There was always a reason I didn’t join facebook until a year later than everyone else.  It was something in the concept of it: the accruing of friends solely to have friends, a subtle expectation to be in constant contact with those people on your list and lastly having people from yesteryear that you really don’t care for anymore contacting you.

Now many arguments can be made for facebook, and some I do support.  I personally used facebook throughout my travels abroad for an easy way to keep in touch with people I met as a simple e-mail address exchange provides all the information you could want about a person and profiles are very helpful in helping my now old mind to remember meeting the person.

I came across an article on one of the (nerd/tech) sites I visit on a regular basis  with an article written by one of the editors that argues against facebook.  His sentiments mirror my own in regards to friendship.  Here’s a small snippet with the link to the entire article following:

Friendship is not based on constant contact and interaction. Friendship is based on the emotional attachment that we have to other individuals, and if this emotional attachment is real, it doesn’t become weaker over time, no matter how rarely you see that person. I have a friend that I’ve known since I was three years old and sometimes we go two or three years without seeing each other. Does that mean that our friendship is weak? No. Does that mean that I should register on Facebook and add him to my friends list so that we can communicate more often? No. It means that our friendship is strong enough that if we get together after three years of not seeing each other, it feels as if we’d seen each other only yesterday.

You can find the rest of the article here.

If you ascribe to god a multitude of seemingly inconsequential and unconnected events, belie your own common rational thinking by rendering unto them a collection of conclusive thoughts in quiet self-justification, then what is attained? Would it not be solely a dark veil between you and that of rational thought? Can one so lost be found again? Could the mere thought of such a meaning not be rationalized to that of superstitious folly? Is it not possible that your belief in the deceiving power of existentialist thought is meant only to deceive yourself? Failure to understand, no rather, failure to truly need and desire to understand is not failing only yourself but life in its beautiful entirety.
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It takes but a mere attentiveness to the world around us, in which we breath, we listen, we dream, we live, to perceive the most desirable pleasures we are sorely denied. Those most selfish pleasures of thoughts without influence, without subjugation to the whims and wants of those who shape our world. Through mediums both prevalent and minute, the permeation of control saturates our very existence. Free thought? A fanciful idea. However that pleasant notion of uninfluenced perception and unbiased opinions forever escapes our utopic fantasies. As masses we mold our minds to fit the perfect die already set, faults certainly cast away. Most accept this reality. Upon few dawns the enlightenment of our endless cycle, but nearly always after their time has set. Their struggles and defiance swiftly suppressed, extinguished into an oblivion. We hope endlessly for those even lesser precious few who can break through, alighting our world with renewed life and thought, procuring within us a spirit and passion that cannot be crushed. And so we wait, patiently acting as we are bidden, puppets to others as much as they are puppets to us.

I thought this was pretty much bang on!

Fondi was our first stop in Italy.  It was a cute little town where we stayed with Sonia’s family for two days.  And let me tell you, those two days were AWESOME.  Tons of great and food, free accommodation, friendly relatives and a beach just a 5 minute walk away!  It was glorious.

One event that stands out (aside from the food) was building our sand castle.  Now as I had grown up with two sisters, whenever I was at a beach with my family, it was usually just myself that built the sandcastles.  My sisters were never really interested in helping as they were too busy tanning or doing whatever girls with cooties do.  So when Paul, Justin and I were talking about our first beach day and the subject of sand castles came up and both showed a lot of interest, I was almost in heaven!  Finally, some brother-in-arms to help me defend the King’s castle from the ceaseless horde of water monsters.

We grabbed some shovels and a pail, then headed off to the beach with Sonia and her little cousin in tow.  After a quick swim and some preliminary scouting we chose a small peninsula in the sand that had appeared during low tide on which to build our base.  In hindsight, this was probably not the brightest choice, but alas we thought we might be able to out-build the rising tide (aside: don’t try to out-build a rising tide…).  We drew out a rough layout in the sand of our castle and began to build.  It was to have a main raised area near the front on which we would build the palace with a ramp down to the royal gardens (as every king needs his royal gardens in which to dilly-dally the day away).  We then mapped out our poor peasant neighbourhood, the middle class area, the wealthy and prominent part of town and the marketplace.  This was going to be a top notch castle.
Paul began work on the front barricade wall.  He created a large sand base and then used a drip-sand technique to build up spires that reminded me of Gaudi’s architectural style.  Justin created a large bamboo bridge connecting our small peninsula to the mainland.  I worked on the normal castle walls and used a pail to create our turrets every foot or so.  A small moat travelled through our miniature city to help prevent flooding from large waves.

Everything was going to plan.  We constructed our raised palace and I was using small greenery to create a miniature garden and trees and adding some detail to the outer walls.  Everything was going according to plan.  In another 2 hours our palace would be complete, the townsfolk would be happy and the king would be more than safe behind his high walls from any marauding hordes.

We certainly got some strange looks from people walking by, some stopping to watch us three twenty-something year olds building a sand castle.  Some even thought we were professional sand-castle builders and were inquiring as to if we were going to be there the following days as well.  All was well and good.  We had smiles on our faces, sweat on our brow and people appreciating the work we were doing.  The only minor problem we ran into was Sonia’s little cousin who kept wanting to help out, and by help out he generally just destroyed things we had just painstakingly worked on.  This is where Sonia’s role came in.  She became “the muscle”.   We assigned her the role of keeping the devil child (and I say that in the nicest possible way) from destroying our work.  And might I say, she did a damn fine job of it!

Then it all went to hell.

It didn’t happen suddenly, but rather creeped upon us, much like the rising tide of the ocean.  Wait…it was the rising tide of the ocean.  At first it was only a wave or two that would wash into our small city-fortress, something our in-city moat could take care of.  Then flooding became a common occurrence.  We worked feverishly building up more walls, reinforcing our structures, scrambling madly for dry sand.  A horrible feeling began consuming us.  We knew we couldn’t win this war, alas our king was to perish a horrible death.  The final hour was upon us.  We started to slow our construction, people along the beach looked upon us with pity and expressed sorrow for our loss.  Paul’s front barricade wall was starting to give away, the waves chipping away at his beautiful structure bit by bit.

Then a brilliant idea struck one of us.  I’m not sure who though of it first, but suddenly the idea formed for a way to at least save the King’s palace.  We could create a large rock base that extended above the waterline on the remaining dry part of the peninsula.  We grabbed some of the stone and rock we had previously started using on our palace and made it into a small pile.  Alas it was not nearly enough.  Depression set in once again, what were we to do?

Then what could be considered almost a small rage came over me.  I refused to give up after so much work and let the King perish.  I told my building-brothers-in-arms to hang on and do what they could for the king while I was gone, and bolted off.  I scoured the beach for larger rocks. I found some farther down the beach and ran back with them, dropping them in front of Justin and Paul, yelling quick words of encouragement and then bolted off again.  I repeated this over and over, grabbing more large rocks and discarded pieces of concrete, having to run farther and farther on each trip to find the required stones.  I can only imagine what the other beach-goers were thinking, me running back and forth along the beach in a full sprint grabbing large rocks and taking them back to our small area.  I didn’t care, they didn’t understand, they couldn’t understand.  We had a duty, a reason to carry on, a king to protect.  Slowly but surely as the tide rose, but so did our small mound of rock, sand and twigs.  Laughter and glee once again filled the air as a feeling of triumph poured through our bodies and hope filled our hearts.

Once we achieved a desirable height of about 2 feet above the waterline we reconstructed our palace again, and even included a small flag made of a bamboo pole and small greenery for the flag.  We had won, at least for now, and that’s what mattered.

We then went for a quick swim and headed back to the house for another amazing dinner, confident that our palace would hold.  Later in the evening we decided to go for a beach walk to check to see if our fortress had indeed withstood the force of Poseidon and his minions.  We walked the beach, but alas could not find our workmanship, nor any trace of it.  Slightly confused, we walked back and forth around the area we thought we had worked.  Finally Justin and Paul came across the remnants of the base.

There were rocks strewn all over.  It was a disaster of magnificent proportions. We had failed our king.  The evil tide had won.  We all fell into a mournful state (except Sonia, she was about 50 feet from us sitting on the sand laughing, but she has cooties so forget about her…).  We gathered around one of the remaining rocks and had a moment of silence.  I saluted to our lost king and we all said a few words in remembrance of the great leader and apologized for not being able save him.  If we had not been in each other’s company, I’m sure we would have all shed a tear or two, such was our grief.

Yet life must go on.  We promised each other and our lost king, now in the afterlife, that future castles we built would have a monument to our lost king, a type of remembrance and tribute if you will, our penance.  We walked solemnly away from the area, eyes down, watching our feet.

After a little while we glanced at each other and smiles crept over our faces as we started chuckling.  I’m sure the same thought passed through all of our heads: It was great to be a kid again.