Destiny
It seems the destiny of this generation lies somewhere between the "Wired" and the Real. As much as I want to avoid it, I spend most of the day online in some way. I'm "always-on" at work and "always-on" at home. I'm an instant message away from family, friends, and coworkers. This weblog "steals the soul" more than any camera image. I have a 'paper-trail' stretching back to 1995 that anyone can follow through a simple Goodle or MSN search. Part of me has been embedded in the web since early adolescence. It has grown something of who I am. That's not to say I can't function without it, I feel fabulous on a mountain-top, miles away from civilization, but I still get some shiver of satisfaction at jacking back in once I'm home and picking up where I left off. The Net makes the world very, eerily small sometimes. You are only a few clicks away from me. Like the Oracle of Arnie and the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, we are all interconnected. More than ever before in history, we are circles within circles. We are the thin red thread between soulmates and life partners, friends and stalkers, identification numbers and fingerprints. We ARE the web. [[I'm looking forward to watching Serial Experiements Lain in Cyberpunk...]]

I write this because I am convinced that destiny doesn't give up on you. Fate can be CHANGED but it remains true. I think we have a certain hold on our own lives but, to a certain degree, we can never escape the web that we have made ourself part of. Things will come to pass if they are meant to come to pass, we have to act on instinct but, moreover, be patient and instinct will act through us.

Do you still believe your life is an epic? Even after it's thrown you? I don't think it matters if YOU do, your life still believes you are epic. Even if our generation does nothing of merit, I feel somehow that there is something epic in store for us all.


It's strange, the places our Web takes us. I'm not sure what this means for me yet, but I feel that it's important in some very odd and intrinsic sense. A few days ago, I was IMed by someone who had either followed a paper trail or who had found me though someone through someone else's weblog. Now, I will credit this person with posessing the same strange effects of Escaflowne-ish Destiny that I seem to hold, or being a very talented stalker. (No Offense ;) Seven years ago, when I first signed onto the internet on my family's Mac II SI, I was interested in two things, the Lion King and Sailor Moon. Eventually, through some weird twist of fate, Sailor Moon led me to chat at a Web-IRC refresh chat called Japan Window. Pretty soon, I was one of the regulars. And I think I was well spoken for a twelve-year old. Much to my parent's chagrin, I think I obtained the reputation for being one of the "original" JW crowd after chatting on there for maybe a year and a half. I met a lot of people, some more memorable than others. I think I'll credit Ryo-oh-ki, Tuxedo Kitty, and (for some reason?) Storm Kicker. I had a huge crush on this guy named Eddie, and we even talked on the phone a few times. Another buddy, Frank, adopted me as a little-sister and was so kind as to send me some sailor moon posters and the infamous sailor-moon pens. (heh heh) Eventually, I moved on to better chats and bigger online relationships but poked my head into JW every now-and-then. After a while, I was only a Palace chatter, and then really an ICQ junkie.

So the other day, I downloaded AIM to chat with Cat... that same day, Frank IMed me through the paper trail. Not only had it been.... err... about six years since I've talked to my bro, but he really threw me for a loop last night with just about one of the biggest "Red thread" kickers I've ever heard. (watch Lum Urusai Yatsura for the "red thread" story) It turns out that Frank-san knows, by web association, a girl in my Tokyo Cyberpunk class. Not any girl, but Sam, who was comically introduced as the person who corrupted so many people into anime by association on the first day of class. Now, if you know Sam, you know why this is ironic because of further inter-personal connections relating someone she knows and someone I know that I'm not "supposed to talk about online" for various reasons. Okay, I'm being vague but, in essence, it proves to me that we really are all connected. I guess I never really imagined that it could be any other way, but it still gives me some hope for the future, and love for the past. I want to thank all of the players in my story. I love you all so dearly, even if I don't know you well or at all. I hope my effect on you can be as profound and as enlightening as your effects on me.