Sarah

She siphons smoke from her cigarette, hand draped like an old spider web over bare knees (summer time means the coat is hidden, like the long johns). She tells me about brawn, a jewel in her crown that turns relations into delicate barriers against war, a threadbare string keeping a pit-bull from its dinner. That’s why it all ends badly, she explains between drags. But I’ve seen her cream-thin hand kneading knots from brows and tired shoulders in her guest bed even been recipient to her chilled hand gathering the blankets affectionately to my chin. She deposits straws in juice cups, drips cheese over nachos,composes meals, assembles late night snacks. Hands dancing to supply. That’s why cigarette intervals puncture post-sunset giving. A time for her gossamer fingers to lay catnapping over the pacifying edge of a cigarette. I sit with her. Sometimes even taking a little smoke offered like her blanket tuckings. But I listen too. She is brawn, but the type that links–strong glue for misapprehension.

Internet Friends

Well, this weekend I’m driving about 6 hours away to a different Northwest city to meet a good friend whom I’ve never seen in person–unless you count via our mutual friend’s webcam. Ah the age of the internet!

I started out hating the internet. As a late teenager, early twenty-something, I was pretty much a hippy. Plus, all I saw of the internet were dorm-mates wasting their time chatting in AOL chat rooms, while I was out meeting new people and experiencing the world of Berkeley. I did use email but very sporadically and I’d wax poetical about the evils of using the internet to have a social life. Now of course, I have two very good friends, both of whom I met on the internet.

So what happened? Well, I firmly believe in synchronicity, call it God, call it the Force, Fate, whatever. But somehow we all meet the people we need to meet no matter what and who knows, the internet may very well be that medium. Now, to my defense, I didn’t meet them in chat rooms. I met one, “Lionel” on World of Warcraft–neither of us play it anymore. I met the other “Carrie” on a poetry critiquing forum. Somehow, we all became fast friends.

Interestingly enough, my boyfriend at the time really befriended “Lionel” because he was younger and going through some tough times. “Lionel” even came to visit us. Then, after our poetry brought us together, “Carrie” was interested in meeting my other internet friend who lived in the same city she did. I introduced them via instant messaging and let’s just say the rest is history. Now when I visit them they have been sharing an apartment for the past year. It is really amazing though to be witnessing “Lionel” grow up via the internet.