The Visible Woman...May 8, 2003

A day in which I spent time thinking more about things than I did doing them and had no social interactions except with FFP and counter people at a coffee shop and a dry cleaner. Talking back to the TV doesn't count. Actually, I think I did talk to my father on the phone.

Social connections are important to us. Talking to people, communicating with them, hearing their point of view, sharing food and drink. Even if we didn't need others to deliver goods and services, we just need to be around them. Like it or not, we need other people to help interpret the world. Ted Kaczynski did so poorly on his own. (Of course, Ted Bundy did poorly and was always good with people but that's another story.)

At one time, the only ways to maintain a relationship were through direct contact and mail. The former required that one be nearby and was subject to a good deal of convention a few hundred years ago. The latter might take time to deliver (although mail once dashed across short distances, borne by the lower class, apparently). Certainly had to be individually composed, generally. No mass mailings. Even in my life time, mass duplication of material with cheap copies or printing wasn't that easy. Remember those awful mimeograph machines in schools with the slightly engaging, slightly toxic smell? But I digress.

Today, one can get together with people, face to face. Or one can send mail. Or one can phone. (One can, in fact, phone from almost anyplace on earth especially behind the wheel of an SUV.) Or one can e-mail. One can even chat online. I personally don't chat because I find receiving e-mail instrusive enough given my ability to be distracted.

And, of course, one can simply wait for people with on-line journals to post and then read the other person's life. Without any return communication or acknowledgment. We aren't even required, in this case, to have ever met the person. It is almost like the penpal phenomena of my youth...only instead of an exchange, only one person writes. In fact, it is nothing like personal communication. It is like reading a newspaper. (This is the version yours truly likes best....the part where I'm 'published' and have 'readers.') Or it's like finding someone's diary on the bus only they keep leaving it there everyday updated again. What reading an online journal is not is communication.

Personally, I alternate between being very sociable and not. Sometimes I need conversation, interaction, the breaking of bread with friends, the bong of e-mail and seeing it isn't spam, the playing of games or the joining together to listen to performances. And, at the other pole, I need to simply be alone with a book or my thoughts or my journal. At heart I'm quite shy. I need interaction but it tires me.

Some people still have parties. We attended two over the weekend. Engendered by hosts' birthdays, still they were coming together events with food and alcohol. Holding the hosts as the center and mingling in their circle. We still entertain. Have people over for dinner or invite them out. Have a party. I miss a lot of people I used to work with (including a number who also don't work at my old company any more). I was tempted the other day to organize a happy hour here to bring them together. I thought better of it. But I considered it. When I was single, every time I dug in and really, really cleaned my apartment...I'd throw a party. Then I'd clean up after that and become a recluse for some time after.

But for all our need for connection, how many people do we really keep up with? FFP and I have social interactions with a lot of different people. But a lot of it is in the context of raising money or belonging to the same club or eating and drinking in the same joints. I make an effort to maintain a certain number of friendships. I try to keep up with some of my extended family. I have a mailing list with 383 names that purports to contain mostly actual friends. Some on the list are couples or families. Of course, at Christmas I stare at some of these names and can't remember who they are and whether I should send a card. But I digress.

Increasingly, relationships may be maintained through e-mail. Probably much more easily than with mail. (I suppose people who instant message use that as well. I don't believe I'll ever use it, though.)

I have a friend who lives in Cape Town, South Africa. I'd say she's a very good friend. I met her when I read a message she posted on a news group (rec.travel.europe as it happens). I met her sister in Toronto in 1996 .I visited her in Cape Town in 1997. She visited me in 1998. We met in Edinburgh in 1999. We met in New York City in January 2002. We maintain our friendship via e-mail. Occasionally, we exchange snail mail which, naturally, takes some days to arrive. E-mail started the relationship and maintains it. I feel aware of her feelings, problems and surroundings. I am friends with her friends. (Some of whom I've met, some not.) I know what she reads and watches on TV, what she eats, how she exercises, how she feels about WARS, SARS and the latest trouble of Winnie Mandela.

My friend in Cape Town takes the trouble to write to me. And I write to her. I understand it's turning winter there, I understand how she feels about family and friends around the globe. She, of course, could read this journal. However, I write many e-mails to let her know how things go, repeating information found here or presenting it as you would to a friend, not a diary. She has met my dad, my in-laws, many of my friends. She has been some of the places I go. Other people she only feels like she knows because of my writing. We don't require each e-mail be answered but we cannot maintain the conversation if it's too one-sided.

I maintain friendships with a couple of people in New York via occasional e-mail, but getting to see them face-to-face makes it more real. I'm communicating with someone we know in San Francisco now because we are thinking of going there this summer. But I might just e-mail her any time, just to keep up. I recently sent e-mail to a couple of other friends, just to keep up. One has moved off to Indiana. I found an old e-mail from her while cleaning up and decided to see if she was still there. I started reading a book that another person gave me. I have a habit of trying to see another friend who lives in South Austin a few times a year. I e-mail to try to set that up.

I also maintain other local friendships via e-mail, extending invitations or just chatting or letting the person know I'm thinking of them. Our supper club chats (not literally) back and forth with e-mail until we set up the date and location for the next event.

None of this works, of course, if it's a one-way street. If you never get together at all, you can still be friends. But there must be e-mail or mail or a phone call (do people still do that?) to keep things going back and forth.

I've said it before herein and I'll say it again. When I read someone's journal I'm a voyeur until I send an e-mail and receive a personal response. Reading a journal is a way to know a lot about someone, to enhance your life by reading another. But it isn't a relationship. Often, I start to write to someone whose journal I read. Sometimes I even hit send on the notes. Often I don't. I just get this impression that I'm having a conversation then I realized it's silly and stop. Sometimes I get a response when I do send mail. I only personally know one person who writes a (fairly) regular journal. I don't know her well. So I don't have the ability to read a journal and read the life of someone I knew well once or someone I see every day. That must be strange. When I first started reading online journals of strangers, I thought I might get together personally with people who wrote them. But I've never once done so. (Not that I've made a huge effort. I did invite a New York journaler to dinner once. I never got an e-mail back.)

So, I thought a lot about relationships today and how we maintain them. Whether these thoughts were coherent (the rule for this section of the page in case you just came in after the reformat) is left to the reader. But that same reader must remember that his or her reading is not a relationship. No, it's not. It can be part of one if you still hold up your end and phone, write, e-mail, visit. I feel a little exposed in my relationships with people who read my journal. Sometimes in pursuit of normal relationship stuff I sense that we are interacting based on what they read here. But I can't be sure they even read it. It's as if I've just said too much, blabbed, hogged the conversation. When I haven't opened my mouth.

None of this is meant to admonish any reader to let me know they are reading or to keep up a relationship that we are either neglecting or to start a relationship we don't have. When I've written such thoughts before, some people thought mea culpa. Don't think that. The point is that this isn't intended as my half of a relationship. And, heck, even if I write you e-mail you don't answer, I'm not going to get upset. Relationships are funny things and they will reignite or not, on their own schedules.

a room dedicated to a little music "All close relationships are lit up by an almost intolerable, piercing clarity in which they are scarcely able to survive." Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street	social connections A day in which I spent time thinking more about things than I did doing them and had no social interactions except with FFP and counter people at a coffee shop and a dry cleaner. Talking back to the TV doesn't count. Actually, I think I did talk to my father on the phone. Social connections are important to us. Talking to people, communicating with them, hearing their point of view, sharing food and drink. Even if we didn't need others to deliver goods and services, we just need to be around them. Like it or not, we need other people to help interpret the world. Ted Kaczynski did so poorly on his own. (Of course, Ted Bundy did poorly and was always good with people but that's another story.) At one time, the only ways to maintain a relationship were through direct contact and mail. The former required that one be nearby and was subject to a good deal of convention a few hundred years ago. The latter might take time to deliver (although mail once dashed across short distances, borne by the lower class, apparently). Certainly had to be individually composed, generally. No mass mailings. Even in my life time, mass duplication of material with cheap copies or printing wasn't that easy. Remember those awful mimeograph machines in schools with the slightly engaging, slightly toxic smell? But I digress. Today, one can get together with people, face to face. Or one can send mail. Or one can phone. (One can, in fact, phone from almost anyplace on earth especially behind the wheel of an SUV.) Or one can e-mail. One can even chat online. I personally don't chat because I find receiving e-mail instrusive enough given my ability to be distracted. And, of course, one can simply wait for people with on-line journals to post and then read the other person's life. Without any return communication or acknowledgment. We aren't even required, in this case, to have ever met the person. It is almost like the penpal phenomena of my youth...only instead of an exchange, only one person writes. In fact, it is nothing like personal communication. It is like reading a newspaper. (This is the version yours truly likes best....the part where I'm 'published' and have 'readers.') Or it's like finding someone's diary on the bus only they keep leaving it there everyday updated again. What reading an online journal is not is communication. Personally, I alternate between being very sociable and not. Sometimes I need conversation, interaction, the breaking of bread with friends, the bong of e-mail and seeing it isn't spam, the playing of games or the joining together to listen to performances. And, at the other pole, I need to simply be alone with a book or my thoughts or my journal. At heart I'm quite shy. I need interaction but it tires me. Some people still have parties. We attended two over the weekend. Engendered by hosts' birthdays, still they were coming together events with food and alcohol. Holding the hosts as the center and mingling in their circle. We still entertain. Have people over for dinner or invite them out. Have a party. I miss a lot of people I used to work with (including a number who also don't work at my old company any more). I was tempted the other day to organize a happy hour here to bring them together. I thought better of it. But I considered it. When I was single, every time I dug in and really, really cleaned my apartment...I'd throw a party. Then I'd clean up after that and become a recluse for some time after. But for all our need for connection, how many people do we really keep up with? FFP and I have social interactions with a lot of different people. But a lot of it is in the context of raising money or belonging to the same club or eating and drinking in the same joints. I make an effort to maintain a certain number of friendships. I try to keep up with some of my extended family. I have a mailing list with 383 names that purports to contain mostly actual friends. Some on the list are couples or families. Of course, at Christmas I stare at some of these names and can't remember who they are and whether I should send a card. But I digress. Increasingly, relationships may be maintained through e-mail. Probably much more easily than with mail. (I suppose people who instant message use that as well. I don't believe I'll ever use it, though.) I have a friend who lives in Cape Town, South Africa. I'd say she's a very good friend. I met her when I read a message she posted on a news group (rec.travel.europe as it happens). I met her sister in Toronto in 1996 .I visited her in Cape Town in 1997. She visited me in 1998. We met in Edinburgh in 1999. We met in New York City in January 2002. We maintain our friendship via e-mail. Occasionally, we exchange snail mail which, naturally, takes some days to arrive. E-mail started the relationship and maintains it. I feel aware of her feelings, problems and surroundings. I am friends with her friends. (Some of whom I've met, some not.) I know what she reads and watches on TV, what she eats, how she exercises, how she feels about WARS, SARS and the latest trouble of Winnie Mandela. My friend in Cape Town takes the trouble to write to me. And I write to her. I understand it's turning winter there, I understand how she feels about family and friends around the globe. She, of course, could read this journal. However, I write many e-mails to let her know how things go, repeating information found here or presenting it as you would to a friend, not a diary. She has met my dad, my in-laws, many of my friends. She has been some of the places I go. Other people she only feels like she knows because of my writing. We don't require each e-mail be answered but we cannot maintain the conversation if it's too one-sided. I maintain friendships with a couple of people in New York via occasional e-mail, but getting to see them face-to-face makes it more real. I'm communicating with someone we know in San Francisco now because we are thinking of going there this summer. But I might just e-mail her any time, just to keep up. I recently sent e-mail to a couple of other friends, just to keep up. One has moved off to Indiana. I found an old e-mail from her while cleaning up and decided to see if she was still there. I started reading a book that another person gave me. I have a habit of trying to see another friend who lives in South Austin a few times a year. I e-mail to try to set that up. I also maintain other local friendships via e-mail, extending invitations or just chatting or letting the person know I'm thinking of them. Our supper club chats (not literally) back and forth with e-mail until we set up the date and location for the next event. None of this works, of course, if it's a one-way street. If you never get together at all, you can still be friends. But there must be e-mail or mail or a phone call (do people still do that?) to keep things going back and forth. I've said it before herein and I'll say it again. When I read someone's journal I'm a voyeur until I send an e-mail and receive a personal response. Reading a journal is a way to know a lot about someone, to enhance your life by reading another. But it isn't a relationship. Often, I start to write to someone whose journal I read. Sometimes I even hit send on the notes. Often I don't. I just get this impression that I'm having a conversation then I realized it's silly and stop. Sometimes I get a response when I do send mail. I only personally know one person who writes a (fairly) regular journal. I don't know her well. So I don't have the ability to read a journal and read the life of someone I knew well once or someone I see every day. That must be strange. When I first started reading online journals of strangers, I thought I might get together personally with people who wrote them. But I've never once done so. (Not that I've made a huge effort. I did invite a New York journaler to dinner once. I never got an e-mail back.) So, I thought a lot about relationships today and how we maintain them. Whether these thoughts were coherent (the rule for this section of the page in case you just came in after the reformat) is left to the reader. But that same reader must remember that his or her reading is not a relationship. No, it's not. It can be part of one if you still hold up your end and phone, write, e-mail, visit. I feel a little exposed in my relationships with people who read my journal. Sometimes in pursuit of normal relationship stuff I sense that we are interacting based on what they read here. But I can't be sure they even read it. It's as if I've just said too much, blabbed, hogged the conversation. When I haven't opened my mouth. None of this is meant to admonish any reader to let me know they are reading or to keep up a relationship that we are either neglecting or to start a relationship we don't have. When I've written such thoughts before, some people thought mea culpa. Don't think that. The point is that this isn't intended as my half of a relationship. And, heck, even if I write you e-mail you don't answer, I'm not going to get upset. Relationships are funny things and they will reignite or not, on their own schedules.
JUST TYPING Talk Listen Talk Listen Think about it later Take a person Inside your head Leave yourself Behind Read a newspaper Read a journal Be informed Take information However personal Inside your head
		Food Diary. I'm never hungry before ten. Today I don't get around to food (save black coffee and water) before nearly two. Then I have a cheese scone and an espresso. A little before four, I have some brown rice (about four table spoons) with a little cheese, onion and hot sauce. Just to see if I ruined the rice by leaving the kitchen while cooking. Around six I have a bunch more brown rice and about six ounces of leftover chicken with a little cheese, hot sauce and onion. I drink a bunch of water. Around 10PM I have a sandwich. Wheat bread, mayo, horseradish, two slices of turkey and a slice of provolone with spinach. I have a side of carrots. I feel really full. I drink more water. Note: Terrible diet, huh? Not enough vegie. Anyway...if anyone else is reading you may wonder why I mention water and horseradish, things that don't have significant calories or nutrients. Because the diary isn't about losing weight. It's about what I eat versus how I feel, mood-wise and health-wise. I would mention all the coffee I drink but I loose count.
		Time flies.... Got up about 8 o'clock in spite of my best intentions and opening my eyes a couple of times earlier. 8:30 I'm dressed (in TShirt and shorts for workout), drifting over a newsletter from Macromedia I got in e-mail, looking at featured sites with all these Flash bells and whistles. Discussion with FFP about our building, talking about setting up talks with our lawyer and CPA about same, talking about digital cameras. Download some pictures on the Mac and, as always, read a few pages of a Mac book that's helping me learn to use it. Edit pictures for journal, print out some to put with boxes of tiny furniture I packed up at Mom's. Finish yesterday's journal. 10:35 Do some e-mail. 10:45 Decide to go to club. Get in car. Gas warning light on. Go to nearest convenience store. No pay the pump. Go to next nearest. Cheapest gas nozzle won't work. Use next cheapest. 11:10 Arrive at club. 12:12 Leave club. 12:25 Arrive home, let out dog. Meant to do errand (pick up cleaning). Forgot. Check e-mail and send some, make date with CPA and put on calendar. 12:55 FFP leaves to interview someone for his column. Get a shower. I am thinking about doing this or that. I need to eat. The maid shows up to finish what she didn't do Tuesday. I don't feel like socializing with the maid or fixing lunch while she's there. I do speak a few words to her but it's just to fill the air. But I haven't eaten and I'm hungry. 1:46 I'm at Russell's Coffee Shop. I brought some old newspapers to read, my journal and a pen. I don't have any small bills. Just a $100 bill and two ones. So I've raided the change jar. I buy an espresso and a cheese scone. I watch the people, write in my journal and glance through several old newspaper sections that had been littering my floor. 2:55 Still at coffee shop. They have a shelf of secondhand books for sale. Mostly self-help including the much-maligned in these pages but still present on my bookshelf, Living Without a Goal.. Get a wrong number on my cell. Decide to go home. Pick up cleaning. The cleaners are right next door but I almost forget again. Go home. Let dog out. Have some more coffee and water. Decide to cook some brown rice. Go look through mail FFP has left in my office chair and start downloading a picture for him for his column. Discuss building. He notices I'm about to burn the rice. (Yeah, I know.) Taste rice with a little cheese and hot sauce and drink some water. Not bad for having failed to cook it properly. 4pm Consider seriously cleaning this place up! Instead write my coherent thoughts of the day. (Yeah, right.) Walk to the nearest convenience store and get an Austin Chronicle for FFP. (No pay the pump, but the Chrons are outside and you don't have to interact to get one.) Return and eat a little, read a bit of the newspaper and watch Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. A lady wins the million, a single mother school teacher. I would have guessed some of the questions correctly but she knew one cold that I didn't know. And should have. Write some e-mails to people. To, you know, keep up my side of the communication. Decide to watch CSI or something while working my way through some newspaper. I actually get through some of the newspapers but a huge pile remains. Watch Without a Trace. They leave the story hanging like a soap opera. I hate that. Finally get in bed. Too late.

		Reading. I am now reading Robert Massie's Peter the Great in earnest...on the bike and at stop lights. I am still reading bits of Journey Through Genius. I read a bunch of old newspaper sections on arts, comptuers and lifestyle.
		Hmmm....I don't really write anything but this stupid journal and e-mail, do I?
		Exercise 50+ minutes on the bike 500 alleged calories (these machines assert these things but I don't necessarily believe it) twenty crunches on bench twelve side-to-side (I use the little three pound ball on this) twelve bent leg lifts I hate ab work I feel a twinge of soreness from yesterday's workout
		Groggy in AM. Feel alive and awake after workout, but stressed at disappearing day. (Another one.) Thought about getting out the blood pressure machine and checking my BP and resting pulse. Felt calm in the coffee shop, reading.

Thursday, May 8, 2003

A Journal from Austin, Texas. A Project of LBFFP Stealth Publishing.