Linearity

[rinue]

When I find a journal I like, I tend to go back and read old entries. This means that, yes, if you're on my friends list, I have read every entry you've ever written. Depending on how new the journal was when I discovered it, this may have meant months or even years of backentries.

This is nothing like reading a collection of essays. It is full of gaps and redundancies analogous to rests and leitmotifs in a piece of Romantic music - or maybe I only say that because I'm a musician. Regardless, it is pretty certain that I'm not meant to approach the medium in this way. You made these entries to be read at the time they were written. I am not supposed to run through your life from March to December, skipping past a given month in less than an hour.

I am not the audience you were writing for. Do you know how erratic you look to me? Do you know how forcefully I have to remind myself that your opinion changed not in a moment, but in a month? Although I'm looking at a calendar, January seems impossibly far away; I am surprised by media references I think of as recent. Since it is now March, I can't exist in January - but there you are, and it is the first time I've met you.

Is this how a human life looks to an extra-dimensional being? Is progress diminished when you know the future, and the answers to old speculations are obvious? I wonder whether life has more value while you're living it, or long afterward, when it can be properly sorted.

Perhaps it would be fairer to set our journals side by side, so they may hold hands as we travel through time.

Comments

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

When I find a journal I like, I tend to go back and read old entries. This means that, yes, if you're on my friends list, I have read every entry you've ever written.

Hee, I do this constantly. It usually weirds people out when I tell them ("you read the WHOLE THING?"). I'm too much of a chicken to do it myself with my own online stuff, though.

moi

[hipgunslinger.livejournal.com]

I do the same with the backreading.
I find the transitive nature fascinatingly similar to the idea that just about every four years all the cells in our body are entirely different. The organism is recognizeably the same, but the fact remains that the components are different.

[treehavn.livejournal.com]

I think you should kidnap Val and all come and live in Canada. We could form an exquisitely decorated commune filled with books (that I would catalogue), and we could live on dates, french cheese, curry, and good red wine - it would be wonderful. Either that, or we'd all go insane.

[rinue.livejournal.com]

You know I'm up for it, but Val is now death on cold. She says that never again will she live in a climate where she might be snowed in. I, on the other hand, would go wherever you asked, with only minimal grumbling, (provided there were food and books; otherwise, I'd be highly suspicious of your motives).

Two questions:

1. What's all this about you possibly visiting this summer?

2. Given that you cannot now go on the $500 road trip, and yet have a desire to participate, when would be good for you? I would very much like to have you along, even if it means waiting a year or so.

-R

[treehavn.livejournal.com]

Two answers:

1. Yes, it is my intention. Very much so.

2. I'd have to say that, post the end of next semester (mid-August?), I'd be totally up for it. The idea thrills me greatly. If Gareth is in situ by then can he come along too?