I Wanna Take You to a Gay Bar

Whenever I write on my own blog I try to tell true stories.  Sometimes I'm the main character, sometimes I'm trying to properly convey the character of someone I know or someone I met standing in line at the auto pound.  Sometimes I succeed.  Sometimes I fail.   But my biggest concern, whenever I post anything--here or elsewhere--is can I prove to the internet that this person is flesh with feelings? 

It's obvious that Cal, a glib little British puppy who's nearly 21, is also trying to creep into the world of storytellers.  Reading his blog is like window shopping at Christmas.  It's all snapshots of silliness and droll, nimble conversations lightly peppered with some distancing snark and I usually finished each post feeling glad but a bit lonely.  There's very little scandal going on, unless you count being in a healthy homosexual relationship a scandal, like those assholes up in Wisconsin. I like him.  I really, really like him.  I even like his template, except for the centered column. 

Cal's writing is calm and honest, conversational and hopeful, all about having good friends and goofy parents, and just...being twenty.  Being twenty was awesome, wasn't it?  The world is just spread out there for you, all shiny and rippled and just waiting to be fucked, and you haven't screwed anything up yet by falling into unflattering light.

The (Not So) Fabulous Life of Cal never really dives into raw emotion, but love is lingering in the alcoves.  The main difference between Cal's writing and other blogs that focus on light daily life stories is the fact that he's not trying to impress readers with individuality and sassy banter.  Of course there is sassy banter, but it's just friends dicking around.  It comes across as more of a tribute to the people he loves. That's fucking valid.

The last couple of months on the blog are stretched like a chore.  And that's my main criticism of Cal's blog: I was hoping his storytelling and characters would grow and develop, I was hoping to read about new jobs and uncharted waters and becoming an adult.

But he hasn't written on the blog since February, which is a big fat bummer.  I want to know what he's up to.  I want to introduce him to my friend's little brother, so Cal can show him a young, positive role model. 

   

I don't know what's going on.  I like everyone lately.  Maybe I'm growing.  

Why Cultivate on Your Face What Grows Wild on Your Bum?

I am guilty of locational friendships. For the sake of my job I was once stuck in a bleak, sheep and wheat ridden town in the middle of Bumfuck Nowhere. I made friends with people I wouldn’t normally and we all played happy. I even fell into the trap of thinking I wasn’t someone else’s zip-code comrade, which was a karmic kick in the crotch when I returned to the big smoke.

Please don’t misinterpret my intentions. I love making friends. I am a big galumphing puppy dog in that way, minus the leg-humping. Friends that are relegated to the locational, well, they don’t start out that way – I always dearly hope there will be something real there for us. So when I meet a new blog or person, I want to like them, relate with them, laugh with them, and if the hero worship is high, be best buddies them.

Reviewing the blogs of others, I am forced into a locational friendship of sorts. I don’t necessarily want to be there but for all intents and purposes I must. I am a beggar but dammit if I am going to give up being choosy. Sure, a lot of the women in this part of BF Nowhere have breasts that are well acquainted with their navels and the men haven’t seen a brush of the tooth or hair variety in years but I must persist. I have to have someone to drink with.

Weary blogger, I ask you this: When a stranger happens upon your blog, do they want to make friends with you or do they cross to the other side of the street muttering ‘don’t make eye contact, don’t make eye contact - I will drink and die alone before I hang out with you’ ?

When I first met Wildhare, I was harangued with this. Here lies an aura of crazy cat lady at the bus stop who practically sits on your knee, offers you a fluff covered butterscotch sweet and proceeds to tell you about the skin tag she has that bears a resemblance to the Virgin Mary. Like the old lady at the bus stop, Wildhare seems to ignore that the person whose lap she has clambered upon has no vested in her life or her history. She may believe that her readers are mostly beleaguered family and friends but I am here to tell her that regardless, she must tell her stories like the person reading them is a stranger.

Peeking into the archives with pinkie finger delicately raised and nosed wrinkled, I saw that Wildhare is only partially a crazy cat lady; she genuinely seems to be a lovely person who keeps some good company. Her posts consist of random lectures, photos of family, outings, trips, garden projects, crafts, recipes, song lyrics and poems. I don’t get why she includes poems and lyrics, finding it redundant and vaguely insulting.

Just in case you were wondering, this mutual circle jerk and part-time review site is called ‘I Will Fucking Tear You Apart’. This is not scrap-booker hipster code for ‘Here is a lovely pattern for you to tear out and keep – enjoy!’ Some of Wildhare’s stuff is cute and all, but it is for a specific audience and I am at a loss to why she asked for a review from here. Even so, I was impressed with her wares and skills. (And fuck it if I don’t want one of these bunnies now).

Wildhare isn’t just about the crafty stuff. In her ‘about me’ she writes: I am a wife, a daughter, a mother, a grandmother, a pet owner, a nature lover. I enjoy reading and writing, working with my hands, crafting, creating, holding fine papers and marking them with fine inks. I am enamored with science, physics, facts. I love the complex, the mysterious, the simple, and the sublime. I am a reader of hard science fiction, an admirer of chaos theory, a lover of mathematics and art.... and so on.

This all may well be true, however in my thorough archive dive I didn’t see sufficient evidence of this interesting person; it hasn’t translated to her writing. She loves the complex, simple, sublime - to be fair that doesn’t mean she has to BE those things. But happy snaps and birthday wishes to family members does not an appealing blog make. This meme shows us a bit more about her. I want to hear these stories in detail, with nary a dot point to be seen.

Wildhare mentions she is gearing up for her second NaNoWriMo. Why in the name of Charles Dickens does she not use her blog to hone her writing skills? Are they a finite resource to be saved for these future novels rather than her loyal blog readers? Why write about thievery in numerical dot points? Does she lack the writerly wherewithal to meld all of these into a story that has her reader boo-hooing into their banana bread, instead of a staccato, seemingly contradictory lecture? The story about her brother’s death is rife with an undercurrent of disharmony; what is she not telling us? That is what us nosey bastards want to know. And why the ‘egad’? I have respect and sadness for her loss but why not chuck in a ‘gadzooks’ while she’s at it?

I am as full of ego as the next person. I have been guilty of bloggy locational friendships, adding blogs to my roll just because a blogger had paid me a bit of attention. Starved for companionship I clung to the crumbs handed out by the bedraggled and droopy-boobed. I was soon cured of that fool-hardy venture when I realised that I would be judged on the company I keep. (It is okay, I am at peace with my shallow nature.)

When it comes down to it, I was happy to keep the company of Wildhare for the duration of this review. She has a gift for craft, a nice life, a loving, talented family and I am genuinely happy for her. But this, my dear, is where the friendship ends.

A meh because, well, meh.

And this one because I wanted to be part of her family, just a little bit.

And this one? Not for Wildhare but for Blogger, for fucking with the head of this techno-lame Wordpress user. It took me over an hour to figure out how to post the bastard. Editing, what editing?

Those Who Wish to Sing Always Find a Song

As with many things in my life, my grandparents are/were a lesson in ironic polarity. On one side, immortal professional athletes that shriveled and aged into diabetic and demented fighters; they championed passionate, critical lives and tired everyone out til the end. When their minds started melting away, it gave me an excuse to ignore them. I'm a lot like them, which I'm sure pisses them off real good, because we never got along. The other pair of grandparents were a pair of sofa intellectuals, all puzzles, trivia, nightly bourbons and hilarious stories about exotic places with names full of vowels, like Ohio and Iowa. They were smart and happy, and at 96 or something my grandpa is still healthy, aware, and self-sufficient. I love that man.

Basically, because I'm lucky and mean, I've never had to care for an elderly relative.

Sue, the holistic saint over at Backdoor Logic, has devoted her love, sweat and blog to caring for her mother who suffers from Lewy Bodies Dementia. She is trying, trying, trying as hard as she can to prevent sending the little old lady to a nursing home. Her caregiving is punctuated by testing the correlations between her mother's fluctuating health and natural folk remedies, nutritional balance, meditation and exercise.

I really have very little knowledge about honest naturopathy. Sue is experienced with Reiki and straight-up hypnosis, she believes in the power of positive affirmations and she seeks out signs of cosmic plate-o'-shrimp synchronicity.

Early on in her blog, her writing is staccato and synthetic, like she's jotting down lines in a journal for the purpose of triggering her memory rather than telling a story. Eventually her writing improves and evolves, integrating stories of her mother with studies she reads and healing practices she uses and a whole bunch of recipes, but this otherwise compelling saga reads like a well-disguised fenugreek advertisement, or a conceited self-help book.

I fucking loathe self-help books. Useless propaganda and bullshit.

Sue is in the process of writing one.

She deals with everything so self-rationally, and with so much care and deliberation that I know she is an amazing person. She's hopeful and grateful and genuinely loves and wants the best for her family. But then shit gets repetitive, as if she's trying to convince us she's right by saying the same thing in as many ways possible. Perhaps she's trying to convince herself. Either way, if I have to read one more warning entry about gluten and blood pressure and hallucinations I am going to delete the internet with a bag of hammers. The whole fucking internet.

I prefer stories. See this? I love that this detail: her dad teaches her how to see auras, damn near explains how she got into all this alternative health business. She grew up with it. One line, one sentence unintentionally gives me so much background, and I love that. And Sue, she has these fun little writing tics. My tiny Italian grandmother, she speaka like this as well.

Like many people of extreme faith, Sue is a holistic health zealot, constantly reminding people to think for themselves and question authority. But when Sue gives examples of how her way is the best way, and everyone else needs to open their eyes because then they'll discover how right she is...when she trudges into that territory, it diminishes her credibility. Does this have something to do with why certain family members refuse to speak to her?

Then there are little things that make me question her process. For example, tomatoes and potatoes are not belladonnas/deadly nightshades. Their family taxonomy is not "belladonna." Belladonna and tomato are two species under different genera in the same biological family. That's like saying humans are orangutans. By exaggerating selective facts and implying things that I know are false, it makes me distrust Sue's judgment on other unfamiliar topics. She ridicules pharmacies for using a tactic that she uses on her readers.

I really love lots of things about Sue. She's individualistic and honest, she's got voice, she's sacrificing her sanity for that of her mother, she's got fucking guts. For that:








But her blog is a different story. I just can't deal with the preachy or boring updates or repetitive entries. I understand that your blog is about you helping yourself help others, I get that. If you didn't have your mother to focus on it would be someone else. How about instead of writing a new entry about the same thing, you just don't post that day? You're tapping out an entry a day and most of them are the same fucking thing. They're well-written and informative, but bland. Think before you publish. Oh, and get a template that doesn't look like it's been faded after being in the sun too long (stupid lighthouse).

I am at home with the me, I am rooted in the me who is on this adventure.

I knew a girl in college who wore long, flowing skirts and no makeup. Her hair looked how it looked with no product or styling or coercing. If she felt like dancing she danced, if she thought something was funny she laughed loud and long (I remember that laugh still: "ha, ha, HAH!" with her head thrust back), and if she wanted to touch you she would. She'd lean in close when she talked, in your space, looking you directly in the eye. Rebecca liked people, liked getting to know them, finding out what made them tick, figuring out how their minds worked, why they did what they did. She hated shoes and clothes and artifice. She liked boys and girls in equal measure, and typically they liked her, too. They couldn't help it. She was light and direct and earthy. And she was the most present and carefree person I think I've ever know.

Rebecca made me uncomfortable while she was making me interested. She just didn't hide. She'd loop her arm through mine and snug her chin on my shoulder, smelling like patchouli and sunshine. She confronted and questioned and she just was so very much her own person. You could take her or leave her and she wouldn't mind either way.

In some ways, Hope's blog Hopenminded reminds me of Rebecca. She has that same carefree directness, that same hippy-dippy, woo-woo peace and love mentality, where they just delve and ask and explore and analyze.

Hope has, by her own admission, a darker experience. There's an edge to her lightness. Her hopefulness is hard-gained and bruised. She is honest (if maybe a little defensive?) about who she is and where she's been. She really is open and hopeful, and based on the glimpses she's given of the life she's lived, it's really a wonderful thing to see. She's chosen -- and probably has to make that choice over and over -- to live simply, peacefully, and joyfully. And for someone like me, who tends to piss and moan about every little inconvenience in her my-god-I've-had-it-damned-easy life, this mentality is really rather instructive.

Now that I've admired the hell out of Hope and appreciated her for drawing out the memory of someone admirable and slightly complicated from my past, let's move on to the nuts and bolts of blogging, shall we? Good. Because Hope needs some help.

Getting the design stuff out of the way, there are three empty tabs. Hey how about taking them down until they're actually useful? You have way too much shit in the sidebars, and you don't need two of them. Get rid of the random posts and recent comments and either stick with the tag cloud OR the categories (categories, please), not both. And your blogroll? It's not really a blogroll. Take it down until it has something in it, or better yet move it to a tab. The design is fine, but consider bumping up the size of your font -- it's way too small.

Now, the writing, which is what Hope and I (and you) care most about. She faces some marked challenges in her writing, with (apparently) little training or education. It shows. But that's ok. You hear me, Hope? That's ok. You keep at it, dammit. You love it, and there's no reason you can't do this if you work hard enough.

But yes, to be honest because that's what we do here and that's what you expect and you can take it, your writing needs some work. You don't need me to tell you there are considerable spelling and grammar and construction mistakes, but I'll do it anyway: there are. You show your rookie roots with rambling, unedited, uncrafted writing. You write because you love it, because it's cathartic for you, because you have to. That impetus is fantastic and can't be taught. What you need -- and what can be taught -- is polish. You need to keep reading good writing that speaks to you, you need to sign up for a local writing group where you can learn from more experienced writers, you need to challenge yourself with writing exercises, and you need to edit the hell out of yourself.

This post here, where you're watching people and recording? That was good (and so was this). Keep observing. Keep figuring out what makes people tick. Write often and always go back and clean up your writing, find the good bits, prune the unnecessary bits, and get to the heart, the poetry, the art of your writing. Your passion is there -- now practice.





P.S. You have a category called "I'm Fingering it all out." I kind of hope that's on purpose. You finger the hell out of life.