The Social Network

The other day I was meandering through the lists of people I should know on Facebook, and after about 20 minutes I was wondering why I wasn't done.

On one hand it was a fascinating experience--there were people on that list I hadn't thought about for roughly 10 years! I've had 10 years worth of acquaintances! Get out! Is that the guy who said--and did they really get married? Who--why? What is he doing? What happened to her??

Then I realized what I was doing and the enormity of all the people I do not consider, but at one time did in some way, mounted to the full height of what it really was. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people that I used to willingly give the time of day to that I now did not waited for me to consider them once more. And quite frankly that seemed like a very steep dive in my attempt to over come my now custom mode of social recluse.

I don't talk to anyone anymore, and I like it like that. Life consists of me, and my family, and a few friends...and that's all there needs to be. My grandmother lived 90 years and I'm sure she didn't care about what the girl who sat behind her on the school bus when she was...(I was going to say 7, but I don't think they had school busses then...). Even Facebook didn't begin with this enormity. It had about 30 people from the collective freshman dorms at BYU when it started. And while it's extremely small potatoes to post up a couple pictures and a post every now and again, I find it extremely exhausting to think of all the people Facebook is asking me to think about catching up with.

But I suppose overall I would deem Facebook's evolution and commandeering of our collective American society as a good thing with a few dark faces. But no wonder life get's so complicated. The wonder is plainly in the magnitude. There are just too many people for one person to try and connect to. Is it our mind's new way of organizing? Classifying people into groups, by work place, by school, by interest, by time period...is that really how we connect to people? Have we changed as people so much that our hellos need to be broadcast to all who subscribe? Are we really so inept to not be able to keep up with those we consider friends? Are we using Facebook as a replacement for real activities with real people and not pages of representation?

I don't know. That's when I logged out.

The Eternal Round

A certain freedom is cultivated by belonging to oneself.  Don't be mistaken; that does not mean that life is best lived solo, without any other being or influence present.  Not at all.  But why belong to anyone else without belonging to your self first?

Yet we often do what breaks us for the sake of another.  We idolize it--giving our self away to everyone and everything for every reason possible.  Someone told me to. My parents did it.  I was paid for it. It was part of a deal. He triple-dog-dared me on a times-infinty-pinky swear.  Everything claims us, as we claim it, but when do we claim ourselves?

Most settle; staking down to a place, a job, a love.  They stay put.  Once it seemed cliché to stay put.  So overdone, so common, so traditional, so over-appreciated.  But at the same time, it's comforting, easy.  Relaxing.  You don't have to count; you can just follow the beat of the blaring boom-box felt through the floorboards.  Some beautiful dance comes out of that.

I find myself dancing in spinning circles this morning.  Much like a top on an unstable surface, I follow the heaviest pull.  Without a purpose?  I have a purpose: my purpose is to wander.

It isn't that I'm homeless--it's that everywhere is home.  Spatial placement is a reflection of where your heart is, and well, my heart just doesn't stay in one place.  Or perhaps it's more accurate to say that it does, but it expands. A universal heart, which is everywhere yet no where all at once.

That's it; that's it.  I am she who wanders, never to settle, always to have settled already.  Yes.  This is what happens when one belongs to their self.

Every once in a while the dance needs to create the beat.  The pulse is given life through the string of yarn connecting beads of morning dew.  Moment to moment, meaning is sought from one place to the next, every instance offering something incredibly timeless, fleeting and eternal all at once.  Time becomes nothing but a plane of space for the exploration of the soul, and meaning is in the movement just as much as in the beginning and the end.

The King of Alabama Avenue

"Jallow is from my country as well" Turay admitted as he went down his list of co-workers. Jallow looked up from his container of rice and smelly spinach and glared over his golden-rimmed glasses.

"Sierra Leone? Bah! I am not from Sierra Leone!" he dismissed over his shoulder in an angry sort of gesture. Turay continued on with his list then noticed his flight had landed and sprung out the door. "Sierra Leone" Jallow continued under his breath. "All they do is kill each other, fighting fighting all the time--who would ever go back there?"

"Jallow, where are you from?" I asked politely, piqued with interest. He sat down and arranged his pungent African dish in front of him.

"I was born right here in DC! Southeast! I am the king of Alabama Avenue!" he proclaimed, poking the table as if to show me on it's smooth landscape right where his kingdom was located. He shook his head. "Only yesterday I saw a girl who was pregnant and all these boys--they all just run around and do this and sleep there, and hit him, and for what??"

He spit disgust to the side of the board and slammed a piece into place.

"For what? I told them, they are fools! They know nothing! And as king I had to tell them so. You see?? I am king!"

I'm not sure he realized that Turay was gone and that the game was over by forfeit. Jallow crowned the piece himself then got up from his table. Without another word, he hunkered down the hallway.