I've been without an internet connection (except for brief 10-minute periods) for a week. I'm surprised to find that I do not miss surfing the web all that much. I have had certain sites I checked every day--the news, cat of the day, two comic strips, stuff like that--and by the end of the week I couldn't particularly say that I cared one way or the other if I ever saw them again.

But the same cannot be said of my connections with people through the web. To me, you are as real and as much friends as someone with whom I'd write letters or talk to over the phone or meet at Starbucks for a cup of coffee. This could only be real to someone like me--and I think I'm like you in this--who has loved people through their written words as much as through their spoken ones. Remember how I said in this blog that I had come to love Kim's Lama? To me he is real and lives through Kipling's words.

Now I'm not talking crazy stuff here. I know that he is just a construct of Kipling's pen and imagination. But he partakes of the creation of our common imaginations and loves, and in that sense he is real. Carl Jung would know what I'm talking about, the common mythology, the stories and dreams, that all mankind taps into and that connects us all.

Aside from that, I know you are real people, with families, jobs, hopes, fears, every day tasks and ultimate goals, just like me. Through our words we make a connection and I value that connection greatly. When it was broken for a week I was truly astonished at how much you have come to mean to me; with the web access renewed, our connection is restored, for which I am grateful.