My Virtual Life

These are my elder granddaughter Crystal’s children, my great-grands who live in Tucson, and I love them with longing like a toothache, as I didn’t get to see them this year and don’t know when I will see them again, other than virtually. I feel a profound connection with Raiden and would be as close to him as I am to Bella and Evan if it were possible. You see him here with his little brother on a Zoom call with me on Thursday.

Another remarkable aspect of my virtual life is that an email came to me from a woman named Anne, in Edinburgh, who is not a Blipper but has friends who are. She has been following my Blip journal for a few years and wrote to tell me about Jackie Morris, who lives near St. David’s and has written a stunning book about dragons. Anne thought Evan might enjoy seeing the book, and while the English version isn’t available in the USA, I found a Spanish version and have now ordered it sent to Evan and Bella, who are bilingual. (Bella was onto dragons before Evan could even focus his eyes.) Anne and I continue getting to know one another by email, and what a gift she is.

Given the Jackie Morris link and the vortex that is Youtube, I ended up touring Jackie’s studio (you note I feel I’m now on first-name basis with her), meeting her cats, and connecting with Ceridwen via email, who sent me an article Jackie wrote about Glyn Griffiths, who lived in a house near a place where Sue and I walked with Ceridwen when we visited in 2015. Ceridwen’s email led me to explore Morris’s collaborations with Robert MacFarlane…. 

You can’t tell me virtual life isn’t “real,” and it can be a kind of dragon’s lair of jewels and entanglements.