A Grave Yard Called Facebook

There is a lot rattling around in my head right now. I feel like a can of spray paint with the marble clanking against the sides as I'm shaken up and slowly the pressure is release. Except I'm not a solid color because life isn't that simple. Three events, this past weekend, have served to through me a little bit. I finished the book Ride With Me Mariah Montana, by Ivan Doig, i signed up for facebook, and my wife and i watched the movie Crazy Heart. Initially i had a hard time putting the three together, they seem relatively unrelated but the book compelled me to dive into facebook. We saw the movie because it was supposed to be very good, and it is very good, but it ties in as well.

Briefly, Ride With Me Mariah Montana, is an old ranchers life introspective as he travels around Montana with is daughter and her ex-husband who are chronicling the life of average Montanans in the build up to Montana's centennial to statehood (good book). Crazy Heart is a film about Bad Blake, a burnt out country singer whose life is heading toward ruin from alcoholism. He meets a young music writer after a concert in Santa Fe and she and he connect and he finds himself on a slow lonely road to redemption. Facebook is a graveyard from the past.

There is no surreal connection between the three, but it has seemed that one has informed the other over the course of the last few days. I could say that, to some degree, the book inspired me to delve into facebook but recently i have been wondering and thinking about a lot of friends that have evaporated from my life and are alive to me only in memory. But their faces are beginning to fade as i grow up, discover my life, go my way i realize they are too. There are people that i was very close to who are living rich, full, and successful lives. Stories wrapped up in tragedy and joy and by and large, it is my fault, i have missed it. Facebook has been a bit haunting, like walking through a graveyard of faces and friends i thought i would never see again.

I don't have the expectation of rekindling these long past friendships with a great degree of intimacy. I don't really think the platform for meaningful friendships rests on facebook. I can see that the people i am close to i will remain close to, acquaintances will remain so, and the ghosts from my past will see my children and i will see theirs. As much as anything i want to know that they are okay, to see their lives--even briefly through the snapshots of facebook, and allow them to see mine.