Generations

[avad]

B.'s grandmother passed away.
82, not bad.
He built a box, covered it in chicken wire and we tied yellow mums and sunflowers all over it as a tribute.
At the wake, I relished seeing all the old photos of his family...I am so mystified by the blurring of past and present. Still cannot see myself or him as the 'grown-ups' we supposedly are now.
The day layers itself over my memories of other wakes...of my own grandmother's and my grandfather's. I still feel like the child I was then. Watching the grown-ups...the grief...still not understanding the need to view the dead body. She's not there! She's gone!
This time I go up to the casket, but only to support B. I wished he didn't stay so long there....they did not do a good job with her presentation...and I would much prefer to remember her as I had seen her last.Not like this.
I walk with him through streets in Queens, the sounds and smells and sights all bringing back childhood and my own grandparents. Feels like it was yesterday.Pavement and shoes...summer breeze..traffic sounds..smell of diesel...it's all just as it was. But they are gone now. Have been for so long!
And we ride the wave of our own lives towards the inevitable.
Endless ocean.I am both alive and dead, I am living and remembering.

I am lost in a delicious memory of my life...and everything seems so real. It's as if I just wrote this.

Comments

Dogfood and Hairnets?

[gabrael.livejournal.com]

"I'm eighty-TWO!" . . . "I'm eighty-TWO!" . . .
(Damn, I hope that's not in poor taste.)

It's been over two years since my grandmother passed away, and I still don't think it has really hit home on more than a couple remote instances. I make stupid jokes to avoid the seriousness of death.

Anyhow, condolences.

Re: Dogfood and Hairnets?

[avad.livejournal.com]

Hehe:) thanks. I always wish I felt more 'prepared' with an unshakeable 'philosophy' about death...but it's all wonder still.

[hope-addict.livejournal.com]

Peace and love go out to you both. I'm sure you both have shoulders and ears that you can call upon, but it helps to know -just to KNOW, sometimes- that you've got that support.

Add one more.

Re:

[avad.livejournal.com]

Thanks, sweetie.*hugs*

[dandy-lion.livejournal.com]

i thought you would be interested in this:

explanation is [http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=sachmet&itemid=11756]

cut and pasted from there:
From all of these projects, I came up with an idea. Myself and my friend aerolith were talking, and we were discussing the feasibility of a project where one could input any two users and find out if there was a way to create a chain between them. I wrote the tool in Perl and unleashed it upon the world in the form of LiveJournal Connect.

What is a chain? A chain is comprised of links of friends. A link is made anytime someone on LiveJournal adds someone else to their Friends list. Therefore, a chain is any list of links which can used to connect one person to another through their friends. In theory, a message can be passed along this chain to get from the first user to the last.

Let's say I wanted to connect to user randomuser. That is, I wanted to see if there were any groups of friends that I knew, that knew someone else, that knew someone else, and so on, until we got to someone that knew her. And as it turns out, one possible way for that chain to happen is:
sachmet -> sweetcarol -> shann -> fourandtwenty -> voodoodollyiii -> randomuser (run this query)
That is to say, I have sweetcarol listed as a friend, who has shann listed as a friend, and so on, until we get to randomuser.

What does this accomplish? Nothing in particular. But it's an interesting toy when you start considering it in aggregate. Consider these statistics:
Hops 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Count 539 471 726 1509 1344 570 184 44 21 8

(These are all the successful searches, not all searches, and these are only the last 24 hours)

Notice something about the results? Most people take 4-6 connections to get to the target user. If I were to get the entire username database and do the stats on that, you'd notice that trend would continue. Generally, to get to a user more than 6 connections away, that user has very few friends, who in turn have very few friends, and so on.

Note also that this is just looking at LiveJournal friends. If I could somehow extract a list of everyone's friends, both in real life and online, and put it together, you'd be amazed at who you'd know through your friends! One of my old friends from high school is a pro wrestler. Another is a defensive player on the New England Patriots. The list goes on, but the point is that you know more people than you think you know.

So the idea is that if you meet someone new, and want to know if anyone else you know knows them, you can use this tool. If you find a random person that has the same interests as you, you can put your name and theirs into the tool, and theoretically, since everyone in the chain is a friend of you and that person, they'll have similar interests, too.

It's a toy. It has no practical value. It does very little. But what it does is makes us feel a little more connected with people. And it shows just how small of a world it can be.

[avad.livejournal.com]

Thank you for thinking of me sweetie!!
Yes I'm interested theoretically in all 'connection' tools.;) I have an entry I saved in my 'memories' (on user info page) that referred to that one you gave...I think it was titled 'degrees of separation' or some such.
It's so baffling and interesting to think of the different trails of connections through a large community like this one. So many different experiments and much research can be done using it as a microcosm of sorts. Interesting also to track the spread of 'memes' through the community, thoughts, links, pictures, icons that seem to spread in the way a virus does...and why.

[dandy-lion.livejournal.com]

and in response to your post, YES.i feel the same way. exactly.
one of my favoirte analogyes is that life isnt a continous light like most people think of it as, its like a fire fly flickering on and off and moving the whole time (Seth Speaks -Jane Roberts)

oh oops i just noticed that the coding came out wrong for the ljconnect thing, here i'll repost it.

hope it works this time.

[blackwhitegloss.livejournal.com]

Could I some of this?

[sibyllam.livejournal.com]

Hey avad! I was struck by a couple lines at the end of this. Could I possibly use all/part of them in a story?

"Endless ocean.I am both alive and dead, I am living and remembering.

I am lost in a delicious memory of my life...and everything seems so real. It's as if I just wrote this."

Re: Could I some of this?

[avad.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. I'm flattered. :)