Elastic World
Today my world both shrank and exploded right before my very eyes.
The concept of Six Degrees of Separation is something that has rocketed to the forefront of socialite tongues. It states each person on this Earth is tied to every other person by merely tracing social links through six easy steps or less. When I first heard about this I was a freshman at the fortress(more on that on a later date) known as Lockport Township High School. It was the title of a movie starring the then fledgling rapper/actor/comedy- The Fresh Prince himself- Will freakin' Smith. Now the movie was a laughable failure, but the idea the movie was based on still lives. The web savvy translations of it have evolved into sewing circle dating/stalking forums, friendship and it's Google friendly competitor Orkut.
As a Social Moth (see social butterfly) I'm aware of the various fires that people tend to hunker themselves around and keep their souls warm. The observation I make as a temporary guest to one and the semi-permanent member of another, is that we sometimes close our eyes to things and people outside of our own bright fires. Blinders are often put on and are a result of the fear of the friendless cold. It usually takes the necessity of circumstance or a flare of burning desire for a person to seek the fresh warmth of new friends/circles. Not to knock on the door of friendship and to call it out and denounce our human intentions, but I cry wolf here to show that a stated friendship does not equate a bond. To know somebody is different than having the opportunity to know somebody. The former is an experience that lashes your life unto the life of another. Where a stranger becomes the trusted, and your lives are made better.
The Six Degrees ideal doesn't take the bonds of family or friendship into effect, it merely relies on circumstance of a chance meeting, or less personal setting. Although working with somebody can be a valid experience of friendship, working the lower rungs of a corporate ladder shouldn't count as knowing the CEO of a company (which is why to this day I still wish I could meet Ted Wait of Gateway and have a long chat). This less than pure chain of people can easily corrupt one's view of how friendship should be. Take a look at some of the more "connected" people on Friendster and you'll find that they meet all the requirements of a raver flash mob. Anybody with 100+ friends is either a budding internet debutante, or a well linked lover of all that is internet. Friendster took note of it's almost ridiculous networking by limiting the degree separation to be 3. Easy on their wallet, and makes more sense when it comes to meeting people who may know a friend of yours. Dark Helmut had us nailed with "I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate"
Which brings us to today. I started off my day by actually shaving my face, but I yet again yielded to my now sentient moustache. Being that it's contrived and composed of alleged hairs, I'm convinced it must be of a hive mind. When stragglers wander off into the unknown of my chin(s) I wrangle them up with the help of my blade of choice, the Gillette Mach3 Turbo. (I could tangent off into the oddly accepted realm of razorblade upgradage, but I'll stick to my posting title today.) I also took the time to iron and starch my favorite white cotton Oxford in anticipation of my corporate doom. There is something relaxing about a slow methodical process in the face of a lion-like day. Because the terribly shadowed date of my one-on-one meeting with my departmental Director had finally arrived, I was preparing my still living corporate corpse to the nines.
As it turns out it was an informal get to know eachother session that allowed my Director to get to a more personal level with her underlings. Which I applaud her for. She's an easy person to talk to, and my own garrulousness is hard to contain in such situations. It's one thing to prod an army of strangers along to battle, but it's easier to lead a group of friends towards an objective. In our less than strategic conversation though, I found out she grew up in the place that I graduated Highschool from. Evans Highschool, in Evans, Georgia (the dreaded Augusta). After laughing about her hometown and my adopted home base (the rents and sibs are still there), we talked about our family. It turns out her mother volunteers in the same hospital that my mother is a R.N. Quite the coincidence, and fairly amusing to us both. We exchange names of our mothers and meandered around my education, my goals, what I liked about my job, and my hobbies. All in all it was a good experience and I'm glad she took the time out of her day to BS around a bit. Augusta and Atlanta come together and shrink my world a step.
A far more sobering piece of news was to shortly follow though. I worked and am friends with a young lady who hails from the former Soviet controlled country of Kyrgyzstan. She's a tennis marvel and went to school here locally in Atlanta. She's a natural at both tennis and geek, a fun surprising cocktail of energy and sobering tinkerality. She can drink me under the table to boot. She co-oped with the company I work for and was eventually hired on as a contractor. Her student visa expired the year she graduated, but she was unable to attain a sponsorship for a H1 visa. Too shorten the tale I'll leave out her involvement with a chicken footed old-balled bastard. She was let go for legal reasons, and she's forced to leave the country, to avoid being banned from the country for several years. It pains our group of friends to watch this happen, as there's nothing most of us can do. She's decided for herself that marrying a stranger or an acquaintance to stay goes against her way of operating, and I'm all for that. My own morality entwined view of love and marriage wouldn't allow me the convenience of an on the spot marriage, no matter how much I loved the country I was in, and how much I would miss it. Some of my other friends disagree, which I too can see, but I wouldn't make that decision personally.
Her leaving is very disheartening to her and to her friends. We'll miss her. Too much in fact. So much that the distance from Atlanta to Bishkek might as well be light years. Thankfully an ansible exists. The internet. But to me, life is more than digitized text and pictures. There's something sly in a smile, something wicked about a laugh, something terrible about a sigh, and something wonderful about tears, that will never be caught unless you're right next to your friend. It won't be the same, and the world is disgustingly huge to me because of it. Being linked to somebody in a very tangible form stretches your heartstrings to the limits when they're far removed from you. When a person 1 Degree from you leaves your circle of influence, their accessibility hampers your expression. Typing to a person through any of the IM programs isn't a fulfilling experience for me compared to a phone call or a one on one. But we'll take what we can get. Hopefully we'll all see her back in several months and this will be just some ink on the internet. Let's hope.
Sorry if I wander about in topic and subject. But the ideas I set before the story (try to) explain my brains alignment with fudged logic and my heart.
The concept of Six Degrees of Separation is something that has rocketed to the forefront of socialite tongues. It states each person on this Earth is tied to every other person by merely tracing social links through six easy steps or less. When I first heard about this I was a freshman at the fortress(more on that on a later date) known as Lockport Township High School. It was the title of a movie starring the then fledgling rapper/actor/comedy- The Fresh Prince himself- Will freakin' Smith. Now the movie was a laughable failure, but the idea the movie was based on still lives. The web savvy translations of it have evolved into sewing circle dating/stalking forums, friendship and it's Google friendly competitor Orkut.
As a Social Moth (see social butterfly) I'm aware of the various fires that people tend to hunker themselves around and keep their souls warm. The observation I make as a temporary guest to one and the semi-permanent member of another, is that we sometimes close our eyes to things and people outside of our own bright fires. Blinders are often put on and are a result of the fear of the friendless cold. It usually takes the necessity of circumstance or a flare of burning desire for a person to seek the fresh warmth of new friends/circles. Not to knock on the door of friendship and to call it out and denounce our human intentions, but I cry wolf here to show that a stated friendship does not equate a bond. To know somebody is different than having the opportunity to know somebody. The former is an experience that lashes your life unto the life of another. Where a stranger becomes the trusted, and your lives are made better.
The Six Degrees ideal doesn't take the bonds of family or friendship into effect, it merely relies on circumstance of a chance meeting, or less personal setting. Although working with somebody can be a valid experience of friendship, working the lower rungs of a corporate ladder shouldn't count as knowing the CEO of a company (which is why to this day I still wish I could meet Ted Wait of Gateway and have a long chat). This less than pure chain of people can easily corrupt one's view of how friendship should be. Take a look at some of the more "connected" people on Friendster and you'll find that they meet all the requirements of a raver flash mob. Anybody with 100+ friends is either a budding internet debutante, or a well linked lover of all that is internet. Friendster took note of it's almost ridiculous networking by limiting the degree separation to be 3. Easy on their wallet, and makes more sense when it comes to meeting people who may know a friend of yours. Dark Helmut had us nailed with "I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate"
Which brings us to today. I started off my day by actually shaving my face, but I yet again yielded to my now sentient moustache. Being that it's contrived and composed of alleged hairs, I'm convinced it must be of a hive mind. When stragglers wander off into the unknown of my chin(s) I wrangle them up with the help of my blade of choice, the Gillette Mach3 Turbo. (I could tangent off into the oddly accepted realm of razorblade upgradage, but I'll stick to my posting title today.) I also took the time to iron and starch my favorite white cotton Oxford in anticipation of my corporate doom. There is something relaxing about a slow methodical process in the face of a lion-like day. Because the terribly shadowed date of my one-on-one meeting with my departmental Director had finally arrived, I was preparing my still living corporate corpse to the nines.
As it turns out it was an informal get to know eachother session that allowed my Director to get to a more personal level with her underlings. Which I applaud her for. She's an easy person to talk to, and my own garrulousness is hard to contain in such situations. It's one thing to prod an army of strangers along to battle, but it's easier to lead a group of friends towards an objective. In our less than strategic conversation though, I found out she grew up in the place that I graduated Highschool from. Evans Highschool, in Evans, Georgia (the dreaded Augusta). After laughing about her hometown and my adopted home base (the rents and sibs are still there), we talked about our family. It turns out her mother volunteers in the same hospital that my mother is a R.N. Quite the coincidence, and fairly amusing to us both. We exchange names of our mothers and meandered around my education, my goals, what I liked about my job, and my hobbies. All in all it was a good experience and I'm glad she took the time out of her day to BS around a bit. Augusta and Atlanta come together and shrink my world a step.
A far more sobering piece of news was to shortly follow though. I worked and am friends with a young lady who hails from the former Soviet controlled country of Kyrgyzstan. She's a tennis marvel and went to school here locally in Atlanta. She's a natural at both tennis and geek, a fun surprising cocktail of energy and sobering tinkerality. She can drink me under the table to boot. She co-oped with the company I work for and was eventually hired on as a contractor. Her student visa expired the year she graduated, but she was unable to attain a sponsorship for a H1 visa. Too shorten the tale I'll leave out her involvement with a chicken footed old-balled bastard. She was let go for legal reasons, and she's forced to leave the country, to avoid being banned from the country for several years. It pains our group of friends to watch this happen, as there's nothing most of us can do. She's decided for herself that marrying a stranger or an acquaintance to stay goes against her way of operating, and I'm all for that. My own morality entwined view of love and marriage wouldn't allow me the convenience of an on the spot marriage, no matter how much I loved the country I was in, and how much I would miss it. Some of my other friends disagree, which I too can see, but I wouldn't make that decision personally.
Her leaving is very disheartening to her and to her friends. We'll miss her. Too much in fact. So much that the distance from Atlanta to Bishkek might as well be light years. Thankfully an ansible exists. The internet. But to me, life is more than digitized text and pictures. There's something sly in a smile, something wicked about a laugh, something terrible about a sigh, and something wonderful about tears, that will never be caught unless you're right next to your friend. It won't be the same, and the world is disgustingly huge to me because of it. Being linked to somebody in a very tangible form stretches your heartstrings to the limits when they're far removed from you. When a person 1 Degree from you leaves your circle of influence, their accessibility hampers your expression. Typing to a person through any of the IM programs isn't a fulfilling experience for me compared to a phone call or a one on one. But we'll take what we can get. Hopefully we'll all see her back in several months and this will be just some ink on the internet. Let's hope.
Sorry if I wander about in topic and subject. But the ideas I set before the story (try to) explain my brains alignment with fudged logic and my heart.
posted by Nevkil at
6/29/2004 01:31:00 PM
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