Monday, January 25, 2010

Friends on the Internet

A good ten years or more ago, I was introduced to an online diary/journal called LiveJournal. I'd been involved in online fandom and one of my friends from a fandom yahoogroup led me into LJ. Before long, I'd found a long-lost friend under a pseudonym on LJ, and then I started to keep my own Journal there - and when it was offered, paid the $25.00 for a lifetime membership.

That long-lost friend and I don't communicate much anymore (but we did meet - twice!) but we're both still friends on each others' journals; I keep up with whats' going on in her life and I'm pretty sure she does the same with me. One or two others I knew from YahooGroups are also friends on my journal for the same amount of time. One of them (Joanne) lives in Australia; she's a sporadic poster but when she does post, she posts in spurts. The other one (Natlet/Jes) has migrated (half-heartedly - I still mostly keep in touch with her via LJ - to Twitter and Facebook - and of course we're friends on those sites as well). Along the way via these three people I met others who became hard and fast friends ... all of whom have made the jump to other social media ... Jaime/Smittygirl (and via Smittygirl I met Carol/LadyDiva and Kelpie), Kirstin (who I met via an LJ group and we became friends because she and I have the exact same thoughts about how to treat humans of celebrity status), CJ, Danielle/theHunter (who, I believe, I also met via Smittygirl because of the A-Team). I keep a locked journal because over there - when I'm talking - I'm talking about things dear to my heart that I prefer to only share with a few that I trust. It's just my way. Most of these people are friended on my locked and private Myspace, and they have all migrated to Facebook. A few are on Twitter too.

Via CJ and theHunter, I started reading Neil Gaiman's journal. For those who have no clue who he is - where have you been? He's an author of books that have been classified as children's books although his books cross all genres and age-brackets. Over the years that I've been reading his journal, he's become more and more recognized by the public at large; his books are being made into movies; he's getting many awards ... hell, he recently won the coveted Newbury Award, joining in the ranks with the likes of Madeleine L'Engle. How cool is that? Very cool.

Through it all, though, he's remained amazingly human and those of us who read his journal look forward to his posts. All of us are animal lovers (Natlet convinced me to keep Sambuka back when he was still a VERY lively kitten and driving me batty even though I loved him to death) as is Neil Gaiman. We've followed his stories of the various cats who have lived/do live in his house and yard as well as the dog who adopted him and visa versa - the dog was a runaway for good reason, Neil found him, found where he was from and offered to adopt him and now we're all treated to wonderful pictures of a white German Shepard on walks through the woods near where the author lives.

All of us got to know the two elderly cats who lived in the library - and when one of them passed away, we knew the other wasn't going to be far behind. And we learned about this little blind cat named Zoe who lived in an attic bedroom. Within the last week or so, Zoe became ill and it was found that she had a major tumor in her esophagus ... we all lived traumatically through each post of Neils' (and the other people who knew and loved Zoe as well) until she was finally put down (at home!!) today. Every single one of those posts from the last five days or so had me in tears. And I found out earlier today, I wasn't the only one. Kirstin, on her facebook, commented about crying (and I had just wiped my eyes from reading the previous post). From that I realized two things. One is that I have this solid pocket of friends - some of whom who have migrated to other social media sites where I hang out and do business - some of whom I have met, some of whom I have talked with on the phone and exchanged tapes of The A-Team or Crossing Over with John Edward. I called theHunter/Danielle when her horse had to be put down. Danielle/theHunter also saw Jes after Jes told me to "live it myself" and went off to live her life elsewhere ... she showed up on a bus in upstate NY where Danielle was attending college - and was seen not once but twice!). I'm pretty sure I've been on the phone with Jes/Natlet at least once if not twice. I *almost* met Smits/Jaime when I went to the Memphis Folk Alliance conference about three years ago and I'm pretty sure we will meet someday - for now, we have talked on the phone and shared a ghost. I've talked with Carol/Ladydiva on the phone myriads of times (we both went into retail around the same time; if retail meant survival then survive we must!). Kelpie and I are fast friends; she also maintains my website and does design work for me as and when AND we ARE going to meet next month (which I'm very excited about). I've met - several times - CJ. Joanne and I have shared a storyline.

I'm pretty sure all of us follow Neil Gaimans' journal and I'm pretty sure all of us as animal lovers have all been reacting exactly the same way as Kirsten and myself. (I also cried when Kirstens' sisters cat, Simon, has to be put down. She worked really hard to save this cat and it didn't work out).

The story of the last days of a cat that affected all of us starts with this post on Neils' journal. You can follow along from there till today just to see why this author that we know from his journal and his friends and the people who work for him were affected by this little cat. In a strange way it brought all of my small group of online friends together ... and I wonder whether you won't start reading Neils' posts and/or read a book or two of his.

It's sorta a little bit of what the internet is all about.

jal 1/25/2010