Welcome to my patch of the electronic garden
Hi there. Check out my blog. Leave a residue. Check out my links to some great blogs and other writers, journals, etc. Mazeltov and Namaste.
When I cancelled my first blog, which I posted to for about a year, I never thought I'd miss it or that others might as well. It's flattering that friends have emailed asking where it went, but I think there's something else at work. I think we've got a little bee-mentality going, an insect like way of checking in with each other's minds, one that's devoid of intimacy on the one hand, but keep us connected on the other. I, too, miss checking in on the blogs I had linked on my site.
Is this odd, that we maintain connection by hooking in to each other in this tangential way? Perhaps not, especially for writers/artists/creators who are, paradoxically, often loners and needy of connectedness as well. I know in my domestic life, other than my husband (and thank whatever gods there may be for him), my sensibilities make me feel rather alone, sometimes even alienated (not much talk of poetry happens, for example, at Little League games -- oh yeah, call me a snob, but I've tried. People go blank and talk on as if you'd lapsed into tongues and they're just ignoring you until your meds kick in). I noticed from my own blogging -- chronicling my time at places like Bread Loaf, Colrain, Vermont Studio, etc., a kind of joyful mania in my posts while in the community of artists and writers, and then, well, we all come home, don't we? And blogging kind of kept me connected to that spirit of generativity. Too, people told me, and I guess I ignored it, rudely, and should have known better, that others visited my blog sometimes to read those very posts, the ones about the experiences in communities like BL.
And so I arrive at the beehive metaphor. In real life, bees are in serious danger with Colony Collapse Disorder. Not a joke, though it sounds like one. I've used this now in several poems and pieces of prose. It tantalizes and worries me. They don't know really why bees are dying, but I never forget this: Einstein once said that if bees died, it would take aboout 4 years for mass starvation to begin around the globe. Bees matter.
I planted a bee-butterfly-bird garden when I moved here. Perrenial, sometimes messy, lots of seeds that need overwintering, so it's not a clean, suburban garden, but a sprawling one with lots of critters in it. Here, too, is my little virtual garden (for a "real" one, let's do Second Life, ok?) for my winged writer buddies. Let's do insect-mind together, our little flight paths through the virtual literary community the way we mark out our world, collect a little poetic pollen hither and thither.
If you're here, welcome. Oh, and as I wrote this, my littlest guy, Rudy, stole all the French chocolate (Michael is just back from a trip with students to Paris) out of the fridge and lined them up in the little tent I built this morning in the kitchen. I got him just before he started munching, or so I thought; there's a line of brown dribbled down his little polo. And he's standing here now with chipmunk cheeks and tightly closed lips. Hmm. Well, we all like something sweet, don't we?