Windchimes

paper friends

Fall semester started today, first meetings of three out of five courses, including one German course and one French course. English courses both start tomorrow.

Just finished reading the German shortstory/assignment, very short. The narrator in this story claims to have a close relationship with a woman she's corresponded with for a long time. She finds herself, by chance or some circumstance, in the same city where her friend lives, but doesn't want to meet her. She says the woman will monopolize all her time, will demand her full attention. Despite all her attempts to avoid this, her friend happens to see her, takes her arm and pulls her along to a restaurant as she asks her where she's staying, tells her to bring her luggage from the hotel to her house, and exclaims that she'll set everything else aside while they have this chance to spend some time together. The narrator just keeps asking if there's a movie theater around there, and wonders if they couldn't just go see a movie. Seems like the narrator doesn't want any conversation not involving paper and ink (or keyboard and email server). The narrator ends up ducking out of the restaurant, running away from her "friend". So the close relationship turns out to be a fraud, really.

Two extremes, kinda, between the narrator and her enthusiastic friend. Seems to me the story teller wants the distance and control that a penpal kind of relationship affords, while her friend wants what I'd describe as a total friendship package, if a little on the possessive side. True, I can only take so much time with people who never stop talking to think, or who want to converse unless they're sleeping (which may be the only time they have to reflect on what they said or something someone else said that they actually heard. That's a whole different thing from when you haven't seen someone for a while and there's a lot to catch up on.

Still seems to me, though, that if I'm in the area where a friend lives, or anywhere close, I'd want to at least call and ask for at least little of their time, if they can possibly spare me any. It's one of my motivations to travel, meeting people in real life that I've only met online. I've been lucky enough to meet a few of them, too. It's always a little nerve-wracking, wondering if they'll expect something different due to what or how you've written, but mostly it's just exciting. It feels like a materialization of something that was only a cloud of loose molecules a la Star Trek before.

That story's gonna niggle at me for a good while, I reckon. I believe the title could be translated "A Hearty Meal," which makes the ending (where she ducks out of the restaurant and runs away from her paper friend become a 3D talkie) a real kicker. Is it a commentary on computer-addiction induced anti-social disorder? A commentary on the ease of being phony when a relationship is all created and maintained within the craft of writing? Kind of gives me a sick, sinking feeling.

Ping pong, back and forth.

All that aside, it was great to see familiar faces, hear familiar voices again. And to be sitting back on my favorite bench spot on the deck behind Cobb Hall.

J.H. Larrew
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