BLOGS

I get a lot of great feedback from this blog, mostly in the form of e mails, and I just want to say I appreciate it.

I know I’m late to this game, and that there are now millions upon millions of others. But in many ways, this does what writing always did for me, only more efficiently in some ways, and that is, give me a place to articulate my perspective on the multiple subjects running through my head at any given moment.

I’ve always thought of myself as a grapho-maniac (if that’s the correct term for someone who cannot NOT write, constantly) and have been writing on a daily basis, sometimes many times throughout the day, since I learned how.

So, blogging is a great addition to the many other ways I write down my thoughts and ideas and experiences etc. And the almost instant feedback makes it particularly satisfying.

Unfortunately it isn’t for everyone. And I can understand that too. It isn’t always for me either. Which is why I’m also writing several books on a daily basis, as usual, and doing other kinds of writing (from e mails and postcards to articles and book-length poems etc.)

But blogging has become an integral part of my day, and reading other blogs, or viewing them, as well.

Which is why I have that list to the right about blogs I dig. I check in on them on a daily basis. It doesn’t take long, as most people are a lot less prolix than I am.

But, for instance, Jimsonweed’s particular perspective, “trying to photograph all of L. A.” beautifully reflects what I find so attractive about the blogger -K-‘s poetry, so far unpublished—the particulars of place and time and individual, intelligent, perspective.

And my friend Alameda Tom’s coolbirth, the same quirky individualism that I can identify with for all kinds of reasons, including our shared pasts, but mostly dig the uniqueness of his Northern California perspective, like his post today about the local goats being shot! (As well as his techy take on all things internet, something I don't share given my techno-dyslexia)

Or Nightlight's post today on Paul McCartney's latest output, from a man who is not only one of the most articulate and intelligent of bloggers I've read, but also is multi-talented—including being an accomplished musician and therefore able to give a critical perspective beyond the usual intellectual-only take. I love the individual voice on these blogs!

I felt the same way about the two blogs of Nina’s, which unfortunately, for me at least, she has grown tired of and has removed from the net (so I removed them from my list). To read on an almost daily basis the thoughts of a young woman, obviously intelligent but more importantly completely candid and uniquely her own person, was for me like reading a short chapter in an ongoing novel every day. One of the delights of reading that hooked me into it at an early age, that wanting-to-see-what-was-going-to-happen-next. Not in the way of a well-plotted conventional novel, but in the way of the kinds of novels that were more about fictionalizing personal experience and commenting on it, ala Henry Miller or Jack Kerouac. Only no longer with the need to “fictionalize” it.

And the other blogs I have there as well, (all I think unique, which is why I list them, no two alike) I check in and learn from every day. Just like I read a few chapters and a few poems from several different books every night before I fall asleep. Or read from different magazines and papers every morning over breakfast or on the train into Manhattan when I have to be there.

I couldn’t imagine living life without all that reading and writing, and adding the blogs to it hasn’t given me less time for “real life”—whatever that may be—but actually more.

As has always been proven true for me, the more I do, the more I seem to be able to do. So reading and writing have never taken away from the rest of my life, but only added to it.

A big thank you, therefore, to the bloggers I mention to the right, and to all the others I’ve been turned on to or stumbled on, and to those of you who check mine out now and then. It’s a pleasure exchanging views and ideas and experiences and etc. with all of you.

And let’s hope Nina rejoins us again some day. Meanwhile, as my friend Selby always said (and others are now copying, which would delight him) “Give a good day.”