Coming to you live again from the Mission. I left work incredibly early today, 3 pm, and got here at 6. Not that I would expect that to happen on a regular basis--there were some hiccups along the way, healthwise. Never have ice cream after four hours sleep and a high maintenance day. And the Meg Ryan in me cringes just thinking about the trip down here.
But, three modes of transit, no riots, and three unplanned stops later, here I am. The world always rights itself when I write. I whip out The Piccolo and plug in words that are in bigger type than it is. I grab a pot of mint tea. I sip water, and juice, and try to re-hydrate.
I don't know how these other writers feel about me, but they are wonderful in my eyes. Not a crush, really, but the regulars are starting to show themselves dedicated. I'm incredibly impressed. Even the new people are wonderful, not just for their newness, but for their tentative determination. Look, they seem to think, these other people come every week, and there's no freakin' read-aloud session. This must be no nonsense. This must be the real thing.
Oh, it is, too. The real thing that I did alone for YEARS. Imagine something so natural to you. Let's say there's an eating of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But no one else in the world eats peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. So you move to another state, hoping to find someone who eats peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Doesn't everyone know how filling eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is? For heaven's sake, and they aren't that hard to make. A good glass of milk, and...but no one eats peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in your home town(s). (I had a Bryan, Ohio address, an Evansport, Ohio phone number, and went to Stryker, Ohio school. Since I was born in Bryan I have to claim that, but I never set foot in Bryan Schools. Confusing...) So, there's step two. Maybe if you went to school, grown-up college school and SPECIALIZED in the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, you would meet other writers. And you do, but you are way WAY outsmarted in the peanut butter and jelly chef-dom. These people are making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with gourmet breads and jelly from their own grapes.
You feel like a freakin' amatuer. Some of them even have peanut butter and jelly sandwich RESTAURANTS, for heaven's sake.
Then someone suggests that you give away the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for a while. You find other PBJ sandwich makers, some with restaurants, some not. You even find some that want to start a club but get too nervous to meet you and make the sandwich.
Until a club comes along that believes in THE SANDWICH so much that it has a group in one part of a region, and two in another. It's just a sandwich, you think. Other people can't imagine eating that sandwich, however. They have never had it before and it seems like too much work to them. You want the whole world to eat and make these sandwiches. But others don't understand.
There are things I don't like to do. I'm not a big "American Idol" fan. I'm not much of a gamer. But there are SO MANY things that I love to do. I love to teach myself stuff. I love to discover new things. I love to plunge in. AND I LOVE TO WRITE ABOUT IT.
*****
Having said this, I am still surprised when people say that they read me. In my side of the sight-scope, only three or four people read me, and only when the seventh moon is in the seventh house. When two or three people come to me at once, though, and they weren't the people I expected to read me, then I step back, virtually, aghast. Wasn't it just yesterday that I started this little experiment in blogging? And that experiment was only to keep in touch with other people back in the states, so I could be lazy and write ONE letter instead of four, and then the people who knew about the blog didn't read it anyway. The only people who read it were other writers, or people who like the way I wrote. Still small, still select.
I forget that I have been at this for nearly four years. Others have been blogging even longer than that. My roommate has been at it since the early 2000's. It's not a great accomplishment, these blogs of mine. But it stands, still.
Smoke or no. Riots or no. Recession or no. Republican or Democrat POTUS, here it is.
There's the danger. I may be repeating myself. ;)
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