A couple of days ago, I was deliberating on the apparent demise of certain voices. Some articulate pockets of resistance. Querulous individuality.
"The curious vilage of Blog houses a fragile temple. Twatter made a dent on it. Bookface corroded its foundation," I wrote.Of course, that is only part of it. The relief is that quite so many voices persist.
Well. I was cataloguing those both currently above and below the radar - outlining the beginning of a tentative line of enquiry - when I inadvertently hit the 'publish' button. A case of spastic finger, no less. My surety of touch is slowly failing; along with my once adequate vision. My gums. My teeth.
The error was quickly contained, I thought. I killed the wayward article and promptly set out to the park to feed some ducks. A ballet of swans, I am told. Dispersing stale bread with impunity.
I had not counted on the RSS feed, though. I was too embroiled with tagged birds. Beaks. The blanket tucked over my baby's feet.
In my own absence - again - my in-tray has become so coagulated, that I can no longer depend on automated devices. Bells and whistles. I scratch my head and dither this way and that. Sniffing my underarms. Following partial scents.
"Sometimes I have questioned its will to live - in and out of DMCA pogroms; snideful interjections - but mainly, I feel, it is the case that every voice is finite. I am not so fond of Social Networking sites, admittedly, I like to hang my own shit out like a flag. An upended bag of washing. If one rallies around it, fine and dandy, if not I'll still wring out the stain of it in the morning. Mark my last stand with (territorial) pissings."You get the gist. Nothing substantial enough to warrant publication. The sort of inane rant I am often sadly prone to in unguarded comments, but generally try to avoid up front.
"Shall we gather at the river ?
Only should the washing machine fail. The tumble dryer fuse in the wall."Still. I got back from the park to find my laundry had been snagged. The sole good thing in this was that it might have prompted the odd hippie bus driver to blow the dust off between the chickens; the hawks; the castrators of prose and poem. The ineffable attraction of cue and recoil.
I have missed the clarity.
Still unresolved is the stubborn silence - too many months now - from @eloh.
There. I have said it, finally.
I hope that you are well. In spite of your daughter's assurances, I have worried. Sometimes it is hard to begin from where one last left off. Chew on the rust.
I have no idea whether you might read this or not.
Don't let the @ssholes grind you down.
5 comments:
The same nasty RSS feed saved me a few weeks back, when a Blogger outage caused me (and pretty much everyone else who posted on that particular day) to lose an entire post. I was able to go to Google Reader and get the whole post back.
But, yeah, I notice that people just hang out on Facebook now, and if someone's Facebook tells them to go read a blog post then they go read it. But it seems like no one really reads blogs directly anymore, we're just extensions of someone else's Facebook content.
Who's this hippie bus driver you're talking about? I hope you don't know any other bus drivers. Actually, I'm now a part time bus administrator. Got that?
"Blogger Outage". Sounds like a Fall song.
I must have been ensconsed in the study when that went down. That, or chasing my tail. I don't know if I've ever configured Google Reader to update me on my own shit or not. If that function is a default. Most of the time I export content as XML. Over time, it grows into something rather unwieldy.
"I notice that people just hang out on Facebook now... we're just extensions of someone else's Facebook content."
It is further proof of diminishing attention spans. Convenience. Harvesting on the fly.
That sort of repackaging is an attractive proposition if one trusts
the conglomerate providing the vehicle - the taxi service - to instant gratification. I don't. Never will entirely.
Like Apple's newly touted iCloud. A vast politbureau in the sky.
Jon:
I stand corrected.
I don't know. 'Part time administrator' ? Doesn't have the same cachet as White Panther CitiLink, but when you paint it in bold strokes the gig sounds fine.
It's heartening that your tour service is no longer quite so exposed to persecution from the civic monopoly.
Even better to know the poetry has not been neglected to idle on bricks.
Yes, I set my Google Reader to update me on my own blog, that way I can see my new posts the way other people see them.
I think "smart phone" useage has a lot to do with the change in the way people use the internet. They want their links now in digest form, so that everything fits on a small screen, and Facebook is one way of doing that I guess.
Post a Comment