Hello again. Just a brief update. I’m still cleaning things here. I’ve deleted broken links, well, most of them. I haven’t cleaned the sidebar carefully yet. I’m looking for new gifs, new images, new things . . . The theme is temporary. I’m still mulling over a few choices, trying to decide if I want a complete departure from my old look, or something similar.
To that end, if you’re visiting, could you take a sec and just let me know if you like this style, or if you find something like my old theme easier to read. Of course, if you have completely different suggestion of something else, I’d love to know. Also, I’m thinking about resurrecting a couple of my regular posts like Two for Tuesday, and Friday leftovers; plus, I’ve thought of something interesting for future Mondays.
This major makeover is harder than the other ones, having been absent for so long. So many new things to try on WordPress, not the least of which is the option to upgrade to get rid of ads on my site, something I’d really like to do. Of course, the whole nature of blogging has morphed mightily during my absence. I haven’t even explored if people still write like this or post my predictable wordy blongs. Granted, I’m just not cut out for a limited number of characters—not to mention my complete aversion to that particular medium because of 45’s insistence of governing via Twitter. I mean really………
Anyway, just wanted to post a quick update, no flora or fauna to accompany. Hope you are all well out there in the ether. Take very good care of yourselves.
More later. Peace.
An appropriate oldie but goodie, The Rolling Stones, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”
“If with pleasure you are viewing Any work a man is doing; If you like him or you love him, tell him now. Don’t withhold your approbation Till the preacher makes oration And he lies with snowy lilies o’er his brow.
For no matter how you shout it, He won’t really care about it; He won’t know how many teardrops you have shed. If you think some praise is due him, Now’s the time to slip it to him, For He cannot read his tombstone when he’s dead.”
~ Clyde H. Box
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Many thanks to those of you who continue to follow and subscribe to this blog. Some of you I have never heard from, and some of you I hear from once in a while, and some of you I hear from frequently. You will never know how much your comments and observations—big or small—mean to me. It affirms that this ongoing project is not for naught.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Here’s an excerpt from the WordPress report:
The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 160,000 times in 2013. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 7 days for that many people to see it.
“Double Image,” August Strindberg (1892, oil on canvas)
“The paper I write on or you write on, every word we write, every cross and twirl of the pen, and the curious way we write what we think, yet very faintly . . . In them realities for you and me—in them poems for you and me . . . In them themes, hints, provokers.” ~ Walt Whitman
"Wonderland" (1894, oil on canvas)
Rarely do I know what I am going to write when I sit down at this keyboard. I may have an idea generated from a dream or something that I have read in the news, but most of the time it’s more a matter of touching the keys and letting the words come out. No great creative genius is involved. Rather, it is more a matter of need: I need to write, to release, to ponder, to construe, to evoke. I need to do this as naturally as I need to breathe.
That is my reality, and truthfully, it has always been this way. I have been writing about things since I was very young, before I even knew how to string letters together to form words. I would put pencil to whatever scraps of paper I could find in the house, and I would write. Of course what I wrote made no sense to anyone but me, but I knew what I was saying. And I had such a need to share my thoughts that I would take these scraps of paper and slip them under the doors of my parents’ neighbors in the large apartment house in which we resided in London.
Some of the people knew that these notes were from me, but others were confused by the nonsensical missives that appeared under their doors with no regular schedule. The doorman in our building knew what I was doing, so he ever so kindly explained to the confused tenants that it was the little girl in apartment 13 who had been writing to them.
Then when I went to school and learned how to form words, I wrote more. I wrote poems, letters, stories. But my dream at that time was not to become a writer. I wanted to be a hairdresser . . .
“O, how incomprehensible everything was, and actually sad, although it was also beautiful. One knew nothing. And sometimes it seemed that something never seen yet long desired was about to happen, that a veil would drop from it all; but then it passed, nothing happened, the riddle remained unsolved, the secret spell unbroken, and in the end one grew old and looked cunning . . . or wise . . . And still one knew nothing, perhaps, was still waiting and listening.” ~ Hermann Hesse, “Narcissus and Goldmund”
"Baby's First Cradle" (1901, oil on canvas)
In many ways, this blog is like those indecipherable scraps of paper: I know what I’m trying to say, but not everyone who reads my words can discern my meaning. That’s okay, though. The beauty of blogs is that readers can just close the window if they do not find the post interesting, or appealing, or if the subject matter is not something that coincides with their personal beliefs.
I’m not trying to please anyone but myself. In the beginning of this blogging stuff, I was more self-censoring, not wanting to offend anyone who happened to be reading. I wrote in more general terms, putting less of myself into my posts. Over the months, though, that changed, as I had thought that it might. My persona began to creep into my posts more and more. My life, my family, all of it, became fodder. So much so that now my posts are a virtual doorway into my life.
Is this a good thing? Perhaps not. Will I change it? Probably not. Do I regret this progression? A bit.
“The swarm of words,
and little stories
are just to loosen you
from where you are stuck.” ~ Shitou Xiqian
"The Wave VII" (1901, oil on canvas)
When I first heard about blogs—personal online journals that are available to anyone and everyone—I must admit to being personally appalled. What kind of person puts his or her life online for the world to see? It just didn’t seem right to me, someone who had always hidden my journals from other people, seeing them as both highly personal and private.
Then a few years later I decided to create a MySpace page. I played a bit with the internal blog aspect of the page, which made me realize that the whole social networking thing was really just a collective blog—people visiting each other’s sites, sharing opinions, leaving notes, posting pictures. Then I was given the assignment to create a web page for one of my publishing classes. The site could be about anything; there were no parameters.
I decided to create a site on which people could create a community poem. I called it The Poem Makers. In concept, it was a pretty creative idea (or so I thought): I would write the first line of the poem, and then anyone who visited could add a line and/or comment on the poem in progress. As part of the site, I wanted to include a blog page on which participants could post ongoing commentary about the project, poetry, whatever. My search for a blog page led me to WordPress.
Essentially the project was disastrous, mostly because I didn’t know enough HTML to create an interactive site, that and the fact that I knew relatively little about promoting a site. I eventually abandoned the website, but I took that experience and decided to keep going with the blog. My first post was in February 2008, which means that I’ve been doing this for over two years.
“Within all of us is a varying amount of space lint and star dust, the residue from our creation. Most are too busy to notice it, and it is stronger in some than others. It is strongest in those of us who fly and is responsible for an unconscious, subtle desire to slip into some wings and try for the elusive boundaries of our origin.” ~ K. O. Eckland, Footprints on Clouds
"Coastal Landscape" (1901, oil on canvas)
In that time I have gone from basic posts about nothing at all to posts that include images and music and cover a range of topics. I like how I have progressed. I know so much more now than I did when I began; in particular, I realize that bloggers tend to congregate in communities and that if you want other people to read and comment on your blog, then you need to read and comment on other people’s blogs—regularly.
I have also noticed a change in my writing style: Whereas when I was writing for publication, I was much more sparse with my words, never using five words when three will do, always choosing the simpler word over the multisyllabic one. Now that I’m writing without an editor, I tend to be more verbose. I do edit myself, but anyone who writes knows the limitations of such a thing. I do go on and on, and it’s an indulgence that gives me pleasure. I also take more liberties with punctuation than before. Always a stickler for grammar, I am merciless with a red pen when it comes to editing or grading someone else’s work. Too bad I cannot admit to being as rigorous with my own.
Oh well . . .
“The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.” ~ Elias Canetti
"Aleja" (1903, oil on canvas)
I remember how excited I was when the number of hits that I had received went past 200. It was a time for great rejoicing. I am now well past 300,000 hits, but I still love to see who is visiting, what they are reading, how they got here. I don’t know that I’ll ever tire of paying attention to my statistics as they serve as my validation, for now.
I suppose all of this boils down to a few simple facts: I have come to love the freedom of blogging. I sometimes resent feeling as if I have to post until I realize that no one is making me do so. I no longer feel as if blogs are an obscene violation of privacy spurred on by the blogger’s own need for exposure. I take pleasure in reading blogs that are written well, or are visually appealing, or are in line with my own sensitivities.
For now, this whole thing is an open-ended experiment. Who knows where it will take me, but I’m going to enjoy the ride while I can.
More later. Peace.
All images are by Swedish novelist and playwright August Strindberg, who turned to painting during times of crisis in which he felt unable to write.
Lola's Curmudgeonly Musings 