Tag Archives: Blogging

Propinquity

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Propinquity

There we sit,
side by side
again and again.
You in black,
I perpetually in vivid red,
slightly aslant
to your perfect
upright.

How is it
that we could meet
time and again,
liking the same things
not only so often,
but also with
such perfect timing
that it places us
side by side–

united so often
in proximity
and preference
in this cyber world,
when we will never meet
in the other.

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Don’t worry, Mark–I’m not about to turn stalker.  I’m just continually amazed at how often you view a blog just before I do.  We must be on the same erratic schedule.

The Old Ones Deign to Tweet

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The Old Ones Deign to Tweet
(With Character Counts)

Immanuel Kant
on the subject of building “platforms” for
blogs, websites, Twitter accounts or Facebook:

. . . the favor of the multitude is seldom got by honest and lawful means.
Seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them. (140)
*

Charles Dickens
on the subject of tweeting, texting , e-mailing, or other social media:

Electric communication will never be a substitute
for the face of someone who with their soul
encourages another person to be brave and true. (140)
*

Mark Twain:
On the subject of those (like me) who resist
tweets, texts and ubiquitous handheld devices:

One who stops learning is old, whether 20 or 80.
One who keeps learning stays young.
The greatest thing you can do is keep your mind young. (140)
*

Me:
And, a further comment about those tweets:

Mind without heart conveys no wisdom.
Where brevity is the only rule,
larger truths may be lost. (96)

We must remember that “character” has two meanings
and count our truths as closely
as we count our keystrokes. (109)

The World Is Too Much With Us

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People here are funny. They work so hard at living they forget how to live.”
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)

The World Is Too Much With Us

How was life when we didn’t know everything?  Back when there was no TV and when news got shared once a day on the radio and once on the door stoop in the morning?  We were so busy with our own lives that we didn’t spend every minute of every day bound up in the ills of the world.

Violence was a neighborhood game of cops and robbers, but nobody really ever identified more with the robbers.  It was more a game like kick the can, where you were trying to keep something away from the other side.  Violence was not the point and when I look deep, I know that a game of cowboys and Indians was no more an expression of prejudice than listening to a World Series game of the Yankees against the Dodgers was.

To rephrase a quote from Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), I have to say that people of the twenty-first century are funny.  They work so hard at living they forget how to live. I include myself in their ranks.  I am so tied to my computer that I panicked recently when I spilled a Coke on it and had to go a few days without.  My day felt strangely empty even though I had an entire ocean and beach spread out before me and a small town full of people to talk to, a porch full of art materials.  But, I’d become so accustomed to my blogging world and even to talking throughout the day via Skype to a very dear friend, that I didn’t know what to do with a day that was just a day in one place with one set of people around me.

Existence has become a thing that has no value unless I can write about it and I don’t seem to be able to write anymore unless I am writing into a computer and sending experience out into the world.  I am committing, perhaps, even more of a sin than those teenagers glued to their hand devices, texting their friends. They, at least, are connected to someone,  whereas I simply talk to my computer and send out copies later.

Who is most at fault is not the point.  The point is that connection with the world at large that keeps some of us from a simple and private connection to the world immediately around us.  We know so much about so many things we really don’t have much control over, that we have become voyeurs. The entire world has become grounds for our gossip.  We are fascinated by the gory details, shocked but in a sort of fascinated daze that keeps us many times from realizing that this is more than a movie. This is reality.  Someone’s pain.  We feel it for those seconds and minutes and hours and days that the horrible action stays in the headlights of this rushing vehicle that is our world, but then we pass on and it is as though one program has ended and the next begins.  We think about world events in episodes.  Off with the old one, on with the newest slaughter or murder or coup or genocide or monster storm or hostage situation.

In the meantime the minor tragedies around us sometimes go unnoticed.  We are so fixated on the stories of major tragedies on the other side of the world that we forget the real people and small dramas going on around us.  We watch nature shows on television while ignoring what wildlife still exists around us.   We suffer the passion and pangs of romance as onlookers.  Observing the great chefs of the world takes up time we could have been baking chocolate chip cookies.  Watching Honey Boo Boo in horror becomes a punishment in comparison to  sitting in a playground, watching children living the world in real time.

Yes, what I write is hyperbole, but I think it is true, to a varying degree, of most of us connected to the technical world. It is like a horrible accident passed on the hightway that we are told by our mothers to look away from.  Who can resist?  No matter how much the gory scene may invade our dreams and turn them into nightmares, we cannot look away. And now with TV and the Internet, we could spend 24 hours a day watching such horrors. And often do.

There is such a thing as being too connected to too large a world.  This is why I disconnected the dish network and cable years ago.  The bad news still leaks through, as does the good news, but in quantities I can take and that leave time for real experience and a perhaps misplaced faith in the world and human goodness and yes, even my own goodness.  I am beginning to try to spend more time away from the computer–to simplify, if that is possible in this busy cluttered mess of a life I’ve once more collected around me.

I find the valuable elements slipping away and less energy to collect more around me.  Friends die and move away both physically or emotionally.  This is the process of life.  But it is also the process of life to stay engaged in a real way and to fight for meaning and value in our lives.  This should not be so hard.  There should not be so much to plow through to get to ourselves and what is really important.  The Mr. Deeds quote, in modern context, might be altered to read, “We work so hard at observing and being in contact with the world at large  that  we forget how to live in that world.”

The Prompt: Silver Screen–Take a quote from your favorite movie — there’s the subject of your post. Now, write!

Citing or Writing

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Citing or Writing

Two little Internetters sitting on a log.
One is a writer. The other reads a blog.
The one who reads it learns a bit,
but I’d rather be the one who’s writ;
for there are parts of me inside
that like to run away and hide

and the only way I get to be them
is if I take the time to see them.
But they are canny, reclusive, meek;
and so unless I prod and seek,
they stay hidden, sealed away–
never seen in the light of day.

Somehow, blogging brings them out.
The Daily Prompt, without a doubt,
seems to catch them by surprise
and lures them from behind my eyes
to meet the screen–to shine and glow
and tell me what I need to know.

So if I want to follow others,
or entertainment is my “druthers,”
I’d go on reading other blogs–
other writers on other logs.
But since my need is to know myself–
to lure the rest of me from the shelf,

I’ll make the choice that’s most exciting.
If I had to choose, I’d keep on writing.
For if blogging is a game,
sitting on the bench is lame.
Those who write just keep on fighting
while those who read are just reciting.

 

The Prompt: If you had to choose between either writing a blog or being able to read the blogs of others, which would you choose?

Writing Habit

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The Prompt: Winning Streak—What’s the longest stretch you’ve ever pulled off of posting daily to your blog? What did you learn about blogging through that achievement, and what made you break the streak?

Writing Habit

I’ve written every day since April 1, 2014, except for yesterday, when I couldn’t get online all morning. I then got involved in working with the illustrator of my next book, who came to visit for two days to work on the covers. They are now finished, except for the lettering, and he’s done a wonderful job. Thrilling! I actually did answer yesterday’s prompt today and I’ve answered every other WordPress Daily Prompt since May, when I switched over from the NaPoWriMo prompt. I have not, however, managed to post a pingback to the WordPress Prompt page 3 or 4 times in the past and have not now been able to do so for the past 7 days, which is frustrating. I wonder if anyone reading this knows what the problem is and why some can trackback/pingback and others are unable to?

Blogging and the WordPress and other prompts have given me two things: a daily audience and pressure/permission to make writing a priority. I write every day, first thing, with very few exceptions. I now exercise in the late afternoon instead of the morning, giving me the entire morning to write if I need it. If I have activities, I get up early to write and sit waiting for the prompt like the parent of a teenager out after curfew.

I also sometimes post things I’ve written as a draft, waiting for a prompt to which they will relate. This serves as a backup as well, but so far I haven’t had any writer’s block. I think writing every day helps to prime the creative flow. I expect it to be there, so it always is. I also try not to censor myself. It’s necessary to let thoughts flow naturally. One can always delete or edit things later, but sometimes what feels not up to par when being written actually ends up being good. We need to give ourselves a chance and to be as supportive of ourselves as we are to our fellow writers.

Hard Drive

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The Prompt: Buyers, Beware? The year is 2214, and your computer’s dusty hard drive has just resurfaced at an antique store. Write a note to the curious buyer explaining what he or she will find there.

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My Retablo, “Autobiography”

Hard Drive

If you long for mystery,
poems, facts and history,
long perambulations
and wild exaggerations,
recipes and letters and
episodes of Homeland,
Elementary, Sherlock, Friends,
a blogging site that never ends,

Emails, Youtube, Facebook notes,
starts of novels, copied quotes,
OkCupid pictures of
possibilities for love,
notes from nice guys, threats from creeps,
notes from guys who play for keeps,
friends who only write when drunk,
chain e-mails, jokes and other junk,

two hundred drafts of my third book,
(each one different, have a look),
kids stories and their illustrations,
the Christmas plans of my relations,
photographs of my whole life—
its happiness and pain and strife—
some successes but also follies,
fireworks, insects, gardens, dollies,

travel snaps and friendly faces,
rooms at home or foreign places,
birds and children, beaches, skies,
the camera lens is true and wise
and not as given to fraud and lies
as writings filtered through the eyes
of one who feels the joys or pains
of what she witnesses, then deigns

to try to change her reader’s mind
to accord with the type or kind
of thoughts she carries deep inside:
pride’s cutting edge, love’s waning tide—
things lovely, funny, jarring, rare.
So read this hard drive if you dare,
but if you fear a life laid bare,
I have one word for you. Beware.

Pressed for Words

10 Replies

lifelessons-stats

Pressed for Words

9:22 on a Thursday night,
keeping my MacBook screen in sight.
I agree, it’s superficial.
I should do something beneficial;
but instead, I sit and count
as my blog views slowly mount.

Today, so far, one hundred four.
(Yesterday’s count and then one more.)
With some hours left , I do not know
how much higher it might go.

Yesterday I took great care
to write an essay on my hair.
(About my hair, I should explain,
to write “on” hair would be a pain,
for in the shower or under rain,
my words would go right down the drain!)

Judy, stop!!! Get back on track!
(I’m turning into such a hack.)
Today I sluffed off all day long—
just posted Leon Redbone’s song.
Yet here I am at 10:03
with three more viewers viewing me.
Two more hours and then no more
to tally up this blog day’s score.
Already, though, its clear to me
what the lesson learned must be.

It’s clear this truth I must compute.
My viewers like me better mute!!!