Hi, My Name Is Daniel, and I’m a Packrat. I dunno, I suppose I do it for the same reason any packrat does- to remember… or at least in the desperate attempt not to forget. I guess I’ve always been one for sentimentality and nostalgia. These ticket stubs and scraps of otherwise useless paper have to me a certain special value. They remind me of times when I was happy and things I accomplished, saw, and did. And while it’s true, that if half my things got thrown out, I probably wouldn’t know; I can’t bring myself to toss these things into the trashcan just yet… not yet, not by my hand- I’m not ready to willingly forget yet.
I guess for similar reasons, my AIM buddy list always rides close to the allowable limit. Not cuz I’m cool or popular (HAH! Not by any stretch of imagination!); in fact, quite the opposite. I don’t have a lot of close friends or ppl I feel like I can really talk to. So by default, everyone’s sort of a friend. True, I don’t talk to 90% of my buddy list, yet I’d feel bad deleting anybody. It’d be like an outright admission that no, we’re not really close anymore; perhaps we were friends once, but now we’ve receded back into just acquaintancedom, probably never to cross my waking thoughts again.
And perhaps that IS the reality of things, but in my safety bubble that is the buddy list, that’s not the case. They say that when you physically die, you’re not truly “dead” until everyone who knew you is dead or has forgotten. In the same vein, maybe by some crazy logic, a friendship isn’t truly dead so long as the buddy list remembers? Maybe? It seems so arbitrary- a click of a mouse and a press of a button whisks away the last tiny strand by which a friendship hangs on. And you might say, “they’re just symbols and representations, not the actual thing.” But really, isn’t that all we’ve got? How do you quantify or substantiate these abstract concepts like friendship, and memory, and worth?
“525,600 minutes - how do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee.
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.
In 525,600 minutes - how do you measure a year in the life?”
~RENT – Seasons of Love
Hi, My Name Is Daniel, I’m a Pachyderm, and an Elephant Never Forgets.
I guess for similar reasons, my AIM buddy list always rides close to the allowable limit. Not cuz I’m cool or popular (HAH! Not by any stretch of imagination!); in fact, quite the opposite. I don’t have a lot of close friends or ppl I feel like I can really talk to. So by default, everyone’s sort of a friend. True, I don’t talk to 90% of my buddy list, yet I’d feel bad deleting anybody. It’d be like an outright admission that no, we’re not really close anymore; perhaps we were friends once, but now we’ve receded back into just acquaintancedom, probably never to cross my waking thoughts again.
And perhaps that IS the reality of things, but in my safety bubble that is the buddy list, that’s not the case. They say that when you physically die, you’re not truly “dead” until everyone who knew you is dead or has forgotten. In the same vein, maybe by some crazy logic, a friendship isn’t truly dead so long as the buddy list remembers? Maybe? It seems so arbitrary- a click of a mouse and a press of a button whisks away the last tiny strand by which a friendship hangs on. And you might say, “they’re just symbols and representations, not the actual thing.” But really, isn’t that all we’ve got? How do you quantify or substantiate these abstract concepts like friendship, and memory, and worth?
“525,600 minutes - how do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee.
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.
In 525,600 minutes - how do you measure a year in the life?”
~RENT – Seasons of Love
Hi, My Name Is Daniel, I’m a Pachyderm, and an Elephant Never Forgets.
posted by Dear Daniel at 4:08 PM
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