Friendship through the looking glass

I sometimes get sidelong glances from people when I mention that I keep an online journal. Those glances turn to incredulous stares when I add that I regularly follow a couple of dozen journals/blogs belonging to complete strangers.

In my mind, this all seems quite normal.

But for people not caught up in this ‘wonderland’ of blogs, it must seem a little creepy.

For instance, the benevolent contempt in which I’ve always held people with an over-active interest in Dungeons & Dragons or Star Trek memorabilia is now precisely how many of my non-blogger friends view me.

Pay attention Alanis… that’s irony!

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not some housebound agoraphobe (to borrow one of my favorite Imus phrases) who is incapable of real intimacy. Zahava and I have several overlapping circles of friends with whom we regularly socialize. But there is something liberating about cautiously cultivating and maintaining the acquaintance of people through the ‘wonderland looking glass’ called the Internet.

I have never met most of the bloggers/journalers I read each day (and likely never will). They live around the world, and my ‘relationship’ with them covers the entire gambit from them not being aware that I even read them… to cordial, almost intimate ongoing comments on each other’s sites. Some I would like as best friends… others I find instructive, but we share few values in common.

The same can be said about those who read treppenwitz. There are literally hundreds of people from near and far who stop by almost every day to read (I honestly can’t fathom why…). Most do so without ever saying hello… and others have become welcome participants in my journaling experience… dare I say even friends?!

Thanks to the recent Anglo-Israeli Blogmeet, I was able to make the acquaintance of some of the ‘local’ online personalities. That meeting scratched an important ‘itch’ that many people in this odd world feel from time-to-time.

On our vacation to the states I met up with another journaler I read. She and I went to high school together but had never met. Again one evening together added a special new layer to the fondness I already had for her, and the intimacy I felt with her ‘story’.

But are these people really my friends? Can one make that leap? Is it even healthy to try?

Like nearly everything under the sun… there is no single right answer to that question.

People have found love on the Internet… so by my way of thinking it should come as no surprise that occasionally, a real friendship can take shape.

This past weekend, a journaler who I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a couple of times, came to us for Shabbat. I was a little worried since this was the first time we’d actually had someone from the ‘online world’ spend an extended period of time in our home. We wondered if the charming, well-spoken façade would crumble after a few brief minutes… only to be replaced by 25+ hours of raving lunatic?

It turned out that Noa is as bright and animated as she seems in her journal, and she knows about a gazillion of the same people that we do, both here and in the U.S. We read many of the same blogs/journals (no big surprise there), and we even share a love of dogs (she brought her little Sharona to play with Jordan).

I was especially pleased to see that Noa and Zahava talked effortlessly for hours about countless topics that at turns fascinated me and made me want to run screaming from the room. I probably shouldn’t be surprised that they clicked, though. After all, I’ve seen Zahava emerge from public restrooms with new friends in tow… a concept so alien to men that after 13 years of marriage I still can’t completely come to terms with the idea!

So, despite the admitted oddness of the whole blogger world… I am happy to report that it is possible to create friendships ‘through the looking glass’, and happier still to find that it is possible to translate those friendships into the flesh & blood variety without too much weirdness.

That’s a good thing (as ‘Martha’ was fond of saying), because there are still a few other people out there in ‘wonderland’ that I would love to get to know.