Online Friendship
Recently, my blogging friend Macaholiq8 posted a question asking “Do You Take Online Friendships Seriously?” The question pops up often, along with the “can men and women be friends?” question.
I like questions like that. You think the answer is easy, you have an automatic response, and then you find yourself days later re-visiting the question, pondering the question. That’s a good question, isn’t it, when it comes back and haunts you and makes you think some more?
In social environments, my mother trained me well. I know how to be pleasant, how to make small talk, how to amuse people with anecdotes that are short and funny. I know how to mingle, I can put people at ease. I have a wide range of connections; I have a lot of friends, i.e. people I know socially.
Only one of these friends knows that I blog.
There is another level of friend, friends with whom friendship has developed slowly, and usually cemented by some event during which we connected at a deeper level. I know one blogger, for example, face-to-face. I liked her anyway, but when my Father died, she sent me her real name and phone number and told me to call her. You know how wary I am – her compassion and grace, her trust, brought me to tears. She is the one exception to my “stay anonymous” rule; she broke through the barrier by her one act of grace – and by her body of work, which helped me to know her temperament and her character.
Most of my friendships occur online these days, but through e-mails keeping me up to date with those whose friendships I have cherished over the years:
* My college friend
* My childhood-live-across-the-creek-in-Alaska friend
* My Chinese-Mormon-Army Wife Friend
* Several mentors, hobby-buddies, church buddies, expat-abroad buddies, as well as family members, some of whom are also buddies!
AdventureMan is my very best buddy. When we met, my sister was getting married in the Heidelberg castle, and there was a lot to be done. I didn’t have a license to drive in Germany, and AdventureMan would come and get me and take me places like the florist’s or the officer’s club or wherever I needed to go to run an errand that needed to be run. We weren’t dating; he was just very kindly ferrying me around. As he would drive, we would have good conversations. The night my sister got married, he looked at me and realized he wasn’t going to see me again if he didn’t ask me out. We’ve been best friends ever since.
Friendship, deep friendship, doesn’t always mean you’re going to agree, in fact sometimes it is only your very best friend who can give you bad news and make you listen. When friends tell me about big fights with other friends, I tell them (whoa! when did I become a mentor???) that fighting and even hatred is not the opposite of love, disengagement and indifference and not caring is the opposite of love.
I have a good friend now in Kuwait who is helping another friend walk through a terrible situation. The friend gets really really angry with her, and even says behind her back (and to her face) “I hate it when people try to tell me how to live my life.” Because the helping friend is loyal and committed to the friendship, she persists. It’s like dealing with an animal in pain, when we are in emotional pain and don’t want to hear something, we might strike out at the person bearing the message. It takes a very special friend to stay the course, to be committed through that kind of emotional pain.
As I see it, there are an infinite number of levels of friendship, and different friendships for different times in your life, and different needs.
In times of crisis, when a friend needs someone to talk to who can keep her mouth shut, I’m there. If you are my friend and want to spend a lot of time with me, you’re going to be disappointed. If you need me to head up a project, I’m there. If you need me to head up a group – no way. Some people, mostly introverts, find me a great friend, and others, those who are good at hanging out, find me lacking.
I DO think you can be friends with bloggers and never meet them. In the days of snail mail, people had pen-pals who lived in distant places. They might write for decades and never meet, and yet there was a lasting and genuine relationship that I would call friendship. We meet in a realm of ideas and experiences. Meeting in person, the differences might overshadow that which we share in common.
You might think I am just blah-blah-blah-ing, but there is a method in my madness. I think we relate to one another and influence one another in ways we are just beginning to realize. I think there is great value in what we gain from our online friendships.
Later I will post on a hotel AdventureMan and I stayed in, a hotel I would never have known about or heard of were it not for the recommendation of a Kuwaiti former blogger (one who I hope will one day blog again) Gastronomica who now owns and operates The Slider Station and who hasn’t blogged for quite a while. His posts were so educated, so interesting and so reliable that I truly miss his presence in the blog world.
I am guessing that the secret to maintaining friendships is to understand who the friend is and what he/she is capable of. One of the great pitfalls is expecting more from the relationship than the friend, or the relationship can merit. Different friends bring different gifts to the table; I think you need them all to some extent, and it is up to you to determine to what level YOU want the relationship to go, depending also on the capabilities and needs of the other.
As It Snows . . .
Catching up with the news, I was looking at the Thursday Kuwait Times when I came across a photo. I am not going to print the photo in my blog, but if you want to look at it, or one like it, you can see it at Yahoo News, just click here on the blue type.
The photo of the execution, titled Iran hangs 13 on a single day is extraordinary enough. I don’t think we print those kind of photos in American newspapers. Maybe in the tabloids; these photos are considered disturbing. I know they disturb me. This one in the Kuwait Times has big white balls in it and the caption reads: QOM, Iran: Three Iranian drug traffickers hang limply from the nooses as it snows in a square in this central city yesterday.
I remember cutting out a similar one from a paper in Saudi Arabia when I lived there. It didn’t have a photo, but the article was about the Taliban hanging of a convicted man in the stadium in Kabul. It stated the man was wearing a blue sharwal khamis. There was no mention of why this man was hung, of what he was convicted.
The Yahoo version of the same hanging of 13 states: Three Iranian drug traffickers hang limply from the nooses after being executed in a square.
To me, the mention of snow falling as people are executed, of the executed man seems . . . maybe poetic? Maybe some way of softening the horror? I don’t know. It’s not something we would do. Bad news is left bare, without a lot of dressing it up. I would love to get your input on this. For me, it’s a different way of thinking.
Feeding MY Soul: Blog comments
Today, on the day we honor the Wise Men following the star, I got the following comment on a blog entry I wrote back in August, on Buck Naked and the Yemeni Star from PetroOps, no hot link, so maybe he/she is a blogger and maybe not. This kind of comment feeds my soul.
Well that Star is called (Sohail) it is a Yemeni Star because it holds its place on the southern sphere’s sky. so it is to the Yemen side for Kuwait and other GCC countries. on the opposite side there is the (Thoraia – Star) to the northwest of our Sky and that was mentioned together in some poetries as the lovers that will never meet with each others.
I never knew that! I have sort of kept Sohail in mind as a name for the next female cat that comes into my life, and now I can see that the next cat will probably have a brother, whose name will be Thoraia. If those names are male and femaie, and I have assigned the wrong sex (in English, if a name ends in an “a” it is most likely a female name) somebody please clue me in so I don’t make a terrible mistake. Anyway, I don’t see adopting another cat any time soon, as we have our hands full with The Qatteri Cat.
A week after the first Yemeni Star entry, I wrote another, Yemeni Star to which I received all kinds of great informative comments.
A lot of time on blogs, every blog, it is just blah blah blah. What feeds my soul are comments like this one above, and the ones to the Yemeni star entry, comments that add something to my knowledge base, often comments that help me think in a totally new direction. You do that for me, my readers, my commenters. Thank you for delighting my heart.
January 6 The Feast of Epiphany
I have always loved Epiphany. The vision of the three wise men riding on camels, following a star to find a baby in a manger delights my soul. There is a flip side, of course, as the wicked King Herod sends his soldiers to kill all the male children under two years old, and the Christ child, whose parents Mary and Joseph are warned by an angel, have miraculously escaped to hide in Egypt.
Friday, in church, I learned something I had never known before: The Feast of the Epiphany was traditionally the second most important celebration in the church year, just after Easter. I had always assumed it was Christmas. I was wrong!
Not only is Christmas not the second most important, it is also not the third most important – that is, if I remember what Father Andy said, the Assumption. He said that we didn’t begin to celebrate the birth of the child in Bethleham, as a church, until around the 4th century.
Here is the story, in one of our readings for today:
Matthew 2:1-12
2In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men* from the East came to Jerusalem, 2asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising,* and have come to pay him homage.’ 3When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; 4and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah* was to be born. 5They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:
6“And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who is to shepherd* my people Israel.” ’
7 Then Herod secretly called for the wise men* and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.’ 9When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising,* until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10When they saw that the star had stopped,* they were overwhelmed with joy. 11On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
Every Sunset is a Beautiful Sunset
We were walking along Clearwater Beach, in Florida with a couple who had been our friends for years. We have so many stories with this couple, stories that make us all double over in laughter.
There was the time we were dining at a castle in Germany, a very lovely place, and when we ordered dessert, it came . . . chocolate mousse, but carefully placed, a la nouvelle cuisine, and striped with a chocolate syrup. As it was being put before us, we didn’t dare to look at one another. Only when the waiter left did the giggles start, growing into full grown guffaws, as we laughed helplessly.
The mousse looked like dog poop.
My husband was laughing so hard he had trouble breathing for a while. The gales of laughter, the whoops of laughter continued as we remembered the utter shock as the dessert was placed before us. To this day, we still don’t know if this was seriously supposed to be haute cuisine or if it was some kind of German joke. It still makes us roll with laughter thinking of the horrified surprise we each felt, and our fear of laughing in the waiter’s face.
There are other stories, stories funnier to us than they would be to you in the retelling.
Bill had a heart attack earlier in the year. AdventureMan and I were going through career transition issues. It was a time of struggle for both couples, and we were talking about what we were going through as the sun began to set. We all stopped and watched.
“What a beautiful sunset!” AdventureMan said.
There was a pause, as we all watched the last fading rays of the setting sun.
Bill took AdventureMan’s arm and looked at him intensely.
“Every sunset is a beautiful sunset,” he said, and added “when you think you may never see another.”
It changed how we see the sunset. It changed how we see the sunrise. Bill died this last year, having had many more sunsets after our sunset in Florida, and we still miss him grievously.
Saturday, 5 January Sunrise
Clear horizon . . . . looking for snow clouds . . .
Scary – that’s not the horizon the sun is over, it’s the veil of (smog?) (pollution?) (fog?) that seems to hang over the Gulf perpetually.
Why all these sunrises? Well, for one thing, because I can, because when I wake up I usually can’t get back to sleep, I am AWAKE and ready to go. My best time of the day.
Freecycle
There was an article within the last few days in the Kuwait Times about Freecycle but this is not the recent article. It was the only article I could fine, from April 2007. The important thing is that it exists, and that setting up a Kuwait freecycle would be of benefit to many.
In the expat community, we do a lot of Freecycle on an informal basis. When we come, people help us out with things, and when we leave, we pass our things along. Sometimes we sell them, but often as not, we give them away and would love for them to fall into the right hands. We all hate waste.
(Oh my gosh! I just went to the Freecycle Website and found the Kuwait group and it has 122 members! Holy Smokes!) Click on the blue type and you can join the Kuwait group, too!
Don’t throw it away, someone might want it
Published Date: April 25, 2007
By Pete May
Our houses are full of them: old computers, fax machines, video players, fridges in the garage, vinyl records, unwanted armchairs – things we don’t want but still work. Research by gumtree.com reveals the British dispose of over £5.6bn worth of usable household items a year, including 1.35m working fridges and freezers, and 2.6m sofas. People out there want our redundant stuff – but how do we find them? A few weeks ago, I tried to shift a 10-year-old Apple Power Mac and a similarly ancient (in computer terms) Mac laptop. Both worked, so to throw them in a skip would have been wasteful and created toxic waste (computers can contain heavy metals and chemicals). I’d checked the likes of Computer Aid International (computeraid.org) and the Community Recycling Network (crn.org.uk). Both accepted PCs, but the words “10-year-old Apple Mac” resulted in polite rejection.
So I tried Freecycle, an online forum where people give away and pick up unwanted stuff, free of charge. It has 4,009 communities worldwide and, according to its online counter, 3,401,532 users. I joined my local group and tentatively posted my message: “Offered: Power Mac with printer and Powerbook laptop, bought in 1997 but working fine, need to be collected.” Within three hours I’d had 30 replies. Suddenly my Macs were seen as a valuable resource. Jenny wanted the laptop for her 11-year-old son who was “a Mac fanatic”, while Julie wanted it for her soon-to-be daughter-in-law; Ben needed computers for his charity in Zimbabwe. It wasn’t easy to decide whom to give them to.
Freecycle etiquette dictates that you don’t necessarily give things to the first emailer – and you must reject anyone you suspect wants to sell the goods. I opted for friendly sounding people who could collect immediately: Andy, who’d been on disability benefit for three years, and Ruth, a cash-starved student. Since then I’ve used Freecycle to shift two fax machines, a Zip drive, an office desk, a child’s desk, a malfunctioning Hoover, some kitchen shelves, a washing machine and my local vicar’s sofa bed. Our fridge-freezer went to a woman with cancer who was on a special diet and needed it for her store of juices. Our rubbish was helping someone fight for life. Then I visited SwapXchange, which offers items to swap from all over the country via its website (swapxchange.org). I exchanged a juicer and a Kenwood mixer for a bottle of organic wine apiece.
(Read the rest of the article by clicking on the BLUE Kuwait Times type, above.)
Pass it along. . . !
“I Sparkle Like a Crystal . . .
. . . when I am with my pistol” sings Annie Oakley, from Annie Get Your Gun. It’s been running through my head ever since I heard about the Kuwait Bloggerettes outing to the shooting range. You’ve seen Megan Mullally on Will and Grace, but here she is, singing Annie’s song and hitting her target dead on:
And here are the lyrics:
Oh my mother was frightened by a shotgun they say
That’s why I’m such a wonderful shot
I’d be out in the cactus and I’d practice all day
And now tell me, what have I got
I’m quick on the trigger
With targets not much bigger than a pinpoint
I’m number one
But my score with a feller
Is lower than a cellar
No you can’t get a man with a gun
When I’m with a pistol
I sparkle like a crystal
Yes I shine like the morning sun
But I lose all my luster when with a crumple buster
Oh, you can’t get a man with a gun
With a gun! With a gun!
No you can’t get a man with a gun
If I went to battle with someone’s herd of cattle
You’d have steak when the job was done
But if I shot the herder
They’d holler bloody murder!
And you can’t get a hug from a mug with a slug
Oh, you can’t get a man with a gun
I’m cool, brave and darin’
To see a lion glaring when I’m out with my Remmington,
But a look from a mister
Will raise a fever blister
Oh, you can’t get a man with a gun
The gals with umbrellers
Are always out with fellers
In the rain or the blazing sun
But a man never trifles with gals who carry rifles
Oh, you can’t get a man with a gun
With a gun! With a gun!
No you can’t get a man with a gun
A Tom, Dick, or Harry
Will build a house for Carrie when the preacher has made ’em one
But he can’t build ya houses with buckshot in his trousers
And you can’t shoot a man in the tail like a quail,
Oh, you can’t get a man with a gun
A man’s love is mighty
He’ll even buy a nightie for a gal who he thinks is fun
But they don’t by pajamas for pistol-packin’ mamas!
Oh, a man may be hot, but he’s not
When he’s shot!
Oh you can’t get a man with a gun!
Wait Five Minutes
When I first looked out the window this morning, you couldn’t see a thing. Looking closely, you could see a tiny glow where the streetlights are, but nothing else. The fog had rolled in.
Five minutes later, you could see the shoreline.
Now, there is still a thick fog, but you can see through it.
I didn’t have any hope for a good sunrise this morning, but I was pleasantly surprised. I had a gleam of sunshine about 7:30:
Five minutes later:
And five minutes later:
And in my head, I hear the ineffable strains of Break Forth, Oh Beauteous Heavenly Light, which when I went to U-Tube, I found this wonderful version by the Florida Agricultural and Mining University, beautifully done with another appropriate hymn, Deo Gratias, or, as we say in Arabic, Thanks Be to God!
Insha’allah
One of the best things about moving between cultures as often as I have is that I get a chance to learn how much I don’t know. One of the things I have learned living in the Middle Eastern countries was how little I knew about my own religion. Knowing how little I knew sent me into a bible-study program that I look forward to resuming one day when I am living back in the US, or someplace that offers it – Bible Study Fellowship. They do an in-depth study of different books, or sections, of the bible, very serious, and you learn so much.
Apart from that, the church with which I affiliate, the Episcopal Church, has daily readings – I’ve mentioned this before – you can see them yourself by clicking on The Lectionary over in my Blogroll, and then going to the Daily Office Readings and clicking on the right week. Once there, you have to click on the day of the week, and it will take you to the readings for today.
One of the readings for today, the New Testament reading, made me smile:
James 4:13-17,5:7-11
13 Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.’
14 Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
15 Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.’
16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil.
17 Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin.
7 Be patient, therefore, beloved,* until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.
8 You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.*
9 Beloved,* do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be judged. See, the Judge is standing at the doors!
10 As an example of suffering and patience, beloved,* take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.
11 Indeed we call blessed those who showed endurance. You have heard of the endurance of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.
In the first section, verse 15 tells us that we should be like good Moslems, never saying we are going to do something without adding “if God wills it,” or (big grin) in Arabic, “Insha’allah.” How often we hear Westerners saying “None of this ‘Insha’allah!’ I want you to DO it, dammit!” I never looked twice at this verse until I had lived in the Middle East.
In the second part, there is a message just meant for me, maybe not for you, in verse 9. It tells me not to grumble against another person, of I will be judged by the same standard. Hmmmm, now there’s a scary thought!
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