pixels in cyber-space

one of the many themes contained within the stories you hear batted around this time of year frequently concern the Stranger at the Door. for those of us raised in the judeo-christian mythos, of course, the Story has a particularly poignant cast - any child old enough to recite the nativity knows that the reason the baby jesus had to be born in the stable was because there was No Room at the inn.

but other cultures, other mythologies share similiar pieces of the Story - the Stranger turns out to be an angel or a goddess, or an Otherworldly visitor, usually in disguise. the two that resonate for me the most are that of Mama Pele, who frequently appears to those who would seek her favor as a querulous old woman, and those of the ancient celts, whose customary welcome demanded that a stranger be fed and refreshed before even being asked to state his or her business.

so why am i thinking about these stories?

twice in the last ten days or so, i've been told by one "anonymous" and a certain Blogger-in-Question, that i am "just a pixel on (his) screen, with no reality outside of (his) computer screen."

i was tempted to allow these statements to simply pass. Blogger-in-Question, at least, is wrong, because i was invited to peruse his blog at the invitation of a mutual friend - a friend both of us know not as pixels on a screen, but as a living breathing flesh n' blood human being. the reaches of cyberspace are bigger than BIQ's imagination, but i don't have to prove i'm right all the time.

the reason i decided to write about this was because after i left a comment for BIQ that he didn't like, he not only didn't publish my comment, but made it the very subject of a later post in such a mangled form that only the writer of the original comment would've understood to what it referred.

and i thought only slimey politicians and republicans did that.

surely not a fellow pagan, a would-be writer. surely someone who professed to walk a similiar path as me wouldn't leap to conclusions about a stranger who appeared out of the cyber-night. surely he couldn't have miscontrued my comment to mean "giving is the reason for the season, that (he) was wrong to make personal wishes, and that (he) was obviously an evil hedonist."
because that's not what i said at all. and even if that's what BIQ thought i said, he should've had the balls to publish the comment as it was written, so that others may read it as well, before mangling it beyond recognition in order to tear it apart.

i find it interesting that BIQ would waste such time and effort as a five paragraph response to me personally, and then another six paragraph blog on a mere set of pixels in cyberspace, especially considering my comment was all of five sentences long. obviously he thought my post was meant to sting.

obviously it did. the fact he rushed to such a swift and harsh judgement tells me how swiftly and harshly he has himself been judged. i don't mind he disagreed with me - one of the things he asked for in his orginal post was for "pettiness to be met with maturity."
what's sad is that my comment wasn't meant to sting - it was meant to tweak. a writer - a Real Writer, which is what BIQ aspires to be - needs a tougher skin, or at least the ability to allow what he perceives to be criticism to stand without feeling the need to respond. how's he going to survive reading his reviews on amazon, otherwise?

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.