My younger brother writes to me from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

"I started this letter today, intending to work on it for the next few days, but I just now found out someone is going back to the States tonight. If I can wrap it up in a few minutes here, you can have it in a few days instead of a few weeks."

He is not exaggerating the length of time it takes the mail to travel between the Land O' Sky and the Empty Quarter. This message will be delivered online in a few hours; a paper copy was posted today via a narcoleptic snail and will arrive at its destination on or about December 5.

What to do ...

The list is John-L. Subscribers include mom, dad, big sister, big brother, middle child, and youngest brother, also miscellaneous in-laws, out-laws and fictive kin; the honorary moderator of the list is younger brother himself. Mailer Daemon is a frequent, albeit unwelcome, guest.

The start is slow, curiously impersonal. Some of the subscribers are virtual strangers, regardless of blood ties. There are a lot of *reports* - on the weather, the traffic, the jobs. Then tentative forays beyond the minutiae of the day begin.

Second_cousin_once_removed and daughter-in-law discuss the chats. One finds the chats filled with wailing ghosts demanding privileges of flesh; the other regales folks with hilarious accounts of unix masters leading her through a maze of scripts and shells.

Youngest brother enters a fugue state and begins writing, posting poems daily. He writes of dog ears and bayous and woman love.

Older sister weeps through pirate nets and returns with tales of brave Ulysses.

Older brother and middle child relate a recent reunion at a talker. They'd had a chat with a presenting gay male and introduced themselves as brother/sister having a little chat. They did not specify who was which gender. The man guessed wrong, resulting in a fascinating escape from (into?) gender for the sibs.

Himself writes of scuba diving in the Red Sea. Air tanks carry regular air, with the attendant danger of nitrogen narcosis. Symptoms range from euphoria to anxiety. Himself finds "My own experiences are somewhere in the middle (anxious euphoria?)".

A debate over survival rages between mom and nephew. Posts scream down the wires, shooting sparks, filling the family noses with the scent of burning wire. Auntie Beastie steps in, gets flamed to a cinder, and sulks pettily across the net all afternoon. Suddenly exists the delightful ability to tear each other to pieces in an excruciating efficient fashion. Wounds are nursed and allies regroup. Confessions and forgivenesses are exchanged publicly, resulting in a blush of new love and closeness.

Relatives who have been silent throughout time suddenly find voice and begin revealing a multitude of experience and thought. They find new depths to tenderness and fury. Cyberspace opens their mouths like whiskey never did. What *is* it about the absence of flesh that creates a temporary autonomous zone of communication? Does the body really carry such weight in face to face encounters?

A plateau is reached, posts fall to a few a day, days pass in silence. Then the pace slowly builds again. The posts ebb and flow in a cycle governed by the rhythms of the family. Lurkers emerge and withdraw clumsily. The list grows. The mail is always there. The brothers are jacked. Middle child reads it all and grows large on the net.

paula

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     Paula Davidson                       
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