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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