21 X 2002 - 22:17 - verba33

Floodtide, if you're reading this, the entry just before this one is especially for you.

I had meant to put up scans, but there were scanner difficulties, so it's a transcription for this week's Buzz again. Buzz is, of course, an Alchera production.

I implied things I didn't mean in my piece, but they're up here anyway. Drat the "please don't edit" clause of the assignment -- I hate not being able to revise. It's even easier to think when I start out typing -- I've got to remember keyboard correspondences and then that leads to thought and... yes. I will continue.

Note: I read the Buzz that had been submitted earliest before I did this -- because of it, I extended the necessary phrase... you'll see. Be careful: I was bouncing off the walls as I wrote...

Sometimes, I wonder if you really know me -- or perhaps that should be amended to something more like, "Sometimes I wonder if you'd really like to know me." As far as my LiveJournal and Diaryland habits go, there is much of me that remains incomplete -- a spectral knowledge I'm not sure could be filled in, even if you were to know me in real life. I live much more in my head than I do in the real world -- generally I am sort of nondescript and quiet fellow, as far as those adjectives can be stretched. But on Diaryland I am reasonable, I am alive, and all because my writing is really the first contact you have of me. I live more through the words I write than through the ones that betray my tongue.

There is something to be said for the ability to put a face and a timbre to loosely connected words. I won't deny that I'm glad of the ability as I page through a couple of friends' sites. But just as important is the ability of creating the imagined appearance and timbre; I have peopled my electronic landscape with a host of good people whose simulacra probably bear no relationship to a real appearance. This is of no importance. My resonant bass is just as true for floodtide as is his real speaking voice (just for an example)...

Beyond that, I confess to an odd vanity -- better that you should have a hand in my creation than that you should see the mundane truth for yoruselves. In this too I must vote that imagination should be king. Call it paranoia or fishing for compliments, if you will; I remain thoroughly convinced that those who wish to reassure me about my appearance and -- more important -- talent and essential good nature -- are merely trying to spare my feelings. Or not always sure [of it.]

Confiteor Deo et omnibus sanctis... runs the saw and then only a little later mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I'm no Catholic but perhaps I should have been; it might have taught me a begging for absolution. As is I'm stretched on the rack of believing my own, essential guilt in everything and have no confessor to turn to but the world -- which is nice and quite possibly well-intended byt can offer me no lasting forgiveness if I consider my existence a transgression. Old habits are hard to remove, and wasn't

there something about roads hellward and good intentions? (Forgive me, the question mark was to test scanner bleed-through and there's quite a bit -- so why am I still writing here?) -->

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