touched by a minimalist

I made a new friend yesterday.

As with another close friend I've made in recent months, he lives very far away indeed.

All the way in Warsaw.

He (I have proof that he's a he) is a gentle soul whose cybername is afp763389.

My guess is that was randomly assigned, and suits his purposes--whatever they may be--perfectly.

I don't think his purposes can be articulated, exactly, but he comes in peace.

He seems to slip through the rank and file on our mutual blogging host, Blogger, and whether he stops with a purpose, at random, or sequentially is not to be known.

What he does, though, generally, is leave a little tiny greeting.

Like this.

Or this.

To which he gets a range of responses on his own blog [note: the 2005 blog is not extant but here is a new link].

From this:

ahhh.. you annoy me!

And this:

Hey, what ´s this? when I click on any number always appears the same map and when I click on map I am back on letters. You are weird!

To this:

seems to me from the look of all of these comments that this blogger must be a guru, because all I'm readin is a reflection of the people who left the comments. some selfish (write because i want you to) some adventurous and open, and others simply confused! haha. then there are those of us that are amused! write on! or don't! i think this might be the blog of a zen master. ;^)

And this:

i smell genius.

Sometimes he leaves slightly longer messages, as he did the first time he came to see me:

theres no truth since the secret is not a lie
besides he pain is not objectively bad
resumed: no harm from death :)

enjoy

[post entitled "Guys Named Lance"]

I could tell the speaker was a non-native, and when I went to his site I didn't know precisely what to do.

So I did nothing.

I neither responded to nor deleted the comment.

I felt a little edgy, though.

This morning I was having a look at the stats. You can't see much from these--nothing very personal--but you can see how many computers have been used to visit you, where they are, what time the visit was made, and how the visitor found you. The latter is what interests me, especially the Google and Yahoo and MSN and other searches.

This visitor, it turns out, was searching for afp763389. And the search originated in Poland.

I looked at the pattern--a poster "named" afp763389 making curious brief visits to other blogs, and for some reason I remembered my mystery visitor.

This time when I went to his blog, I did look around.[The new one is similar to the old. Go ahead. Do some clicking.]

You'll be nervous. I know I have been. That imposing black screen, the lack of answers. Surely this was--what? A hacker? An evil-doing cyberbusiness? A surveillance operation?

Nothing good.

Then I began to read comment after comment after comment. As usual, community opinion swayed me.

I am after all human.

But is afp763389?

I invited him to stop by again, and his most recent comment indicates he is.

Human. Like us.

And maybe he just likes this particular black-background design for a blog, because he seems to reserve his most human answers for those of us who chose this template. Here's what he posted on sister site My Weird Philosophical Moments:

as for 'human nature' I think that we are the most advanced dominant specie on planet earth

so not know much of evolution but every overpopulation gets its fall because of losing stability of ecosystem thus the value most importrant for Us is to look for more space to live

instead of fighting against each other if the agression and fear would win than we may allways say that we made as much as possible to live with self esteem or minimum human dignity

so often being not within swarm fight looking for peace and nice place to work or spent the time I find myself lonely or some bunker shelter the net makes me know and feel like we are on the concert of darkness each one keeps the shining little flame of the lighter not long not much bright but without any here we soon will join the spiritual space of OverSoul or something like that :)

I might just have to post some of afp763389's wisdom on my next Poetry Thursday. He's brilliant:

"we are on the concert

of darkness each one

keeps the shining little flame

of the lighter not long

not much bright"

nice, huh?