Sunday 31 October 1999

Pic of the day: Fall colors cover a nearby rock cliff.

It rained off and on all day long, sometimes both at the same time. I snuck out with my umbrella and took a walk, not too long. Perhaps too short. Apart from that I've stayed indoors. The autumn is really coming on, and the ground is covered with leaves many places.

At 7:45, I woke up from dreams. And in my dream, there was the shallowest of ponds, little more than wet leaves on the ground. And I drew a line in the soil from the end of the small, shallow pond, a thin line that could fill with water; and the water would start to trickle along the small furrow, for the end of it was lower than the start. And people came by, and among them my administrative office leader from work, and looked at me with surprise and (I thought) disdain. But the water did run more freely, now that it was first moving, though still only the tiniest of trickles. And I went after the others. And a way further down the hillside, we crossed a small stream, small enough to step over. And we went further and we came down to the lake. And the lake was growing, and was starting to overflow, and all wondered why would this happen now?

This may be nothing more than what has already happened in the past. The people who have held the administrative boss job have for some reason all been elderly males, and a bit disdainful of my craze for new technology. The first of them, may his soul be at peace at last, forbade me to use a programmable calculator. We had mechanical (and quite loud) calculators and printed tables at that time. Later I brought my private PC to work, again to the irritation of said boss (who later went for all purposes insane, and would come back to yell at us during his retirement until he was finally dying from cancer). But the top boss at our place was quite interested in the PCs. Later our office, and several others around the country, got PCs for that department in which I worked by then. Later there came more PCs for other purposes. Then there came terminals on every desk. Lately there came networked PCs on every desk. Now people are virtually immersed in the technology.

Another thing that started as the merest trickle was this whole online journal thing. When I started my JPG Diary, I thought I was the only one in the world. Others, elsewhere, also thought that they were the only ones. After a while I found that there was a sort of community of online journals. We are still relatively few, perhaps a couple thousand. But that's more than anyone could manage to read up on every day anyway, so I'm not complaining.

I also doubt the entertainment value of online journals. Some are deemed to be highly entertaining, such as Pamie's Squishy. But this reputation is, as far as I know, mainly among fellow journallers. And let us face it: Online journals are demanding. Not like a webcam, such as the immensely popular JenniCam, where you can basically just sit down and watch Jenni type or talk on the phone or sleep and hope to see something interesting. (In all honesty, Jenni has taken up a bit of journal writing too lately.) Journals are text, and reading is not as natural as looking. Reading is an intellectual process, not an instinct. It demands more from the reader. Some people do not find reading very pleasant, and prefer films or television, radio or recorded music.

But I do think that the habit of sharing our lives will spread. Slowly, certainly. And through this, new bonds of friendship will be tied across borders of nationality, religion, culture and color. A common understanding that while we are all unique, we are all human. Or at least humanoid. :)