Digi Digi Digi

Greetings internet community! It is kind of a farce to call me and my lonely ramblings a community, but maybe one day I will pass word along and be able to say it with a straight face.
In the past year I feel like I have been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the digital age. I joined facebook, for example, after a through shaming from my friends. Just yesterday I joined 'flicker' in the hopes that one day some images might grace this mess. It is a strange thing to accept - the revolution of out modes of communication and documentation.

Part of my hesitation was that analog felt eternal while digital, ephemeral. I should clarify that I am a hoarder of historic proportions. If my age were to be determined by volume of stuff I would definitely be 17. The fact that my stuff has not increased exponentially with age is only due to the fact that my husband brandishes a firm trash can. But I can go into my basement, unearth a box, search inside for a bag containing a book that harbors a note on which one can gleam incite in a way no memory alone would allow. Can you say that?

My recent acceptance (some might say embrace?!) of these flicking bits of light, of the interplay of ones and zeros, is due mainly to the feeling that light might linger. I realized that I have been sending some files and photos on a journey of circular email in the hopes of ensuring their longevity. Sent and received to reside in, not one but two, of my email boxes for eternity. Or until Google goes the way of the banks. I know many fear the locktrap part of the internet's personality, but I love it. Somewhere, someone with a diligent sensibility and modest search engine will be able to find fossilized files of yesteryear. And while they will not smell like basement they will be vestiges of different lives that were lived, that could have been lived, that faded. They will remind us of who we were.