Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84 exptools; site whuts.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!mhuxn!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!whuxl!whuts!amc From: amc@whuts.UUCP (Andy Cohill) Newsgroups: net.singles Subject: The real thang... Message-ID: <372@whuts.UUCP> Date: Tue, 12-Nov-85 22:18:43 EST Article-I.D.: whuts.372 Posted: Tue Nov 12 22:18:43 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 14-Nov-85 07:39:36 EST Distribution: net Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 57 Some talk about love again appearing on the net. Some kind of cycle at work, circadian or otherwise, we keep swinging back in great long turns of the wheel, over and over, to the same old thangs...lot of resistance to the idea these days, like people have developed an allergy to it or something...used to be you saved yourself for love, and now it is something completely different (other side of the wheel??). People saying now that they are saving themselves for everybody. "...like, you know, I just can't imagine loving one person all my life, it will get old you know, and there are so many people I could love, one right after another, so why not spread it around?..." and so on. And on the the net here the fight rages on, "what is love?" and it always gets defined in terms of relationships, as if it can't exist by itself, somehow, can't just accept it you gotta have rules for figuring out when you are in love. Out there in the marsh, you know, love is. Just is, love. Big. Real big. 'Course, I haven't met too many sitters-in-the-marsh. Out there the land meets the sea, mile after mile of the black coagulant ooze held together with the sawgrass that grows and dies and falls back into the muck to be born again over and over, all the while the whole marsh is rising and sinking because it is *the edge* of the whole damn continent. That's love. You sit out there long enough, watch the sun set behind the loblolly pines way off on the edge of the marsh about a million times, and you start to understand that love is bigger than all of us put together, that it has nothing at all to do with rules and stupid phrases like "SO". You can't abbreviate the marsh. Down there in the muck, in the primordial ooze, just like it was ten million years ago, like it will be in ten million years. It is life coming back around on the wheel, over and over again, in spite of the hate and greed and selfishness in the world. The marsh don't care....the whole cycle is out there, birth, growth, death, re-birth, and perfectly so. All the essentials. We have forgotten how to listen, lost touch with love, the sound of night, the songs without a sound, the laser purity of a single thought that travels half way round the world to reach you out in the middle of the South China Sea...or in the middle of the marsh, out there in a rotten old john boat with waders on...nobody listens....we are inundated with the ghettoblaster volume of psycho-babble...I'm ok, you're ok. Sure. Let's be friends. Let's try to talk this out...I really care about you (but do you *love* me???) And of course, the all time bogus phrase (or phrases) anything really that has the word "*relate*" in it. No love though. "I'm not ready for that." Yea. You'll never be ready. And all the twits that mumbo-jumbo sci-fi to death with the stupid conventions, star trek this and sttar trek that, dungeons and dragons, and they don't know a single damn thing about the real future. It's not artificial *intelligence*, it's artificial *vision*. Bogus. If they are in love with anything, it's technology. Cream in your jeans over a Sun workstation. You know how long one of those thangs would last in the marsh? salt water eats 'em right up, and they sink into the muck. Love wins again. It's kinda like night vision, where you have to sorta squint sideways to see the real image. Extra work though, to squint, and nobody wants to do it. Easier to build that artificial vision machine, tippity-tap on the keys, and pretend it's the real thing. No risk. Durn thing gets outa hand, you just turn it off. Let's see you turn off the marsh... Andy Cohill