I'm still using your theme and loving it.
I have a longer post or two on the stove, but nothing quite ready yet. But as I try to get a tad better about actually posting (both here and to my main blog), I’m hoping to do more frequent smaller posts here. We’ll see how much difference this actually ends up making.
Despite having been away for so long, I’m certainly glad to see that The Midnight is still jumping. Finding any sense of community seems to get harder and harder by the day, and even though I wouldn’t exactly consider myself a “regular” or whatever, it’s comforting simply to see activity continue. I was also gratified to see that my blog[1] is still on Writer’s Lane; than you for that, m15o!
For all my complaints about lack of community, I have a hard time really *doing* anything about it. I struggle with pessimism under most circumstances, and doubly so when I’m trying to accomplish something whose success isn’t entirely dependent on me. Plus, trying too hard both makes my interacts far less successful and much harder, so often it’s a case of having to keep myself from trying. The welcome I’ve received here means a lot, and I only have been out of pocket for so long due to not really feeling like I had much to say. Hopefully smaller posts like this will help (and not be the same complaints over and over), and I miss writing in general.
[1]You were (hoping to see that word morph to 'are') one of the more significant draws for me.
I've always much to say, but quickly wind up convinced word-mediated mutual understanding is a dream even the most capable pipe would laugh hysterically over the thought of taking on.
Something like that....
That's very good of you to say, thank you! That kind of praise really does mean a lot, even if I'm often unsure what to do with it.
For your second point, there's certainly something to that. There's a great David Foster Wallace quote that has stuck with me:
How can I have all this inside me and to you it's just words?
But even then, that kind of mutual understanding (or at least our attempts at it) is all we have.
Oh my gosh, I was so gloriously lost in "Infinite Jest" back in the day. But then I got busy, and completely forgot about David Foster Wallace until the devastating "I read the news today, oh fuck" seeming eons later.
The last several months - after an ambulance ride in October due to what was eventually diagnosed as "parasomnia" - have paraded similarly themed collections of words past this seeming instance of private awareness suggesting all we are (that last word in contrast to the 'have' of an individuality context) is obscured by the layer of conceptuality non-different from words, i.e. mentation. Pondering that once inspired the phrase "all mental is illness" in this here phantom in the plane of life is but a dream.
But, well, verbal convolution seems so danged fun - at least from the safe distance afforded by so-called "non-attachment".
Anyway, hope your visit evolves unto regularity, then onto tenure, and eventually unto a bunch of us celebrating decade-bounded anniversaries on the theme of "Remember with zampano finally returned to The Pub for good?" :-)
(Unrelated: some "random" blog finder link brought me to a "Justin Hall" installment... and I swear I was reading that guy... decades ago? Wow....)
<later>
(Related: Today's drives to accomplish this and/or that had me passing a front yard political support sign for one "Bukowski", another past, mild writer obsession somewhere along the line....)
Glad to see you.
Thanks very much!
I have to say that I've been really quite surprised (pleasantly, of course) at how warm my reception has been here. I don't have a good sense of my effect on others, including how I come across or whether what I have to say is remotely interesting. This isn't some perverse attempt at humility; I don't think those effects or my writing are *bad*, I just genuinely don't know.