A few months ago I was having such
a nice time going to a weekly night time writing group, hanging with people who
write and everyone reads and listens and talks. It was led by Dori Ostermiller,
of Writers in Progress in Florence, MA, and was luscious and informative.
But I wasn't well enough and had to stop. Oh
well. I write all the time anyways, things knocking at the door, murmuring to
me, waiting in a queue for their turn, meaningful or meaningless, all sweet and
muttering and waiting a turn to come out.
Comes from a childhood of silence,
I sometimes think, all this streaming outward...
Then I remembered I had a few years
ago posted one small photo and piece of meandering on a free blog thing. I
forgot where it was. I searched by my name, and there it was, sitting there,
quietly, all alone, funny little thing.
I thought, well, I can pull back the
curtain and let the stream of chiming packages get unpacked and stretch out and
sing a little and then sit someplace where possibly i won't forget them so
easily again. So I did.
I began putting some of the new
little crop-ups of song and dance on it and some old ones that called to be
included and slowly got accustomed to placing some of whomever comes tumbling
out...some of them...in this place, a place called...a blog.
Oh, i used to wonder why on earth anyone had one of those. All those
photos of your self flossing your teeth and describing your minute aspects of
your day the way I imagine Twitting (I stubbornly call it Twitting) might....but
since that first deposit of words and pictures, I had begun to discover some of
the joys of ...blogs.
I mean, there are so many
different types. Paintings and poems and creative
ideas and silly funny ideas and
gardens and history and the enormous variety of work and effort and
theory.
Plus, when I have the energy, I am
irretrievably curious and caring about lives. Your life. Your spider's life. So
many lives. .
I often think that if I could, I
would be the person on Forrest Gump's bench, only I would sit there and listen
and carefully look through your box of
photos of your life, then ask you questions.
You all know, being on a computer
at this moment or a phone, you all are familiar with this, all the information
and blogging and tweeting and websites and all.
And so came a time when I thought,
Okay, I get this. Some blogs are not for my consumption and some are delicious,
and it's that way for everyone. Got it.
So as I rambled along, listening to when
something wanted to slip by and stream out and be plucked up and placed there,
I began to realize there were all these buttons in the blog place when you have
a blog.
I mean, it is a shock. Don't laugh.
There is actually a 'Stat page'. I said to myself, man, that has to mean
statistics. Wow. What the heck. So clicked on it, and wow is right.
It told you how many people, people you really
don't KNOW, somehow wandered their way onto your little spot of earth, of
internet, with your little tiny sploggletss that called to be let out, like
impatient tumbling puppies, so you did..with a bit of forethought, like, don't
post your beloved getting into the shower or your kids because that wouldn't be
good or blab their names or such....but there I am, anyways, and you can push a
button for 'ever since you started this blog' and it tells you that thousands
of people have looked at it. Hmm. Wow.
Then you push another button, and
it tells you all the countries. I had to mull that over for a week or so.
Right? Like, if you are sitting in one country, and you suddenly discover that
thousands of people you don't know have been perusing your little small words
and pictures and they are from the U.S. and Britain and Hong Kong and Germany
and Russia and and Japan and Canada and Italy and Venezuela and Australia and Saudi Arabia???
Right?
Then you say, hey, wow. Here I am,
a 60 year old person, kids grown, with four cats, a sweet old dog and a
beloved, living in the country, going to work and coming home and taking care
of myself and writing and taking photos and wandering the hills, there are
thousands of people from all these countries looking at this stuff.. its kind
of mind blowing.
Not that it doesn't happen all over the
Internet, which is partly why the Internet is so incredible. The best and the
worst, right? So many options.
Then I see another little button
that says NOW and it tells you how many people are looking at what little biddy
things you wrote ...right now.
Then I sit there going, well. Okay.
What a trip. Oh, and you all probably know all this stuff already...but it tells
you something called 'pageviews by browsers' and then 'pageviews by operating
systems'. Which kind of seems almost as invasive as when you have your iphone
on the internet-thing as someone drives you down the road, and on the screen
comes all your neighbor's tags for their internet connections...popping up on
your screen. But that's life, isn't it? All this stuff.
So , anyway, I have slowly become used
to this idea. That when I have a delicious time enjoying some amazing
historical or cultural or political or artistic blog, I now am part of their
statistics.....similar to when you look at photos and begin to remember that
the people in the photo are responding ....to the person taking the photo. That
look on their faces...is for that person with the camera.
Same with me looking at your blog.
Same as you looking at mine.
I'm slowly starting to adjust to
this brave new world of bloggery, of mine and yours and things called 'stats'
and all that stuff.
And in my Acupressure/Herbal
practice for the past 25 years, which is all over the internet anyway, clients
have forever wanted to have photos and little worded snippets on the waiting
room walls...of some cool place I went, etc... curiously curious, they always
have been. I realized over the years that as I confidentially listen to them,
week after year, to their dreams and wishes and pain and health improvement and
tears, so they wait for my photos and descriptions of places and times and
events also.
The last thing that confused me
about having a blog...was that thing where when you post something...and suddenly
your 'stats' go flying up. I finally said to my husband, ‘Oh, so people
'subscribe' and when I plunk something there, it goes flying off to them right
away and shows up as bunch of people suddenly looking. Right?'
And he laughs, smiles, and says
"Yeah, that's how it would work!!!' And I laugh too, awash with the wonder
of modern life.
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