red_turns_25 raze i didn't have a home computer or a stable internet connection until i was a senior in high_school. that opened up a whole new world for me. the information superhighway was different then. none_of_the_roads_were_paved. the confluence of a few incipient city streets created something strange and slow and riveting. a half-hidden world that felt safe in a way it doesn't anymore and never will again. almost_everything i found and loved online as a terrified teenager is gone now. only red remains. it feels like a small miracle that this flickering flame would still have heat to give a quarter of a century after the first spark took hold. someone who used to write here once said she hoped people would outgrow the space and leave it behind. i hope to keep growing into it and feeding it whatever words i've got until i'm just a bunch of bones in the ground. 260124 ... ovenbird As red reaches its 25th year I wonder if it feels ancient. Almost nothing on the internet has survived so long. Its digital friends must all be dead, and still, it lives, and gives itself over to the words that continue to arrive on its doorstep. I frequently find myself wishing I had found it when it was a baby, but I was instilled with the belief that the newborn internet was crawling with predators and I, steadfast rule follower that I was, stayed far away from anything that looked like a chat room. I wonder how my life would be different if I had grown up feeling like I belonged to something. I wonder what words I might have given to Red over its 25 year span. There’s a feeling like grief attached to knowing that I can’t ever be anything but new to this realm. Its roots go deeper than I can ever reach. And while the shifting self I was as I transitioned into adulthood could surely have benefitted from a space like blather, instead Red and I are meeting somewhere in the middle of our lives, another time of profound upheaval, a mirror of sorts of puberty where I am once again reckoning with who I want to become. I’m grateful that I have a space to explore that. Happy_birthday_red. I hope there is joy in witnessing the song of a thousand voices. I couldn’t be there for your first birthday, but who knows, maybe I’ll be there for your 50th. 260124 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Why didn't I see this before? Happy belated birthday, red!! I second the wishes for longevity! With unaccustomed brevity. And vevity. (I don't know what vevity is, but it must be a birthday-related thing.) 260125 what's it to you? who go blather from