We learned of the final project on the first day of Lit and Culture of the 1960's. Like all senior seminars, the culmination of the semester was a 12-point font, annotated behemoth and a class presentation - the kind of project that sounded like a deathbed so far in the future in September, like the click of a gun barrel against your head in November.

I met her through this class. She goes by an unspoken name, she whom I don't really know, but of whom I have seen hundreds of pictures. I've read an intimate account of her childbirth. Seriously, I could tell you about her episiotomy, but I've never talked to her. She made a Powerpoint of her project on her website, unwittingly securing herself a stalker for life. (That'd be me).

It's not that she's that interesting really. She has a kid and an English degree. She doesn't climb mountains or backpack anywhere or live a fast-paced life - none of the things we generally consider "interesting." Like me, she doesn't write about everything she does, so I suppose I can't be a genuine stalker. But she writes about things that never come out in a senior seminar, in most interactions, in anything she'd ever have said to me if I spoke to her in class. I guess this is why I used to check her website often, loving the updates and fancying myself familiar enough to judge. Of course, that doesn't require so much familiarity on or offline for any of us.

After I read about her divorce, a huge life event she never blogged about that I thus, never saw coming, she stopped writing. She was juggling joint custody of her son, moving into a tiny apartment, and looking for a job. The website took a back burner to basic survival. I stopped visiting and moved on. Yesterday, I remembered her.

I typed in the familiar address and read a rambling post about the history of her website. She has taken it all down, minus the recent post, deciding she no longer knows what to post, that she is no longer the person who started the site. My old haunt has been boarded up.

I won't say this to this woman whose name I have never spoken, but I feel a little sad. I will wonder about her and wish her the best unwritten life out there. And I'll probably keep checking her website anyway.

*I guess I might be trying to say that I understand the tenuous connection between blog and reader or website and lurker. So I'm trying to be understanding of those of you who are emailing me and asking me to be the godmother of your children and on your emergency contact employment paperwork. But still. I don't know you freaks.