. Spinning .

It’s tough being a blog.

What you start out as is never what you grow up to be.  Writing was the theme of Spinning back in 2003, but personal journaling became a part of it as both an exercise in writing story and in telling all a bit about the writer.  Caught up several times in rants and ravings, it tried to set itself back on the track and added literature reviews that came in an unprofessional but more of a writer’s viewpoint.  But the personal cannot help but creep back in.

Having lost all but a couple of the inner sanctum of those who know the writer in all her barest flaws and foibles, I’m talking without so much as earrings on nor rings, the need to talk became instead the need to write.  Lost readers who either didn’t like the lit or current course reviews, or those who slowly snuck away in fear from the often dark swinging of the mood.

Hooking up with communities such as the great Metaxucafe is a mixed blessing.  Too often the headlines grabbed from Spinning turn out to be the idiotic ravings of a madwoman obsessing about her winter sand battles with the snowplows.  Too many posts per day and often the good ones are lost offscreen within an hour or two–and face it, how many read the archives?

The latest happy revelation is a mention here on Canopic Jar, an online literary journal that I’ve followed for a couple years.  Good grief, the link may bring their readers directly into the current legal battles here recorded; all I can do is weakly smile and offer a Sorry, folks, and read something really fast and add some posts to top the page.   (I will, I will, I will submit a story as they suggest.)

So a weblog needs to assert itself perhaps in some direction or another.  Or else it simply needs to be itself.

Putting off dying, as much as real living.  Just walking and stopping and standing still looking around.  Ideas fly by like elephants with wings; are caught, inspected, and stored safe away.  Can’t plan nothin’ ’cause there’s too much to do.  Can’t do nothin’ ’cause there ain’t enough time.

Just hanging around, putting off dying.

He walks into my kitchen looking seven days worse than last week.  The fingers, long and ghostly white, tissue paper wrapped on bone.  Back bent and shoulders hunching forward.  It helps the pain, I think, of looking anyone in the eye.  Shuffle left, shuffle right, one and then the other across the floor without his walker; he doesn’t think of the strong arms of his son behind him as the same thing.  How are you, little lady? he asks.  But the smile is more a slit of mouth through which his hardy rough manner squeaks out.  He coughs and waits until it’s over, then is slowly let down in his chair. 

I watch him eat but he will never look at me except, I note, when I am not watching him.  I learn, defer to his wishes, and  do not look him in the eye.  Soon he stiffly is helped up and shuffles out again.  I hear his Thanks for dinner! that’s thrown over his stooped left shoulder back at me.  I go back in the house as he is safely put inside the car and they drive back to the home and wonder what, come next week, he will be.

Grey sky grumbles thunder, black cloud furrowed brows above eyes flashing in anger.  Discontent, frustration give way to tears of rain.