Mara Chibnik writes: Sometimes that's all it
takes to make the connection.
. . .
I can't even do a meaningful partial ordering on the basis of how
much time I've spent actually conversing with some of the people
I've met, and there's no correlation that I can tell between the
amount of correspondence I have with someone and the way the
conversation flows in person.
There are even a couple of people I've never reached in email, and
probably never followed up to on motss, who are nonetheless very
much part of my sense of who's here, and whose absence I would
feel in some "disproportionate" degree.
Interaction with others, whether electronic, in person, or a combination and the way it affects us, is difficult to fathom. There are people I see every day with whom I feel less connected than with people I've only interacted with electronically. I never met Rob. I never posted in response to any of his postings, nor sent him email. Yet, I've read *.motss on and off over the years (whenever I can find the time to wade through it) and Rob was always a presence for me. And his death affected me deeply. And I feel his absence in soc.motss.
I've wondered about the way we touch and are touched by each other, and how it doesn't really correlate with the amount of or kind of interaction since last year when a good friend (a woman in her early thirties) died suddenly of a heart attack. After Carol moved to New York, I used to see her once or twice a year at her sister's parties up in the Boston area. But her death has affected me more profoundly than the death of any other friend or relative (fortunately my nearest and dearest are all still here). Not surprising, perhaps, because at one time we were very close. What surprised me is that Kathy (my SO), who met Carol only twice (at some of the afore-mentioned parties), was affected almost as much as I was. I guess that during those encounters Carol revealed something of herself that Kathy responded to very deeply.
So even when we consider only face to face encounters it's
difficult to understand what it takes to connect with someone.
Electronic encounters just add to the complexity.
