Facebook is the tattoo I never got.
I know that at least half on you are on fb and I wonder if your thoughts and feelings have changed about it during the time you have had an account.
Facebook is my first social networking experience. While I had enjoyed peeking in on my younger siblings MySpace accounts for a few years, I had always thought I was too old to get a MySpace account. (Perhaps too old to even be on the internet!)
But I joined fb two Januarys ago at a time when I was so ill I was basically an invalid. I was in serious pain in snowy New Jersey and my ever constructive sister said, “Come play Scrabble with me on Facebook.”
“Do I have to set up an account?”
“Yes, but it’s worth it.”
And she was right.
I threw caution to the wind and opened an account using my own name, something I rarely use in any sort of public forum. But I was dead anyway. So using my real name didn’t see risky.
Who would use my name after I was dead? I had better use it now.
And I had just snatched a starving feral kitten from the yard two months before and he seemed like a blue wizard, my familiar, and so I posted his photo.
I had been so sick, living in a land of agony, lacking any diagnosis, three emergency room visits and a long list of procedures later and I seemed to look good on paper, but really I was just a paper doll. A paper voodoo doll.
I was so alone I didn’t even understand why people had furniture.
And then Scrabble sort of saved me.
Facebook seemed like the afterlife. Immediately a couple of old college friends drifted by and said Hi, like we were at a reunion, all with cocktails in hand, and then they drifted off.
Then I began the love-hate relationship with feeling exposed. For all the blabbing I do, and all my openness and extroversion, and the fact that I invited my lady friends to the blog, I am a deeply private person who cherishes solitude.
And of course I need the solitude to write.
And to play Scrabble!
These thoughts come to mind since I just hung up the phone with my stepfather. He works in a place I call “Mattress Land” which is much like Sartre’s play No Exit. I teased him, “You sure suck at facebook!” and he said it was true and he was afraid to post anything because a future employer might see it and that might affect his eligibility for a job.
And I recall way back when, in my adolescence and early twenties, that that fear was the reason I did not get a tattoo. I wanted to stay blank so that I could fit better into any circles of the world I might seek entrance.
It wasn’t my personal prejudice. I loved tattoos. (I particularly wanted to cover myself with glow –in-the-dark stars and maps of the world, mermaids and dragons and lions and trees, a zebra running on my shoulder…) But being from rural Virginia there was definitely a stigma that basically tattoos were for people in the military, and bikers, and an exception could be made for Japanese gangsters and Maori warriors.
(Having a Southern accent back then was also something to lose, or at least soften, if you wanted a career in the wider world.)
Five minutes later the whole world would rush to the tattoo parlor and ladies and teenagers and punks and baristas would suddenly all sport colorful camouflage and my sister would start adding to her collection and everyone would pierce any piece of their flesh that they could.
But I was right there in the last few minutes of the old world, the one where tattoos were permanent and we must have believed we were going to live awhile.
(Remember, back when books were made of paper and you saved your money to go to an actual bookstore and choose one carefully?)
What I know now~ there is An Exit.
And the house is overrun with books. Beautiful papery semi permanent books.
And maybe this year I will get another fabulous temporary tattoo at the fair!
Temporary is permanent enough.
I know that at least half on you are on fb and I wonder if your thoughts and feelings have changed about it during the time you have had an account.
Facebook is my first social networking experience. While I had enjoyed peeking in on my younger siblings MySpace accounts for a few years, I had always thought I was too old to get a MySpace account. (Perhaps too old to even be on the internet!)
But I joined fb two Januarys ago at a time when I was so ill I was basically an invalid. I was in serious pain in snowy New Jersey and my ever constructive sister said, “Come play Scrabble with me on Facebook.”
“Do I have to set up an account?”
“Yes, but it’s worth it.”
And she was right.
I threw caution to the wind and opened an account using my own name, something I rarely use in any sort of public forum. But I was dead anyway. So using my real name didn’t see risky.
Who would use my name after I was dead? I had better use it now.
And I had just snatched a starving feral kitten from the yard two months before and he seemed like a blue wizard, my familiar, and so I posted his photo.
I had been so sick, living in a land of agony, lacking any diagnosis, three emergency room visits and a long list of procedures later and I seemed to look good on paper, but really I was just a paper doll. A paper voodoo doll.
I was so alone I didn’t even understand why people had furniture.
And then Scrabble sort of saved me.
Facebook seemed like the afterlife. Immediately a couple of old college friends drifted by and said Hi, like we were at a reunion, all with cocktails in hand, and then they drifted off.
Then I began the love-hate relationship with feeling exposed. For all the blabbing I do, and all my openness and extroversion, and the fact that I invited my lady friends to the blog, I am a deeply private person who cherishes solitude.
And of course I need the solitude to write.
And to play Scrabble!
These thoughts come to mind since I just hung up the phone with my stepfather. He works in a place I call “Mattress Land” which is much like Sartre’s play No Exit. I teased him, “You sure suck at facebook!” and he said it was true and he was afraid to post anything because a future employer might see it and that might affect his eligibility for a job.
And I recall way back when, in my adolescence and early twenties, that that fear was the reason I did not get a tattoo. I wanted to stay blank so that I could fit better into any circles of the world I might seek entrance.
It wasn’t my personal prejudice. I loved tattoos. (I particularly wanted to cover myself with glow –in-the-dark stars and maps of the world, mermaids and dragons and lions and trees, a zebra running on my shoulder…) But being from rural Virginia there was definitely a stigma that basically tattoos were for people in the military, and bikers, and an exception could be made for Japanese gangsters and Maori warriors.
(Having a Southern accent back then was also something to lose, or at least soften, if you wanted a career in the wider world.)
Five minutes later the whole world would rush to the tattoo parlor and ladies and teenagers and punks and baristas would suddenly all sport colorful camouflage and my sister would start adding to her collection and everyone would pierce any piece of their flesh that they could.
But I was right there in the last few minutes of the old world, the one where tattoos were permanent and we must have believed we were going to live awhile.
(Remember, back when books were made of paper and you saved your money to go to an actual bookstore and choose one carefully?)
What I know now~ there is An Exit.
And the house is overrun with books. Beautiful papery semi permanent books.
And maybe this year I will get another fabulous temporary tattoo at the fair!
Temporary is permanent enough.
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