writing here is a way of making nebulous images in my mind into something lucid and clear.
Yes, that is how I'd explain many of my posts. Surprises even to me.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2005-04-19 03:43 pm (UTC)That was one of the reasons I fell in love with this form of discourse. The ability to read such diverse opinions, get enraged, yet not show it.
Just be. And eventually, maybe, change my mind. Meet people with views and experiences that I could not possibly meet in my everyday life - partly because there's no way we could come into contact, due to distance, lifestyle, etc. Yet, as I post in this box - it feels oddly surreal, writing and getting responses from people, that I've never seen, do not even know their real names, the only indication I have that they are real is the words they send me written or pasted in a similar box.
I understand your sense of apartness; it is sometimes like a one way street when you put something out there, and no traffic passes by. Kind of feels like you're travelling down the highway at 3 a.m., all alone in the night. But every now and then a light appears in the distance, and it turns out to be a friend.
Yes, in a way it does feel exactly like that when I post. At times I feel as if I'm in a tunnel, thinking my thoughts aloud, whistling. Convinced I'm alone, yet at the same time oddly aware that there are people moving beside me, unseen. I light a match and see their shadows cast on the walls, too dim to make out faces or forms, and a few even speak, respond - I'm here! I'm listening! I'm muttering too. The feeling gives me an odd sense of comfort and connection admist the disconnection.
Sometimes I sit down at the keyboard, and what ends up on the screen is surprising to me; writing here is a way of making nebulous images in my mind into something lucid and clear.
Yes, that is how I'd explain many of my posts. Surprises even to me.