And yet, not so much anymore. Or maybe it wasn’t, but I thought it was.

I always had the concept in my head that there was no such thing as the secret internet, even though I had an AOL account and posted a few random things to the permanent not-secret internet. But it’s more not-secret than ever. Everyone has a blog, or a myspace, or a podcast. 90,000 podcasters, I believe, I heard on the radio the other day. It’s a gold rush and the laundresses and grocers are making the big bucks. It’s “news” every few months that you shouldn’t post your personal details on the internet.

But as the internet has become more pervasive, has it become the only thing that is? Will I need to explain to my kids how to read a card catalog card? I barely remember, and not for lack of learning over the past few years. I wonder if I used to want to write to leave an imprint. So that after I was gone, and even while I was around, I proved to be real. To exist. To be other than in my own mind, my own reality, outside of my small universe of friends and family.

I’ve got a friend that belongs to a civil war recreational group. They talked about being as close as possible to how things were done back then, including how to create a saddle blanket out of spanish moss. In all the years they’ve done this without the Internet, they’ve not found out how to do it. No one wrote it down, and that knowledge may be lost. All they have are oblique references to the blanket - but no idea how to make it. It’s gone.

Just like the old life from when we moved from WTP (West of the Plains) Texas. Winns is gone. Gibsons is gone. The old family businesses are gone. As if they never existed, never were landmarks in our lives (mom bought me my first set of Tennis balls at Gibsons so I could play Wall-Ball at school, Winns sold our school blouses). The only mention of one of the several family businesses I find is in a poem, of all things - written back when I was in grade school. There once was a mention of Gibsons on the ‘net, but no more. Winns is merely listed in bankruptcy documents and superfund lists.

There’s a joke of a children’s song the hub and I kick around every once in a while. He learned it at school, or from his folks, or both. Like a number of silly children’s songs, it goes on about the absurdity of some of the reality that is life. I did a number of searches on it, and found nothing. All I remember is:

Sy and I went out to the circus
(something something something something)

I’ll get even with the gosh darn circus
I’ll buy two tickets and I won’t go in!

And when all of us die or our memories fade away - it will be as if this song never existed? Perhaps. Maybe I need to find someone left who does remember all of the lyrics and chisel it into an old rock in several languages, then bury it deep. A rosetta stone for the ‘naughts: How we laugh (and laugh we must) at ourselves at how seriously we can take ourselves, with a thousand boring blogs blinking in the night. Or just search more carefully [Page 493].

I could also add it to Wikipedia and it will stay around as long as the servers keep churning. How else will the next generation know there are five English verses to Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star?

Even better, a recent link I found: http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/ Makes me kind of wish it were worth it to spend a few weeks or months in WTP Texas gathering up some of those stories. For overall, it would be, though for me … a bit tough to go dust off relationships I’ve not relationed with in so long.