It's Raining On My Soul

Either Gwen gave me a massive headache, or I didn’t even come close to meeting my required dosage of caffeine before I started reading Gwen Alison Wonderland. I’m sure it was the latter, since the pain abated directly after I filled my belly with the enveloping warmth of coffee, but I’m just as certain that being assigned to review this blog didn’t help.

Now, hold on there – take it easy. I like Gwen, really: don’t get me wrong. She’s got a little bit of the kapow, the bang/zoom that I enjoy in my interweb-personalities, and I’ve enjoyed what I recall of her comments here at Ask... but as the little picture at the bottom of her sidebar states, she’s “drowning in a pool of tears”, and after reading her blog, I’m soaked in her anguish. As a rule, I like to keep myself as metaphorically dry as possible, and don’t much care for the feeling of carrying a sodden blanket on my back as I superficially cruise through the interwebs, but here I am, limping along with angst pooling in my boots.

She’s getting it out, Gwen is, just exorcizing the pain from her system, and it’s not like she doesn’t have cause; no, there’s a whole lot she can say about grief that I’ve never considered, and her emotions are very, very real. Too real, in fact, for me and my tiny little black heart.

The cold, hard reality is that I spent the night sighing and clicking away after a couple of posts, only to return to my sighing as I buried my face in my hands. This despite the fact that her writing is clearly improving, her posts this year far and away more evocative than anything she’s written prior. This, though, is longer than a fourth-grade production of Hamlet, and when one of the things she’s proudest of producing is a review of The Bourne Ultimatum, well, to be unrelentingly honest, life is too short. There’s a lot that I’d like to see distilled, boiled down to just essence and then built upon, instead of watching un-encapsulated stories swell up like a cluster of bee stings.

Still, I can’t shake the feeling that having me review this blog is akin to handing a Rubik’s Cube to a sea lion: I don’t have the physical dexterity nor the mental capacity to engage it with any more than an uncomprehending stare, and I am about as familiar with her experiences as a sperm whale is with a howitzer.

We’re of two different worlds, Gwen and I are, two vastly conflicting universes, so, in my mind, this is a pretty hard-won rating:



Hopefully, she'll continue on her current path, resolutely elevating her writing to allow it to transcend her emotions, making them work for her instead of the other way around... and, also hopefully, I'll get to be a lot fucking funnier the next time you see me.