Making history together

This picture postcard was made for me by NannaK, who has been exploring iPad art, inspired by David Hockney (she explains all this in the blip I've linked to her name). She made me this painting as a memorial to my cat Taiga, who died not quite a month ago. Her drawing is based on a picture I blipped of Taiga back in January, 2012, when he had only been with me a couple of weeks and I was having allergy symptoms. I was afraid then that I might not have him for very long because I feared that I was having an allergic reaction to him. I consulted an allergist who then determined that I am not allergic to cats at all--but rather to evergreens and their pollens that fill the air here from January through June every year. But it turned out that I did not have Taiga very long, not because of my allergies but because of his age and his heart. We did have one year together, Taiga and I, and the postcard is yet another memorial for which I'm very grateful, and which I wouldn't have but for the Blip community (I have only ever met NannaK on this website).

You may also recall this drawing of Taiga, made for me by the artist in my last blip before this one. I wouldn't know her but for Blip.

We come here with our various passages--losses, births, marriages, break-ups, migrations, new jobs, lost jobs, accidents, and achievements, great and small. We cheer each other on, we comfort each other. We bring our gifts of words and images. We talk about what we're reading. Right now I'm reading the poetry of R. S. Thomas because of Ceridwen, and I'm reading Emma Larkin's book, Finding George Orwell in Burma, because of Arachne. I would have to make a very long list of books and ideas that have changed me or helped me develop, that I wouldn't have without Blip. We influence each other's ways of thinking and feeling.

I am richly blessed with face to face friends, some here in Portland and others in various parts of the world. There are a couple of dear friends I do check in with almost every day, but only a couple. But on Blip, there are a great many people whose daily lives I "follow." What does this mean?

As I sit here holding this sweet postcard with an iPad painting of Taiga in my hands, made for me by someone I've never met who never met him, I think of the ways, as it says in the Blip Blog today, we make history together, and "we're the first generation to record and share the smallest detail of everyday life on a massive scale." This has not ever happened, in all the history of people on the earth, before the last ten years. This is a new global phenomenon. We help each other live our lives. Wow.