I sometimes imagine weather as a manifestation of collective emotion, a model of the connections that make up our world, our lives. I thought about the weather a lot this year.

weather seems to me a more effective metaphor than highways or surfboards.

fray is the eye of the cyclone that moves some of my favorite people through my life. I keep trying to elaborate on that image, but everything I've tried to follow that first sentence with either decays into so much emotional drivel or turns into more words than belong here.

two. fray leaps the tracks of time more like a relationship than a website. happy second anniversary, fray. two is cotton; I knew I should have bought that shirt.

Derek, you have made playing the dual role of creator and weatherman look easy. I know it isn't. thank you for taking the risk, thank you very much.

Vagabond Jim {jim@vagabondage.com}

ohmigosh. i did some badly needed growing this year.

my dad landed in the hospital three times for various ailments, one requiring surgery. his body just fails more and more every year. eyes, ears, heart, gall bladder, urinary tract. it forced me to realize what i knew all along: that my dad's growing old and he won't be with us forever.

my dad also got laid off. apparently seniority means nothing to those bastards. being so close to retirement age, his chances of finding another job outside mcdonald's are slim. so he sits at home all day, reading and watching tv, wondering what went wrong. my mom nearly lost her job too, but at the last second she managed to transfer to another group.

i got a new job and traveled the country. i saw more cities, more states, and racked up more frequent flier miles in the last six months than i had previously in my entire life. it was novel for the first 2 months. but after that, it just got annoying. living out of a garment bag isn't for me. and getting drunk in your hotel room gets old.

but the most important thing of all, this year, i met her.

gerard {gerry38@hotmail.com}

derek...

you've provided an outlet that helped me deal with the anger and frustration that come with the passing of a friend.

i got the chance to meet you on the playa this year and introduce myself. i never did get the chance to stop back by fray camp because i ended up working far too much. i am now kicking myself.

this site and the concept surrounding it has meant so much to me and so many people that i'm not sure how to ever thank you.

i'll be there for birthday #3.

happy birthday fray. thank you derek.

-g-

greg {vector@value.net}

I can't summerize my last year except to say that there have been way too many nights like this one, cold but too lazy to close windows, huddled in front of a monitor and contemplating virtual people. The fray never needed to make it real, like I do, because it was always grounded in san francisco, or las vegas, the middle of the desert -- anywhere but simply electrons between people's heads.

This past year has, if you really want to know, been bookended by near collapses, the type of stress that doesn't come from the demands the world puts on me, but from the uncertain demainds that I put on the world. And again, to be honest, the fray hasn't helped much with that. Really, the last thing I need is another black background in my life -- even though the fray was one of the first.

So it hasn't saved me, but what the fray has done is inspire me. Maybe just to share my anger with everybody else, but it always helps to get things off your chest. So they say.

Walking around the place where I live late at night, I can always spot two three five people in the dining room whispering drunken secrets to one another. One tends to be the most silent, another will hold their hand, sometimes nobody will speak at all, because nothing done will bring their girlfriend back or make their parents love them or heal their damaged grades.

Me? You? We don't need to do that. We've got the internet.

gershom {gershom@flabjab.com}

I am 38 and have moved 45 times. Only 2 of them before I was 17. Dallas, Tulsa, ,Montreal, New Hampshire, Boston, Toronto to name a few - and there were mulitiple moves within those places. Usually by the time I'm someplace for a year, I'm looking. One year ago I and my family bought a house on a mountain, at the end of a dead end road in Maine. I have cleared some of the land, made a garden, built a greenhouse, raised my babies -- created a world, a life, that has developed roots. For once I have no plan or desire to move on. I have had so much intensity and excitement that this year has been blissfully uneventful . It's not easy to stay in one place but my kids need it. I sit in my warm greenhouse on a cold, windy,rainy night and it is good. In this remote place the fray connects me to bright and interesting people without constraint of time or space. It is very good and I love you all. Happy Birthday Fray! Julia St. James

Julia St. James {Notownie@yahoo.com}

A year ago I had looked in to my beloved's face and reminded him that we had been together for a whole year. We already had babies - four of them, grown from the tiny black mouse-like, shaking silent and blind kittens they were born as. A year ago his brothers had left the family home to enter the brave new world outside our front door. Monkey stayed with us. His ridiculous high pitched squealy meowing and innocent stupid face are more than wonderful. His ripping up of the furniture is absolutely tolerated. He will never know hunger or real fear, so instead freaks out at the idea of going in a car. He is content to hang upside down having his tummy scratched. He only eats jelly'd cat food, and stretches out on the carpet in front of you, before looking up, his eyes full of placid love. Completely stupid, and completely lovely, he has been the equal first male animal I look forward to coming home to every evening.
Happy birthday, Fray.

Cait

I actually put my name on the lease for the first time. I'm back to living with just my s.o., but this time I like it.

I made a friend, got really pissed at her, and learned how to truely forgive.

I learned the importance of monogamy.

I had another friend move half a state away and never see him. He's even too busy for e-mail now.

I realized I don't want to go to grad school right away; I actually want to have a life without my name ending in random letters.

I got engaged for the second time, but this time we're actually setting the plans.

This time this one is right.

I became a leader in my community, and didn't hide from the spotlight.

I started to exercise.

I saw my mother return to the workforce, and talked to my dad when I went home. Really talked to him for the first time in years.

Happy birthday {fray}! I'll let you know what happens next time.

moonbeam {tegan@goddess.coe.missouri.edu}