Write About Everything

The best advice that need never have been given.  I can look back on times when, by some device, I felt free enough just to write.  To write and write and write in something I shouldn't venture to call "stream of consciousness," and really, I should say, to type, not to write, though what is that but semantics?  I write with a pen and paper, I type with a keyboard and a liquid crystal display, but I've written, no matter, haven't I?  Wind-whipped nights with nothing but gallons of ink and hot brown earth, warm summer evenings with noise all around me, drowned by the thoughts in my head.  Writing for me is such an experience, such an act, because of how intimate it is.  For those lucky of us (I must say this as there are plenty of us in this world whose sight, hearing, voice, or much worse have abandoned them, and to them I cannot relate, no matter how I try.)  Perhaps were I to go blind, a wonderful speaker would I be.  Deaf, an artist.  All in all, again, lucky am I, a novelist.  No, I have committed no long stories to any bound volumes.  I have only scarcely given birth to a character in a story, a ship on a voyage, a planet among the stars in my head.  Yet I have penned many a letter, published many a blog entry, posted, in years of yore, many an entry in my LiveJournal.  Many have been (un?)lucky enough to sift through my words; what some find littered with fluff, others find easy on the eyes and (sometimes) easier on the soul.  You are (un?)lucky enough to find yourself now in a place where there is nothing else to do but just that.

This I would like to call, "What I Enjoy"

As myriad sounds

roll into my head and back out into the ether like waves,

those sounds you can't quite place, that fade, just as waves, if you let them,

those sounds which surround the silence and

choke it to death,

I sip my tea.

Unsweetened.

A sensation, a tightness, a lightness, a spice

in the back of my throat, having downed a glass.

It reminds me that I drank tea,

that I have a throat,

that my mind is working,

that I have a mind,

that my mind is working.

When you stop and let yourself realize it

you rediscover sensation.

Carpet on the sole of your foot,

plastic underneath your finger tips,

a dull cut in your leg as the weight of your thigh rests upon the corner of a keyboard tray.

Is this pain?  Are a million, billion cells

crying out in agony?

Why won't I spare them?

I uncross my legs, and the voices are silenced.

I swallow, and the world around me is made new.

I blink, and the world around me is made new again.

When my heart beats, is the world around me made new

again?

Or am I?

It's like seeing an old friend for the first time...

A hoy-hoy, friends and passerbyers alike.

Welcome to Dinosaur Eats Man.  New and perhaps improved, from your last visit.  If you've never visited, I promise you, still new and perhaps improved.  I say "perhaps improved" because, you know, different strokes for different folks.

They just resurrected Celebrity Jeopardy for Will Ferrell's hosting of the season finale of SNL.  The best thing, no doubt, even seconds into it, that SNL has done in a long time.

I don't know why I imagined that I wouldn't stop and watch it all.  I did.  Quite the triumph.  Moving on...

I'd like to take this opportunity to show you around this little Micro Dys.. er.. Blogosphere, to get you accustomed to your surroundings, because, at least starting now (read:  hereafter), I'd like to think you'll come around fairly often.

Arriving, you were first greeted by our new mascot here at D.E.M., Grimlock.  Leader of the Dinobots, the exceptionally powerful, often loners of the Autobots.  "Me Grimlock no bozo, me king!"

Above, you'll find a section christened "Recent Tweets."  To some of you, that will be pretty self-explanatory, to others, less so.  Feel free to visit http://www.twitter.com and fill yourself in on the microblogging sensation that's sweeping the nation.  Otherwise, settle with this brief synopsis:  Twitter allows a community of individuals, spanning your average Joe to your not-so-average NBA star to your right-out-important public official, to communicate with one another and the community by and large in short messages (140 characters maximum).  Some people use it to chronicle their personal lives.  Some use it, as figureheads for companies, for some things like customer service.  Some people... well, chronicle their personal lives... from space.  Social media is crazy.  Social media is CRAZY.

Back to Earth.  (Witty, aren't I?)  I generally tweet this and that.  Let me know if there is something else you'd ever like me to trend towards, won't you?

To your left, People, a collection of other blogs, of people whose threads have at least once crossed (and likely will again cross) mine.  If you can't find anything you like here, no doubt someone's story, someone's life, someone's whatever-he-or-she-puts-into-his-or-her-blog will tickle your fancy.  I am lucky enough to know globe-travellers, family-raisers, trail-walkers, life-livers, all sorts of folk.

Below that, Places, a soon-to-be-updated collection of photos of scenes I come upon in my travels near and far.

And further still, Things, a perhaps somewhat bizarre collection of things all around the Internet.

Past, a rather standard archive of this blog.  (Short for web log, did you know that?  Probably.)

And here, where you are, the meat and two (or three.)  To some of you, that will sound familiar... a label earlier bestowed upon a failed project of mine, "Our Feature Presentation."  Pay no attention to the blog behind the curtain.  Here you'll find what I hope will keep you coming back for more.  I promise the next post won't be from the perspective of a pompous tour guide.

See you again soon.  Soon.  The caution tape is coming down, the velvet ropes scooted out of the way, the banisters polished, the candles lit, the wine poured, the phonograph cranked up, sweet sounds of Louis drifting across the ether to greet you...

Is this microblogging?

Funny, I just realized it's going to post my signature if I don't clear it. Can I?  I wonder. Apparently so. You'll notice some freshness about this place. There are still a fee cobwebs in the corners, some light bulbs to be replaced and plenty of WD-40 to be sprayed. Still, maybe your hopes will pay off this time. Maybe mine will, too.

Recently, I've been contemplating what social media by and large has done, is doing, and will do to our society. More specifically, I've been trying to figure out where I can fit in. That is to say, where I can beat serve myself, what my 21st century digital appearance can do, should do for me. Maybe that sounds hoity-toity, I don't know. If so, consider this.

If one allows, his or her Twitter feed, his or her Facebook, MySpace, Beebo, LiveJournal, Flickr, blog, YouTube channel, DeviantArt account can become much much more than portals for thoughts, for words, for sights and sounds. In so far as there is anyone you communicate with on a regular basis via the Internet, these things easily pass reflecting you, they begin to comprise you, define you, change more than just your on-line experience, they change your experience altogether, because this new media is that powerful.

Maybe you'll "stir up trouble" in God's backyard because, "What did he say?" Maybe you'll surprise a friend with knowing something seemingly personal about you and they'll say, "You read my Facebook?" Who knows?

Stick around. The gears, they are a-creakin'.

Oh, what the hell...

-Sent from my iPod-