Planes of Existance

Rachel had dreadlocks and did go to Africa, and afterward she cut them off and went to Ireland, and Stephanie posts eerie pictures of mutilated dolls and writes about becoming the person she always was and I think about that and about all of us - Kate, Billie, Stian, Christy, Walaa, osv and the list really goes on and on. With Facebook I see what everyone's up to, all the time, trace their progress somewhat subconsciously, a flicker here and a glimpse there and of course it isn't a perfect, even representation either, but anyway I have this feeling, that we're all evolving. Of course we are. But that's not the point. Sometimes I feel like we are - or were - a fanfiction - there's somehow a sense of inevitability but not the kind that there is in a storybook plot, where the heroes develop along an arch that you anticipate and is pure and regular and they become stronger and wiser and this despite occasional trials and crises. No, that's what I mean when I say it's more like fanfiction - like we're somehow predicted by our earlier selves in a way that's both consistant and surprising, all becoming who we always were.

What I can't work out is whether we were more original then or now - because we're becoming more real, living more in the real world, adapting our madness to reality. There's certainly less fuzzy chaos surrounding us and the simple hints at this and that are manifesting. I don't want to gossip or misinterpret, so I won't use specifics unless they are my own. I for example have traded in forums and all their drama and that certain haze of mysticism and those things that were somehow under the law, under or above reality... and now I want to travel the world, live and learn about other people, other languages... and of course that person was there all the time, under the haze, is now coming into focus. When I sent Elindomiel on her tour, which, if I remember correctly, never got farther than Edoras, that was me, I wanted to explore the real world but I was afraid to reach for it, it was too big and too scary and I remember that time I thought about going up North and I realized I didn't even have a proper concept of what the plane fare would cost and the whole thing disintegrated into something undefined and unreal.

It's a feeling that floats and is hard to describe. I just mean... like fanfiction, the worlds I see my old friends moving in now, from the window of Facebook and the odd email here or there, are of a different quality than being with them every day, slowly their characters are flattened out and I feel that one or the other - new them or old them - must be a parody, an extension of the other that hasn't been fully fleshed out or realized. But it's not the fault of our new technology, though that may add it's own tint or flavour to the experience, it can't be because I see it even in myself, without such a filter. It's just a bit of resistance, some inertia in my mind that resists this idea of development, of a fourth dimension, of a seperation between then and now and the possibility that they can be so different and yet still connected and equally real.