We interrupt this blog…

Running down my rss feeds of the latest entries in blogland, I stop to think over the musings of pen and m of why blogs die. Only a fortnight a dropped one from my tool bar there hadn’t been an entry in four months. I reckoned that the person had simply moved on.

I then thought it isn’t why they die but why we think that they have to hang around? Last summer during the CBC strike there was a blog what was run only during the walkout. When the walk out ended it ended. Using the pen part of pen and m are blogs like North American soaps that go on forever, instead of, say, Latin American one where there is a beginning middle and end. Some do run their course.

Then there are the blogs in which I tune out – as I am sure two of the three that are reading this simply because it isn’t interesting anymore – if ever.

On my tool bar I have six standing rss feeds. Some are those who are linked to mine, others have links to areas am fond off – guess – a couple are from Baltimore as there was this twist of coincidence that would only happen with a blog. Of the six only four are worth reading regularly not because the others are boring per se but they seem more like book reports – I am talking here of the diary like blogs not the political ones that I read which I look at in a different light as they are trying to engender debate. The ones that I am having trouble now are the Friendster type blog which could have been a e-mail.

I was reading Michael Winter’s blog – not only because he drinks at the Ship Inn – but because he was a writer and it was set up to have him convey his feelings during the book tour for THE
Reading it though – I haven’t read the book yet – was interesting as there was a style that came from the entries a style that although I didn’t know it as I hadn’t read his first book THIS ALL HAPPENED, was the style of the novel. This brought up the question what is destined for the blog and what for his future novel. Were these notes. He did seem to be working through styles in them.

From a Newfoundland lit link I found two other writers who while are still making entries they BIG WHY. The tour is over he is teaching in Toronto and the blog didn’t officially end – should check it out to see if it has strarted again – but petered out.
seem to be more about the promotion of their writing and saying hello to all their friends who happened to show up at book signings.

I am not saying that these should die but if circulation were one of the ways of keeping a blog alive they would be gone.

Personally I like solipsism coupled with an awareness around one – the constant question “how does one fit in.”

Making the universal personal, I wonder about YYT. It was set up as the postal system in Canada was horrific – it would take weeks to get a letter across the country even worse crossing international boundaries. My handwriting was/is terrible and I couldn’t risk the eyesight of what few friends I had.

I had done a hybrid when I was in Rio de Janeiro in 2001. spending the last hour the internet café was open around the corner from Pça Gal. Osório in Ipanema, blind carbon copying six people about the days exploits – and cursing when once I hit the plug turned off the computer and had to start over again.

I had time, late at night from IDEAS through BETWEEN THE COVERS. I would write down the days events then – and this has a lot to do with it. drive to the airport where at the time there was free wireless internet access to post the entries. I do believe that having to go someplace – the way I would to post a letter kept it going.

The blog would go into hiatus when I wasn’t on the rock. So in essence there would be anything between a fortnight’s to a month’s worth of entries then eleven months of silence.

It wasn’t needed I could use the post office.

Then something happened. I began to stretch the rules. Last winter I wrote – and bored people silly - about the preparations. It was stretched again as I then started writing whenever I was on the road, then when I wasn’t. The justification was other blogs of place where the place was being lost.

However, I was losing something else which hit me while reading pen and m. I was in the Bristol post office posting my books when Terry asked if I needed stamps.

No I didn’t but why not? Driving back to Peasants Pissoir I realised that I hadn’t bought stamps in two months. There were still some 20 odd stamps from the 40 I bought in September. I had missed the Gee’s Bend stamps, was only half way through the super heroes and barely touched the baseball ones.

Blogging being easier, had usurped my mailings. I cannot blame it all on blogging. It was things digital – I realised that while I was making a ton of snaps, I hadn’t been in the darkroom. It was all done digitally.

For some there is nothing wrong with this but for me I want that distance between the making and seeing the image. I am not so divested and this way the outing is brought back.

This semester – I still think in semester. I am only using film – hence no snaps with the entries.

As you can tell the quickness of response digitally adds verbosity, there was a time when I would have had to edit this down to the back of a 7x5 inch postcard. I liked sending the phlogs – photo logs – off. liked chatting to the people at the post office, like wondering when they would arrive and know that at least 30 people would see them – whether they would be read… I am almost sure that less people read the blog than the cards.

I liked the beginning of a subscription service that came by default. I liked getting responses in the post something that the writer had touched, it didn’t matter if it took forever to arrive from Honoka’a, Montpellier, or River Forest. It isn’t quite the same seeing a number after a name in the Safari tool bar, although I do like comment tag and I think that kept this going – that and the serendipitous comments from people who happened upon it.

I didn’t know what went where, how was I to distinguish my postcards, from the blog, from the book that I carry with me. If my real postings have suffered my notes to myself are even worse. One fountain pen broke without me knowing it the other ran out of ink. I cannot remember the last time my second and third fingers were ink stained.

I had forgot all of this and while I don’t expect anyone to be as backward looking as me and thus expect nothing in the post I am going to stop the until now invisible slide toward everything intangible and cyber and return to the hackneyed art challenged books and cards that would be at the mercy of the post and not Google. Flickr was the first to go, although I guess I shall have to add something soon so that I don’t lose the site.

This is returning – more or less - to its original idea – in use when travelling as a back up. If I have your address it things will arrive that have nothing to do with cable offers. This is in hibernation and – I hope – will wake up in January from Sullivan’s Loop in Pouch.



Besides Ubaldo and Ziquinho are back from repair.