Monday, December 16, 2002

my imaginary friends I don’t

my imaginary friends

I don’t know if everybody went through a phase when their best friend wasn’t real, but I think I did.  I remember hours spent alone, deep in conversation; I remember inconveniences suffered on behalf of someone I’d invented.  Maybe it was a reaction to something, a delusion I created to sublimate some lonely maladjusted pang.  I don’t suppose its so uncommon. 

Like most kids, I grew out of my imaginary friends.  I stopped seeing monsters in the closet and playing with bugs, too.  I became a cynical little person, and I amplified my alientation by trying to make me some real friends.  Even though my real friends were sometimes less convenient and amenable than my imaginary ones had been, eventually the were the only ones whose opinions mattered to me.  I’d weaned myself from fantasy to reality.  And I thought that was progress. 

About a year ago a real person I know well invited me to a concert with a person I didn’t know, but with whom I became friends.  When she shortly thereafter had a party prior to moving away to the east coast, I met other actual human friends of hers, who also became friends of mine.  We started meeting regularly, and also corresponding through our blogs.  This was a means of communication previously unknown to me, but is a rich and gratifying medium to which I have taken enthusiastically.  In doing so I started making new friends through their blogs, friends who lived far away: LA, Seattle, Virginia, Boston, St. Johns, New York… they all seem like such interesting, articulate, stimulating people. But I’ve never seen their faces, felt their handclasp, heard their voices.  They were my new imaginary friends.

Then one of them - he’s “how weird” on my sidebar - announced on his blog that he had just recorded a commentary for my local public radio station.  He lived in town but I’d never met him - just read his site, exchanged comments with him.  When he hit the air I listened from an airport waiting room on a tired old headset.  His words were familiar to me - I’d read the article on line - but his voice was intriguingly new.  I sat in the plastic seat surrounded by scurrying strangers and heard the voice of a friend I’d never really met, talking as if to me, thoughtfully, earnestly.  I still have no idea what this guy looks like, how he carries himself, the way ideas or emotions chase across his face—but now he has a voice, a cadence and a timbre.  There is more to him - objectively - than just a website.  My imaginary friend is turning real.  Now this is progress.