Are there still any Web sites out there that aren’t blogs? I’ve been kind of caught up in blogging lately, so I wouldn’t know. There must be a few. I e-mailed a friend the other day. A very smart, savy tech professional, hosts his own site on his own server and stuff. I asked him if he was into blogging yet. He didn’t know what blogging was; he’d heard of it, just hadn’t investigated yet. I was suprised, but I sort of envied him. He has a hot tub. Is it just me?
Anyway, tonight I can’t seem to get comfortable. I’ve had too much caffeine today, and I’m peaking on sensory overload. I went and laid down on my sofa; no TV, no music, nothing to read or write on. I just laid there for a few minutes, wondering what it would be like to sleep in my living room. I’ve dozed off in there, but never spent the night. My brother did for a while. My second bedroom is an office, so he had an Aero bed in living room. I think it must be a pretty good space for sleep. Two big windows collect the ocean breeze.
The longer I laid there, the more words began to appear like hummingbirds and form themselves into sentences, and this very post insisted itself upon my tired brain. Which is normal. I’m a poet, a writer; been into it for many years. What I’m not sure is normal is this drive to publish my thoughts in a matter of seconds, for all of you to see. I enjoy it, it certainly as it’s applications, not the least of which is keep the traditional media from becoming complacent. But is it sane for those of us not pushing breaking news and innuendo?
I remember I used to spend hours on the financial sites, in the days before the blog. I remember back before that, I’d watch TV and then spend hours writing poetry in a leather journal with a fountain pen; in the days of the comet. Ever read HG Wells?
The Man Who Wrote in the Tower
I SAW a grey-haired man, a figure of hale age, sitting at a desk and writing.
He seemed to be in a room in a tower, very high, so that through the tall window on his left one perceived only distances, a remote horizon of sea, a headland, and that vague haze and glitter in the sunset that many miles away marks a city. All the appointments of this room were orderly and beautiful, and in some subtle quality, in this small difference and that, new to me and strange. They were in no fashion I could name, and the simple costume the man wore suggested neither period nor country. It might, I thought, be the Happy Future, or Utopia; an errant mote of memory, Henry James’s phrase and story of “The Great Good Place” twinkled across my mind, and passed and left no light.
The man I saw wrote with a thing like a fountain pen, a modern touch that prohibited any historical reference, and as he finished each sheet, writing in an easy flowing hand, he added it to a growing pile upon a graceful little table under the window. His last done sheets lay loose, partly covering others that were clipped together into fascicles.
Clearly he was unaware of my presence, and I stood waiting until his pen should come to a pause. Old as he certainly was he wrote with a steady hand. . . .
Ah well, it’s all a matter of balance, you know. Wells was a man a bit ahead of his time; I’m a man a bit behind my own. And since no one takes old bread and goes out to feed the birds anymore, there are bound to be bubbles of unused, surplus Being and unhinged Time floating here and there. I just hit a tough one that doesn’t want to pop. Worse comes to worse, I’ll flip out the lamps and light a candle. I still have my fountain pens, and motes of memory.
Metaphor 