Uh-oh, I feel as if I am coming down with a little cold. Took a lot of airborne and hoping it doesn’t progress. This week in LA has been pretty good professionally, as I made a few contacts and secured a little work. I also got caught up with a few friends and generally had a swell time, low key though it was. I am now in Marina del Rey to visit my old friend Jose, and will spend the night here before going to the airport tomorrow to head up to SF.
In the internet era, we are defining all kinds of new relationships with other people. These relationships are filtered through the online communities we subscribe to, and these color the kinds of connections we have. Whether through a dating site, a Twitter subscription, following a newsgroup, or immersing oneself and exposing one’s life on a site like Facebook, these are fundamentally new ways of connecting with people and the rules and etiquette are still being worked out.
One has all kinds of friends on Facebook, and people will use the site differently depending on who they are. Some people will say yes to any friend request (often resulting in ridiculously long lists of “friends” in the thousands), some will keep their profile private to all but a few close and trusted friends that they know well in the “real” world. Most of us are somewhere in between, having a wider circle of friends (acquaintances, really) on our lists than those that we see all the time.
Some of these are people who you start to get a sense of from the way they interact with your profile. It is interesting how you get to know people, get a better sense of them over time in the virtual world, when for whatever reasons you didn’t have the time or opportunity in the real one.
I have a couple of examples to share. The first is Judith, a woman I know in the real world and used to work with at the LA Weekly. Well, work “with” wasn’t exactly true. I was in IT and she was in Editorial and our paths would cross from time to time for work reasons, but we rarely had any meaningful contact. I always thought she was nice, but never really had a clear sense of who she was. This is normal, you can’t know everyone in an office of hundreds. We became friends on Facebook the same way so many people do; we had friends in common and shared email addresses in our address books. Over time, watching and responding to her postings and seeing her respond to mine, I have gotten a much better sense of who she is and what she believes, as I am sure she has of me and my beliefs. Although I don’t have day to day contact with her or know much about her quotidian habits, I know that I have found a rather like-minded person in many ways, and I appreciate her comments and discourse.
In a similar way, there is a guy named Aman who I friended only for the most vague of business contact reasons, suggested to me by mutual friends in India. We don’t have much direct contact at all, but politically, I notice we are somewhat similar and sometimes exchange comments and “likes” on our various postings. Over time, even never having met the guy and him being from a very different background from me, I feel a small kinship and trust. And this trust is built entirely in the online world.
These are new kinds of friendships, only made possible by our interconnectedness online. In a sense you could say that the internet has lowered our barriers to entry in the publishing world, and that many many more people can have a voice now (not just the owners of presses and TV stations), but that is only half the story. The internet has given us a way to talk back, directly, to these publishers and talkers. And we are all much more likely to be part of the conversation instead of passive watchers basking in the glow of our sets.
And so I bid a wistful farewell to SF (after an amazing meal at a place called Laiola last night), and return to my new hometown of New York. San Francisco will always be one of those places to me that feels so comfortable and a lot like home, as much for my long history and friends here as anything else. It always seems right there where I left off, frozen in time somehow even as time does march on.
I was lucky to meet such an amazing group of people here in SP, who showed me their city and their hospitality. I may just have to come back to Brazil for carnival…
I am heading off later this afternoon to the wonder that is Salvador da Bahia. Like a number of cities I have been to, Sao Paulo opens itself up the most fully only when shared by the locals. At first glance, it is not a city that holds much appeal, and perhaps that is why the pages in my guidebook for Sao Paulo, a huge city of millions, are so shockingly thin. But when one is lucky enough to meet people and explore with them the city they love, the story is completely different. Thanks to Walter, Gustavo, Adilson, Elson, Eduardo, Carol (and Dan and Thomas, who started the ball rolling for me here) I have been treated to a city that leaves me wanting to know more, and one I imagine very easily returning to and spending more time in.
I feel another chart coming on. I arrived in Sao Paulo yesterday, welcomed by Walter, one of Dan’s (my Brazilian friend from Mexico) many nice friends. And it turned out that yesterday before leaving my hotel in Montevideo, I met a guy at the breakfast table who was from Peru and knows both of them. Later on, Walter realized that he knows my friend Thomas from Buenos Aires who I know through Javier (another friend from Mexico). And of course, being from Peru, Walter knows the entire gang I met while there, including Juan Carlos who I was with a few days ago. Whew. The world really is a tiny place (or my social slice of it quite rarefied. Or both.)
In any event, Walter took me out last night to have dinner and drinks with two friends of his, Gustavo and Anderson. I can’t get over how friendly and easy going the people seem here, including strangers. Usually in a lot of places like a bar, people seem to keep to their cliques a bit, but last night everyone was talking to everyone. There is a really nice energy here, I can tell already I am going to like it.
Now if I could just understand a little Portuguese…
The last few days have been low key and lovely. Just hanging out, meeting up with old friends, making some new ones. San Francisco this time around seems like its old welcoming self. The last time I was here I felt slightly disconnected from the city and its people, but this time I could imagine coming back here to live. There is something nice in the air, something new and old at the same time. Because of the brouhaha over our new marriage rights, I am also keenly aware this time of how many of the gay couples I know that have been together a long time are getting married. People seem settled into mostly comfortable patterns of love and support for each other, something really sweet to see.
Ten minutes ago the FedEx guy knocks on my door with the replacement bankcard that WaMu told me this morning was misprocessed and never went out. Not being one to hold a grudge and happy to have the card, I tried to activate it, but alas, they canceled it this morning in favor of the new one that will be here “in two days” (right). When I called them they said, “sorry”, but offered no other help. Ugh.
On the other hand, this has really shown me how sweet my freinds can be. George gave me a little money last week to tide me over, and Rocco did the same today. In addition, Gerardo offered to loan me as well. These guys give me the warm fuzzies. Thanks!
My buddy Mo (Maureen) has come for a quick visit before she starts her new job in LA on Monday. After a great dinner last night in Condesa with Julio and Mauricio, we are heading out to discover the neighborhoods of Coyoacon and San Angel.
By funny coincidence two of the amazing people I met in the past year (Jaume from Mumbai and Jeff from KL) are both going to be in LA in the next few days. It will be interesting to see them here in another place and time. Will they be different, or will I? Will the fact of being back in this (my?) culture and surroundings make our interactions different? The answers to these questions are always both yes and no. Why do I even bother to pose them? I guess because I find fascination in our changing natures through time and place.
I have realized a few things since coming back to the US that involve the “stickiness” of what I have learned over the past year. Some lessons, once learned, will stay with you for all time. But others need tending to like a plant, or they will wither. A way of being and a presence is a precious and somewhat fragile thing if not looked after. It needs constant practice to keep it real.
