Friends, Romans and Countrymen

lend me your ears. Oh wait...that was another post but a useful opening line.
It seems that the matter of friends, especially those made in the virtual context, has been on the minds of many. I suppose some of this is spurred by the 10,000 post threads (here) and (here) to start with. But it is a topic that has come up a few times, perhaps spurred by the fact that the social media sites tend to call connections "friends". Even gtalk has joined the bandwagon.

So what is the matter of digital connections. Are there such things as digitally made friends, or are we really more "Romans" and "Countrymen" to borrow the quote. I think of Romans being a bit like the "tribal" concept that was put forward in a New York Times article this week. To some extent we are creating our "tribes" or our social circles. In each "country" we join, be it Twitter or Seesmic or Facebook. I think that the idea is an interesting one not without merit. We all, on some level, seek to belong - whether our belonging is in that of the questioner and the one who rocks the boat, or whether we just want a crowd that we hang with.

I think we can see this tribal nature in the way we chose the tools we use. Twitter I think is a classic example of it. Twitter goes down, lags, does weird stuff - we all talk about going to Jaiku or some other service, but we keep coming back to Twitter because that's where our "friends" are, or as I would posit where our "tribe" or "community" is.

In a sense it is no surprise that we have this need for gathering. In many places the concept of "neighborhood" or local community is gone. We drive away from home to our jobs and our meeting places. We live distributed across miles and miles of our daily life. We travel from one end of the country/world to the other. For many of us there is no time or space where we can have that "place where we live". And if we don't travel then it is our neighbors who do. Humans are social beings. We tell stories, we desire to connect with others, we look for our place to belong. These digital worlds and countries give us a "place" where we can exist. We can find our "Roma" or our "tribe" even as we traverse the world, we have a "foundation of community" to base ourselves on, to take with us through our cellphones and laptops.

But wait, how solid is this foundation? Is this a false hope we pin ourselves on? Is our identity slippery enough that we can make and remake ourselves again? I think that the answer is that lifetime communities, and the attendant challenges of changing our identity are a thing of the past for much of us. We can be as slippery as we'd like or as real as we like virtually or in physical space. I think these social media tools are merely where we find our need for community met for now.

So I think that many of our "friends" are more members of our tribe. That said I think that there are real friends to be made out there even through this digitally mediated medium. Real conversations do happen, and people do form connections. There are some people who I have met only over the net who I do consider friends. And I think that this makes sense too. What sense of belonging would we have if we had no friends within the medium? What kind of an audience would Brutus have had if he had called out to Romans & Countrymen. For a community to become real, for the "tribe" to exist there must be more connection than just causal acquaintance or ones attention will wane with their needs unmet and they will move on to the next digital country.

Brain at Work & Visiting Grandpa

In looking at the blog I've noticed I've not been posting much, and over on viddler I've not been videoing much. Now one theory might be that I'm not spending as much time on line lately, but really that's not the excuse. I think the problem is best described as analysis paralysis. I tend to have lots of ideas of things to write about. I've probably written about 10 posts in my mind - but getting them to the blog - now that's the challenge. I guess part of it is my public and private tendencies battling it out.

Some people are good at writing no matter their mood - in truth we all are human and have ranges of emotions. I often want to share thoughts when I'm in my darker moodier moods, but then I stop. I wonder - how will this inspire someone. How will this make their life better. It's my mood - why should I bother others with it. But in a sense, I'm doing the same thing that I HATE about some writing. "Oh yes, everything was tumbling down and I was violently ill but I had faith and it all came out wonderful because of my great faith." "Wonderful", I say to the author "and how exactly am I supposed to relate to you and learn from your story?" So perhaps those down days aren't so bad for writing after all.

A week ago I was busy packing for a trip to Nevada City to go to my Grandfather's 90th birthday party. It was wonderful to go and sad to go. In some ways Nevada City is the place that is most like "home" even though I've never really lived there. I have been going there during the summers for longer than I've lived any one place. My grandparents were always there along with my aunt and uncle and usually some more of my mother's side of the family.
It was in the summer that I would read what I wanted and contemplate the universe. It was a consistent "home base" more so than that which would be called "home" at any time in my life.

That said I have not been back to Nevada City in years for various reasons. And this past March my grandmother died. I couldn't make the funeral because my mother-in-law had died just 6 days earlier and I was physically unable to make the trip on top of that. So this trip "home" was the first time I had been back since my grandmother had died. As I stepped through the gate that led to the house I looked and saw my grandmother's touches on the house and cried.

There was the swan on the railing:


Which reminded me of the stories she'd tell me of Half-chick and Dapple Gray and other stories.

And then there were the details along the roof-line.






And the little planter stand she and grandpa would make together.


After a few seconds I composed myself and headed across the little bridge to the house and called out the family "yoo hooo" as I opened the door to announce my arrival.