Backwards

 

I was looking at my blog, reading back into the past.  It’s a bit like archeology, the present is on the surface, the past is buried back there, underneath.  That part of it makes sense.  What doesn’t is that you come to the conclusion of the story before you get to the first chapter.  It’s backwards.

Having been reading books for a number of decades, I’ve gotten used to beginnings being at the beginning, where you start, the first page.  When I open this thing, I’m at the end, which has come to be as a result of that which went before. 

When I get a conversation emailed to me, it’s in this same bassackwards order.  So I have to become a detective, ignoring that which is on the surface, in the now, at least for the moment, going back to where this conversation started, finding the place where it stopped being a conversation and became a misunderstanding, which caused the wreckage dated today.

Considering conversations as symptomatic of the health of relationships, what cruises around on the surface can point to patterns and symptoms of what has been going on in the past.  But rarely do digital conversations reveal much of anything about the user of the machine, and when two or more users begin bouncing around, supposedly communicating about a specific subject, you’re involved in a bar fight. 

If you’ve never had such an experience, good.  But to make the metaphor stick, you get hit by friends and enemies alike, whether you give two hoots about the original cause of the fight or not; there’s no chance of making it to the door without getting assaulted just for being there, and there’s less chance of drinking the beer you paid for.

Which all goes to say, not much, except I can’t seem to get used to the way things work on these machines.  In other words, I’m backwards.  Took me long enough to get to that.  I should have put it at the beginning.  Oh, I did.  Maybe I am getting the hang of it.