Community, Or Why I Love My Readers

I loved logging on this morning, and finding the pictures everyone took of the eclipse last night. While I was lying on the grass watching the moon disappear into a pool of flame, there you all were watching from your own vantages. And those of you who didn't get the spectacular night show we witness still played with it on your own blogs. I told H as I looked at Amy's pictures that we were all so excited because of this eclipse because we are so much a like. We love the poetic beauty of an eclipse that moment of sheer beauty that nature holds out to us.

And this is why I sometimes feel sad when I do my daily blog read. I have this amazing community scattered all over the globe. There are times, when I feel isolated within my family (no, not an entirely bad thing) and I think how I wish I lived in a physical community with you all. Here in this circle of blogs, there exists like minded people that I like so much. I love reading your blogs, I love reading your comments on my blog. You have become my friends, my community, and I have never meet most you...at least in the flesh.

As much as the Internet is demonized by so many, and the relationships formed on the Internet are so often decried as unsubstantial...somehow less than what one finds in real life....I wonder. If we only knew one another through letters would that somehow seem more real? Is it because we somehow don't "really know" each other? And what does that mean? Does being in the physical proximity of someone make them more knowable? I used to think maybe...but no. I've been betrayed by too many people I "knew." And I think that maybe I betray my body when I write these things...but maybe no. As I write to you, my fingers make each of these letters and the spaces between those letters. I am aware of the slight burn from the bottom of my laptop on my legs. I taste my sweet, creamy coffee. I can hear Lost playing in the background. With every post I place up on Green Tea Ginger, there is a whole physical history that accompanies the words.