To be linked to – touched, by a writer or another blog. Touched – to say, I agree, or I disagree, or with great generosity, here is something worth reading; here is something new, or extraordinary. Touched – or brushed, as by a tangent. To say: I was passing this way, and over there, another is passing.
Company, community – and especially when the link is made in passing, and without fuss. When it is part of a block of writing, and integrated within it. But then integration is never complete. Doesn’t the link touch the linker? Then what reaches out to touch is already touched; the tangent carries with it the whole of the blog of the one who links, like the miraculous swerve of the atomists.
What is touched touches back – no, it had already reached you, it had touched you so that you could touch, it gave you that capacity. Peguy’s wound, he said, preceded him; he affirmed the accident that fell upon him by chance. What would it mean to affirm the alteration that happens when you are touched by the writing of another, and especially when you reach out to touch it in turn? To what kind of friendship does it attest?
Lars Iyer's Blog 