All Our Absolute Divinity
By now basically anyone still bothering to read this was either around during Setaseeker or has read what I had to say about it multiple times. But if something's worth writing about ten times, it's probably worth writing about eleven, and if you're writing about something ten times, it's probably of importance.
Why and to whom are two legitimate questions.
Sometimes I type stupid words or people's names (or more accurately, their nomme de plumes) into a search engine to see what kind of random crap comes up. Yeah, I get pretty bored sometimes. Shut up. In the history of the internet, it honestly never really occurred to me to search for myself (insert cheap pun here) on the net. So I ran a search on one of my previous pseudonyms.
Not surprisingly, there were very few results. One of them was a March 1, 2002 journal entry made by Comrade SyKNiS. Part of it reads as follows:
"Things were pretty turbulent around the site. It was the five of us (Red, Seta, Gain, Neon, and myself), and we all quit the site at least once, with the exception of Red. Here's a rundown of how turbulent each of us five were:
I was the first to quit the site at any point in its existence. In turn, Gain followed after agreeing with something I wrote in the journal about attention seeking. I would return a little after, and Gain unofficially came back (we just kinda slapped his link back up on the website).
Seta quit because of his misintrepretation of something I wrote. After some pleading and apologizing from me in the forum, he promptly came back with a renewed passion for journal writing.
I quit because I didn't like the direction of my journal writing and the fact that I was no longer writing for myself.
The Great Forum War. Gain accuses the site that we are a bunch of attention seekers and quits. Seta quits for no apparent reason, but probably was influenced by Gain's decision. In the end, I rejoined.
Neon and I take turns quitting and joining.
Red quits, I quit because Red quit, and Neon followed."
Skip down a couple paragraphs and...
"And when all of this was over, the first five Setalites (*giggle*) disappeared from Setaseeker, leaving a bunch of Ontarians running the site.
And Chaos of course. Good old Chaos.
I get the feeling that everyone who quit have put the site to rest and moved on. For some reason, I still hold a strange attachment to the Setaseeker of old. Perhaps it was the prospects of building something great, the collaboration of ideas and thoughts, the chance to create something unlike anything before. Whatever it was, I still miss it sorely. As much as I say that Setaseeker is shotty and doesn't deserve to exist any longer, I still want to see it work and grow into something else."
And again...
"The site lost direction. The site was intended to be not something flashy to the eye and appealing to the majority, but something that appealed to ourselves. It's not about expansion, it's not about free recruiting, it's not about page hits. It was for us, and only us."
As always, well spoken by Comrade SyK.
I doubt anyone from the defunct site spends five minutes any given fortnight thinking about it, let alone considering trying, the gods forbid, a third stab at it. I can't help it though. Another entry talked about how it was essentially trimmed to a page of links with neither members section nor forum...no frills, just a set of links.
Chances are if you're reading this now, you either went through a page of links or bookmarked it after going through a page of links.
Now, though, there's no collaboration on anything. There really are no frills. There's a guestbook that nobody signs, and 90% of the people linked on that page don't really write but once every couple weeks or less.
It might sound conceited, but I can say with all honesty that out of the multitude of "Veterans," "outsiders," "recruits," and...well..."idiots," I'm the only one who's really kept up with any regularity.
Actually, that's not true. Some of us update regularly on a schedule of once every four or five months. Some even less.
But I think that if asked, we'd all still say we loved the idea, and that if it seemed like it could work and we felt like it could work, then we'd try to make it work. But I know, not think, that even if that were the case it would only be the case for all of three months.
I've made my arguments for writing before and won't go into them again. You probably know them well enough. Writing is a gift, a privilege, an escape, a manifest, and so on down the line. If my great great grandparents had kept journals, though, I know I would've read every last word over and over, no matter what it was about. Knowing where you come from is nothing compared to knowing from whom you come. The biggest photo album in the world won't compare to this insignificant, worthless novel I'm leaving behind for any kindred I might have.
You see, of course, it's only worthless to everyone who's not them. But really, who else matters to you when you're dead? Unless you're some influential world leader, no one but your family dynasty will benefit from you anyway.
That's not true at all, but it's more dramatic sounding.
I wish that I knew how to make graphics with any mote of skill, for I'd construct yet another small web-empire that would only go to waste. But it would be there, for a time, and for that time that it lasted it would be all ours. Our lives will end, too, but for the time that they go on, they are all ours. We have no excuses for neglecting our souls.
For neglecting our writing.
But if I cannot make beautiful things from reds and blues and yellows, and if I cannot make beautiful things from my hands and tools and instinct, then I have no choice but to make beautiful things from black and white and all the blessings of a tired God.
There will be no resurrection, for a thing that died once can easily die again. There will be no version anything point anything. Something that can be improved might easily fall into lesser states. There can be only purity and absolute divinity, total and complete immortality.
If I have to, I will create it alone.
My God, I've gone insane.
Why and to whom are two legitimate questions.
Sometimes I type stupid words or people's names (or more accurately, their nomme de plumes) into a search engine to see what kind of random crap comes up. Yeah, I get pretty bored sometimes. Shut up. In the history of the internet, it honestly never really occurred to me to search for myself (insert cheap pun here) on the net. So I ran a search on one of my previous pseudonyms.
Not surprisingly, there were very few results. One of them was a March 1, 2002 journal entry made by Comrade SyKNiS. Part of it reads as follows:
"Things were pretty turbulent around the site. It was the five of us (Red, Seta, Gain, Neon, and myself), and we all quit the site at least once, with the exception of Red. Here's a rundown of how turbulent each of us five were:
I was the first to quit the site at any point in its existence. In turn, Gain followed after agreeing with something I wrote in the journal about attention seeking. I would return a little after, and Gain unofficially came back (we just kinda slapped his link back up on the website).
Seta quit because of his misintrepretation of something I wrote. After some pleading and apologizing from me in the forum, he promptly came back with a renewed passion for journal writing.
I quit because I didn't like the direction of my journal writing and the fact that I was no longer writing for myself.
The Great Forum War. Gain accuses the site that we are a bunch of attention seekers and quits. Seta quits for no apparent reason, but probably was influenced by Gain's decision. In the end, I rejoined.
Neon and I take turns quitting and joining.
Red quits, I quit because Red quit, and Neon followed."
Skip down a couple paragraphs and...
"And when all of this was over, the first five Setalites (*giggle*) disappeared from Setaseeker, leaving a bunch of Ontarians running the site.
And Chaos of course. Good old Chaos.
I get the feeling that everyone who quit have put the site to rest and moved on. For some reason, I still hold a strange attachment to the Setaseeker of old. Perhaps it was the prospects of building something great, the collaboration of ideas and thoughts, the chance to create something unlike anything before. Whatever it was, I still miss it sorely. As much as I say that Setaseeker is shotty and doesn't deserve to exist any longer, I still want to see it work and grow into something else."
And again...
"The site lost direction. The site was intended to be not something flashy to the eye and appealing to the majority, but something that appealed to ourselves. It's not about expansion, it's not about free recruiting, it's not about page hits. It was for us, and only us."
As always, well spoken by Comrade SyK.
I doubt anyone from the defunct site spends five minutes any given fortnight thinking about it, let alone considering trying, the gods forbid, a third stab at it. I can't help it though. Another entry talked about how it was essentially trimmed to a page of links with neither members section nor forum...no frills, just a set of links.
Chances are if you're reading this now, you either went through a page of links or bookmarked it after going through a page of links.
Now, though, there's no collaboration on anything. There really are no frills. There's a guestbook that nobody signs, and 90% of the people linked on that page don't really write but once every couple weeks or less.
It might sound conceited, but I can say with all honesty that out of the multitude of "Veterans," "outsiders," "recruits," and...well..."idiots," I'm the only one who's really kept up with any regularity.
Actually, that's not true. Some of us update regularly on a schedule of once every four or five months. Some even less.
But I think that if asked, we'd all still say we loved the idea, and that if it seemed like it could work and we felt like it could work, then we'd try to make it work. But I know, not think, that even if that were the case it would only be the case for all of three months.
I've made my arguments for writing before and won't go into them again. You probably know them well enough. Writing is a gift, a privilege, an escape, a manifest, and so on down the line. If my great great grandparents had kept journals, though, I know I would've read every last word over and over, no matter what it was about. Knowing where you come from is nothing compared to knowing from whom you come. The biggest photo album in the world won't compare to this insignificant, worthless novel I'm leaving behind for any kindred I might have.
You see, of course, it's only worthless to everyone who's not them. But really, who else matters to you when you're dead? Unless you're some influential world leader, no one but your family dynasty will benefit from you anyway.
That's not true at all, but it's more dramatic sounding.
I wish that I knew how to make graphics with any mote of skill, for I'd construct yet another small web-empire that would only go to waste. But it would be there, for a time, and for that time that it lasted it would be all ours. Our lives will end, too, but for the time that they go on, they are all ours. We have no excuses for neglecting our souls.
For neglecting our writing.
But if I cannot make beautiful things from reds and blues and yellows, and if I cannot make beautiful things from my hands and tools and instinct, then I have no choice but to make beautiful things from black and white and all the blessings of a tired God.
There will be no resurrection, for a thing that died once can easily die again. There will be no version anything point anything. Something that can be improved might easily fall into lesser states. There can be only purity and absolute divinity, total and complete immortality.
If I have to, I will create it alone.
My God, I've gone insane.
posted by red at 19:47
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