Closed Blogging: Why Bother?

A couple of years ago I closed off a former blog.  I had written so much pain and rage and frustration into that one and I couldn't see a way of rehabilitating it.  But I couldn't just delete it, either.  It's still there; I am the only person who can read it.  Sometimes that will happen to a blog I used to casually read; I'll go there and the writer has shut that valve, sometimes forever.

Blogs are funny things; they are journals for most of us who write them, ways of communicating with the self.  As I type, I don't usually plan out what I'm going to say, and often I just have an undefined something that I need to think about.  But they are public, and there is an illusion of privacy being breached.  I suppose that illusion can be pretty convincing sometimes.

I don't actually have any IRL*  who write blogs the way I do.  I know some online folks who write, but most people guard their secrets their privacy pretty carefully.   Which I respect, but it's amazing to me those folks who write all those details, their lives, their disappointments and personal issues.  I respect both types of folks-- those who write it all out, sharing the warts & all, and those who keep their privacy as close as they can.

I love that my friends and family can keep up with at least a little bit of what I'm thinking through this medium; I wish that I could, in turn, keep up with some of them, as well, in a similar fashion.  Since I don't know very many people who blog, for realz, the blogs I do read are folks who I "met online".  I love to read a story about their day, see a cool photo, step a minute out of my own head.

Lately, talking on the phone seems so invasive, so hard to do right.  I can't unsay something on the phone, highlight a phrase that didn't come out right and retype it better, so it's less painful, nicer. So I don't give away too much.  So that I do it right.  I find myself, with some people in phone conversations, not doing it right.  Screwing it up.  Wishing I could start over.

But I am also well aware that reading a blog entry does not mean I know anything about this person in more ways than superficially.  I know what they are writing, what they are telling me, but I don't know everything.  It's a kind of connection, and sometimes I have felt I know someone better through the blog world than I do some people in that "real life" that I speak to every day.  Just as when I write a blog, I don't say things that I don't feel like sharing.  What I share is honestly far more superficial than people realize, I guess.  It seems like there is nothing I won't write.  I've written about physical pain, emotional pain, love, life, hate, rage, disappointment.

I write things when I am trying to figure them out.  Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't.  I wish I could give this gift to others, the ability to share this or that detail but not too much.  Maybe it's kind of a form of meditative practice; trying to know myself well enough to make the things that are selfish or greedy or wrong over into something better.  It's like my Tarot card readings.  I don't pretend to KNOW through magic or con-artistry what the cards REALLY mean; I just lay them down, tell you what the traditional symbolism would be and let you figure it out for yourself.  What do you THINK the giant head with the body of a cricket from your dream really means?  Your interpretation there is more important than my own.

I want to reach out, to take you by the hand, to give some kind of comfort from grief when that is needed, some joy when that is the thing that is called for.  Something good.  Pull out the good crystal goblets and expensive champagne and chocolates and share joy.   

Sometimes, when I blog, I can do that and more.

But what I have here today is a winter blue sky, windy, isolated clouds that imagination cannot shape into anything other than cold cloud, and trees that are mostly bare and shadows playing on my neighbor's roof. 

His Eyes

One of the things I remember most about the early days of my marriage to Andrew was how he would look at me with his intensely blue eyes, wide, serious.  Like he was memorizing me, and wanted to get it right.  There are more permanent crinkles around the corners of those eyes now, and his eyebrows get so bushy sometimes I have to trim them or he ends up looking like Lloyd Briges in Airplane!.  The photo is us, about five years ago, New Year's eve, and his eyes are the violet-y color of a man who has had a lot to drink.  ;)

I've seen those eyes pensive and scanning the wreckage of The USS Arizona in Hawaii, squinting in the almost too bright to stand sunlight of Alaska near the glacier.  I've seen them smiling at me as we kissed under that kissing bridge in Paris.  When we were having the kiddos and I was wide-open cesearean while he looked on, I could tell he was sort of woozy because his eyes were waaaay bluer than normal in his pale, about-to-pass out face. 

His eyes have always been a barometer to the things he doesn't say.

When we met, and he was a student aviator in Pensacola, he wore the ugly wire-rimmed aviator glasses he wears now.  I liked him because he was a little nerdy and didn't care about those uncool glasses, glasses they used to call "Birth control" glasses.  Weirdly enough, his and my eye prescription are almost exactly the same, and in the last few years, his eyes have not tolerated contacts, so I've mostly seen those ugly glasses.  He hasn't been vain enough to care to buy more stylish ones and I haven't really minded but...

However.  This week (tomorrow) we are going to Texas, where he will get LASIK to fix those pretty blue eyes so that he will see as well as I do now. (He has to have it done by a military doctor or lose his flight status). It will be a long week, and I worry way more about him getting the procedure than I worried about myself. 

But it will be nice to see those deeply blue eyes without anything in the way again.  Waking up in the morning, crinkles at the edges, eyes that speak to me of memory today and tomorrow and today again.   

annoying neighbors

Today, it is we who are the above.  I feel really bad about it, to tell you the truth. 

We are draining our swampy pool. 

We tried so hard this year to keep it from turning swampy.  We cleaned leaves and leaves and leaves.  Tried to keep the chlorine content working enough with all those damned (like, five trees worth) of leaves in it.  I managed til sometime in mid December to make it.  But then, it just got too hard.  And too cold. 

And it's been getting really green in the last week because it got warmer.

So we rented the drain and it's been spewing algae infested water all afternoon, and being noisy as all hell, and smelling like gasoline, too.  And it's getting close to being done, but not yet. 

We plan to buy a pool cover to try to combat this problem for next year.  We had meant to get one this year but it's harder than you would think to get one. 

But I'm really self-conscious about it and feel bad for our neighbors having to hear the "rrwawar" of the drain pump still going.  Hopefully it will be done soon so it will hush.  Sorry!  Sometimes, your neighbors are aware that they are being pains in the butt but there really doesn't seem to be any not irritating way to handle the issue.  And you don't want my pondy-swampy pool in your vicinity, a perfect breeding ground for many many mosquitos, either. 

Sigh.  Sorry!!

How it Was

there is no place for what is missing here
no empty spot to poke
like a child with a lost tooth

there is no thing to be done
no weeping or rending
of clothing

there is only this silence
this refusal to be there
there is only this word
that will stay unspoken

and yet I search anyway
send out feelers
remember a time
when there was something there

and I can't, for the life of me,
be sure of when that last was.

I pat myself down, like
someone
looking for lost keys.

I just had them. Right?

There is no way to say this.

You are gone. 
And the sky is still blue.

Is STILL Not Too Sensitive!!

Last winter, teaching the freshman seminar class I did, we worked a bit on the Meyer's Briggs personality spectrum.  I am, and have always been, an INFP.  When I was looking for info for the little slide show I did with it, I found this cool graphic. I've even written about it before, apparently, cause when I went to look for the graphic, I found a post about this, by me.  Duh!  :) 

It makes me laugh because I AM totally too sensitive.  I take things way personally.  It's not that I think the world revolves around me, not by any means, but I overanalyze EVERYthing.  I think "what did that guy mean, when he cut me off" or "what did she say about redheads" or whatever.  Everything has to be the universe attempting to smash my feelings. 

I know this is self-centered.  I think it's just the way I'm wired, to expect to be hurt by things that other people say "dude, get over it; it's nothing personal."  And the intellectual part of me knows this, but the emotional little girl in the picture does not believe the intellect.

So anyway.  I will go now and get some lunch and perhaps a new book and NOT obsess over slights that may or may not be directed towards me.  I am NOT too sensitive. 

Or maybe just a little.