In 1996, Internet browsers that can display images on the World Wide Web had been around for 3 years.
Search engines such as WebCrawler and Lycos were 2. Amazon, eBay, Internet Explorer are all 1 year old.
Yahoo does not yet exist.

The term ‘Blog’ has yet to be coined.
Web 1.0 is still being formed.
You probably didn’t have an email address.

I’d had a really bad day at work. I needed to find a cute pic to email a co-worker who had been exceptionally kind.
A quick non-Boolean search in WebCrawler pulled up about 7,043 hits, and without the advanced algorithms of today’s Google experts,
any html page containing either the word ‘pic’ or ‘cute’ in it’s list of meta tags was fair game. Quickly scrolling down,
I spied the words ‘Carolyn’s Diary’. Diary? Diary? On the web? Can it be?

Can you really put your diary on the world wide web for all do see?

I printed out seventeen pages of this stranger’s personal diary and pored over them all the way home,
one eye on the bumper in front of me, the other on the gold on those virtual pages…I did eventually thank him,
but Phil never got his cute pic. I’d found something much, much more important.

Turns out, I wasn’t the only person fascinated with a stranger’s personal thoughts painted all over our collective ‘digital cave’
(taken from the subtitle of Rick Smolan’s 24 Hours in Cyberspace, whom Carolyn became the poster child for;
and whose photo adorned the invitations to the unveiling at the Smithsonian Institute on January 23, 1997 http://www.ryze.com/go/clburke).

I was instantly obsessed. I spent the entire evening composing my first email to her. With a readership of 10,000,
my mail needed to be crafty enough to catch her attention. It was. With no reply at all, she brazenly (in my opinion)
copied my email and linked to it from random text in her diary the next day.

http://diary.carolyn.org/Page23.html  (click on ‘should be fun’)

This continued for a time. We were creating a new kind of art, together, for the world to see, complete strangers,
linked only via our written words. It remains to this day one of the most fascinating processes I have ever been a part of.

http://diary.carolyn.org/comments/louise/index.html

By the fall of 1996, I had scraped together the bare minimum of skills required  to do it myself.
So on October 18, 1996, my Electronic Pen, or The mEp, was born.

http://www.vif.com/users/louern/mep.htm

On paper, since December 2^nd 1977, I was an archivist; keeping merely a record of my daily life.
Nothing private, nothing secret, nothing I wouldn’t want my great grandchildren to see. In fact, it’s written for them.

Electronically, I’m the antithesis of that person, waxing poetic to the point of nausea, detaching my thoughts from any reference to reality.
The World Wide Web was a big anonymous place in 1997, perfect for letting my personal trees fall in the forest of the digital cave.

 

 

 

 

“Twirl, the world
chant the breeze
roar the engines
swell, the seas.

When the focus is like a pinpoint in your eyeball
paining the view but presenting an image,
we must force the horizons
to become distant, and near, at once.

Mentor, friend, and fellow seeker of truth;
take my hand and tell of your sorrows.
Spill what you know onto a page i can keep.”

 

“How could I possibly be arrogant - I'm one of the nicest people I know ...”

 

 

Dedicated to Carolyn Burke

 

What ends?

I've got a little story to tell. It's a story made of chapters, but it's not a book. It's a metamorphosis, but it's not about change.
Full of ups and downs and all arounds, but it's not our lives. It's made up of beginnings, middles and conclusions ... but it doesn't end.

The infinite inspiration that writing with you has brought to me has grown into something more than words on the web.
Years later, as the pages continue to flow from my fingers, I find myself contemplating what does end.

from the first, to the present, and throughout the journey in between, has emerged to me one thing which can never end.
embodied in your open spirit, deep honesty, and gentle laughter, is a gift which cannot be taken away.
a gift which cannot be written, changed, nor lived.

that gift, my dear friend Carolyn, will never come to an end.

and from somewhere endlessly inside of me, I thank you.

l

"Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you"

Khalil Gibran,  Sand and Foam" (1926)