May Day, 2009, what that day was like, or at least in those moments that I wrote this poem.
Something has come up that highlights the blogs for me. It is an aspect of the computer life, that I have wondered at for many years now, in many an iteration.
I was once in email AA groups and a girl in the Washington DC area started up with me. We developed a cyber relationship of sorts and while I never really lied or hid my stuff, it turned out that she did, a little. At one point she joined a new grouping under an assumed name and started a new relationship with me. Now she had two relationships with me. After some weeks, when nothing interesting happened she revealed herself and had some sort of reason why she did that. Not long after that I was done with that part of my life anyway.
This blog life is like that. Since there is no real practical way to check, there are plenty of chances to create and put a persona out there and try to live up to it. I know some people are doing that, creating a counterpoint to the life they live. Others are straight up enough but try for far more anonymity than I do. I think I understand, and I keep the confidences that some of you have given me too.
I think for the most part I am playing it straight here. What you see is what you would get if you had me alone in your living room, at least to the extent that I could hold the same conversations we have here. I could take out my hard copy of my poems for that part of the deal. I can talk about stuff pretty close to the same way I can write. I actually hold the beliefs that I express, at least most of the time, if the distractions are not too severe. Or perhaps, I have held them before if not now. I tell you intimacies of my life because I do not fear the stories. Believe me, there are more tender places that I do not share.
I tell you I am fat and old because I am fat and old.
But I am no fool. I know that people can act, can take this blog life and use it as if it was a stage, as if there was something to accomplish. There are others who try to turn the blogs into a pulpit or a forum. Sometimes I think that some people believe they can manipulate this medium all the way to something significant in their lives. I doubt that is true except in remarkable and rare cases, though the manipulation game has its own reward in some ways. For the rest of us, this effort is an amusement.
I am happy to know that most everyone around these parts is not doing that.
I have a world wide readership. It is a very small readership, but it is global. It pleases me. If I stopped tomorrow, there would be no sign of my readership in my life at all. I am sure of it. I am not aiming anywhere at anything or anyone.
What Today Was Like
Tonight the moon looks
like a fat twelve year old face.
All day the flowers
of this sunlit day
were so brightly colored I
would have required good
earplugs had they been
singing instead of shining
in the springtime sun.
May 1, 2009 2:18 PM
Contraction
1 week ago
I wanted to say something here. But I wasn't sure exactly what it is.
ReplyDeleteAbout blogging. Because I started blogging in such a nervous, shy way -- not even knowing what it would mean at all to blog. And then I found a community of sorts. A place where I would go and sip my coffee in the morning -- if I were to go somewhere to sip my coffee somewhere. And I found a net. A strong net. Not a huge wide net, but even a few people can have many strong hands. So. I am not sure what I am saying. There is an amusement in the blogging, yes, and some record keeping, I think, of the days... And then there are these connections. And maybe you and I will never meet... but here we are. Friends. And I believe that you have very nearly stood in my living room and carried me through more than one rough day. :)
And those tender places. We all have those. Sometimes small pieces of them come out in poems but usually the author is the only one to know the whole of it.
I love the idea of needing earplugs because of the riot of springtime color. And the thought of flowers singing. I wonder if they do, but we are not sensitive enough to hear.
:)
Yes, that is what I meant when I wrote that the people in these parts are not doing that artifice thing. In other realms the demarcations between cyberself and localself are more remarkable if one could find them.
ReplyDeleteYou tend to gather what you shine, I think. I think that is primary. If you however are accessible to predation then you can also attract predation, something that I think you know something about. I don't know a great deal about all that except to say that over any stretch of days, a site like yours or mine displays tranlucence and attracts people people who yearn after honesty and intimacy.
It is my honor and my responsibility to show up in your living room. It would be a great pleasure to meet but that wouldn't work as a goal, only as a blessing, I think, contingent on other matters. Only in this way does our connection continue as it started, as a chance encounter of dreams in the global soup.
This one is perfect for today. You did inspire me to write; it is a longer one so I have just posted it directly on my blog. Thank you again, dear Christopher.
ReplyDelete