Deactivation Report: I'm out of the Facebook box

April 2012 Update. Back on FB, but as a presence. Not roving, not posting (this blog posts automatically). More time for me. Less agonizing over lives of others.

This shouldn't be news but then a blogger shouldn't be compelled to be a news source. Now that that disclaimer is off my shoulders or mind or other part of my anatomy or portion of me which defines or signals me, here's the non-newsworthy news: I got off Facebook.

I deactivated my account. I can return. And, yes, it's not a monumental life event. Part of the reason I'm  mentioning this is in case one of my almost 2,000 Facebook friends, most of whom I haven't met but do have a connection with, through poetry or fiction, wonders if I unfriended them.

No!  No one is unfriended. Just, everyone.

Not much more to say than that it is a good move right now. Like many things, Facebook is a box, a specified delivery system. As an intimacy-avoiding mechanism, it rules. I, however, am human, and need intimacy.

As a poet and fiction writer, I need to stray. I am a cat, straying.  I am howling in the alley.

(p.s. Just did a spellcheck. Three words come up as questionable:  Facebook. unfriended. spellcheck.

Psychic networking: who needs a body? Facebook & friendship

We almost don't need bodies to know each other. We don't need "in-person" to feel transecting rings of sameness, strength and history.

On the 4th I wrote a status update on the great social networking timesuck (and joy) Facebook: Sarah Sarai bottles rockets.

Appropriate for the day, done, move on, get out, live your life, Sarah Sarai. Which I did. While walking to the life I was living that day a thought came to me, Why doesn't ** comment on that update?

** is a poet I've never met. ** is a poet with any number of poety accomplishments under her belt——book and university professor, to name two. I'd gotten to know a few FB poets through emails of life history, resentments, lusts, insights, but not **.

Still——through comments and photographs I've intuited a sense of the person and of comradeship {and this was before I read her work}.

Not long ago, a poet with whom I have emailed back and forth nailed me in terms of a specific commonality. We might not have signed on for this childhood happening——but now were sisters. Deep intuition was something I associated with friends and family——they may be thousands of miles away but I often get a sense, sometimes scarily specific, of what's happening.

That intuitive intersection—of piecing together the clues and spirit—is clearly part of my Internet repertoire. I noticed it through listservs I signed onto four or five years ago——new friends based on similar perspectives and born out in meeting. I suppose as a reader I could say, Duh. I've been responding to the written word since Beatrix Potter, but "authors" have a persona. Online friends most often don't.

When I got home the night of the fiery 4th I saw ** had commented on me as one who bottles rockets. Some small connection builds.

Quick Note: the word conveys personality

I've been using Facebook for a year and a half and it has increased my sense of community immeasurably. Indeed, all of cyberworld has done for me what my time in academia couldn't, and as a matter of fact refused to do--given me good friendships in writing.

I don't mean to give the impression these new friendships are my first such friendships but they are reinvigorating. I joined a poetics listserv first and then dug into Myspace. Both seemed such nervy actions to me, at the time. I remember the moment I decided to use my first and last name on Myspace. I held my breath and clicked the mouse so that all the world could access "Sarah Sarai."

I was no longer hidden or hiding. I quoted a phrase from an acceptance letter, "cute and profound...and different" Blackbox, which I thought accurate enough in describing me and my writing. I set up links, tried to remember the HTML I'd had to learn when I was a Web producer (really, an editor).

The odd thing is that through the listserv, less so with Myspace, I learned of poets who lived in New York City but travelled in different, uh, stanzas than I did. I had quit writing poetry (long story) and took it up or it took me up about five years ago, and so I hardly knew anyone. No book. I was no one.

My letter of introduction was my cyber contributions, comments I shared on the listserv and my Myspace presentation. Then came Facebook, with its little photos and, in its glory days, room to romp, to interact in an approximation of real time by way of comments.

I've now met enough people through Facebook--in the flesh--to know I can trust my instincts. People I find a delight on Facebook are the same in life. I'm not saying there isn't a need to reckon with the flesh when we meet--to assimilate our emotions, our bodies, our intensities. Certainly anyone meeting me in person has to realize I'm more than clever.

But it has worked out. New and real friends, shared interests (most of my friends on Facebook are poets, a few are fiction writers, the rest are true and dear friends), a match. I've learned more about long-time friends and about warm acquaintances through Facebook. Yes, you're right. It's a time suck.

But also verification that the little bits we write about ourselves, about politics, about poetry, family, our cats, movies, Gaza, Obama, poverty, life's insanity express who we are. The word can be trusted.