I know I write backwards or think backwards sometimes, like this question, “what were you thinking,” or, “what was your meaning when you said that?” should come before the whole experiential explanation about Facebook, so sorry if this early morning mail is too bleary. I am just getting going, too, with a stiff neck and really wanting to be in that place I said was goofy but meant creatively goofy. A square meal has to be smaller, to fit in the round can. With aptitude dear brother, with such aptitude.
It seems that sometimes everything loses its poetry. We are trying hard to network and find appreciation, get friends to buy our /your stuff, and something like Facebook just doesn’t live up to the promises. The virtual world seems to be overly trendy and only the big brands make it to the “page of pages” the categories don’t seem to match our original choices when we put up a page. Money still makes the world, and especially the virtual world, go round.
Stephen Gaskin (The Caravan) once wrote about religious doctrines as having universals. He used the old IBM card. Stack them up and some of the holes go all the way through. People may be similar, we have through our lives collected beliefs about a lot of things, the way the world works for us, the way it doesn’t. Some things we all share, or many of us do, or can, when we are not looking for differences, being encouraged to find differences that separate us, but find things that unify us.
One thing I am learning as a publisher is that universal to professions is often lacking on social media, and that is simply being professional, knowing how to meet a client or potential customer with a kind of diplomatic approach. Often easier in person. Sensitivity might be a better word for an awareness that might get left up to “tags”. Those invisible keywords that let search engines find us. Catchwords. They let us know what’s coming on the next page. Like flags, buttons we don’t want to push. Watch how the social media experience can be when your buttons get pushed, flags go up? And watch out for the unexpected “delete” mark, that little “X” up in the right hand corner which used to mean close this window or you can accidentally delete a post on Facebook. When are they going to tell me about this? Oh, I don’t have enough to do, i have to spend more time reading about new changes and upgrades.
The tag I hold up looked like a coulage to me, inspiration hops in and then I want to get out old sketch books and scan bits and pieces to make things to post. But my scanner is up stairs with my old computer and I move like the underground from computer to computer until my office is one again.
Extract to a friend I’ve never actually met:
“This stream of consciousness is probably bogus, and I am sending it to you so you know that I didn’t say anything that isn’t meant as a loving friend in our cyber friendship. Can you imagine, I mean, if we actually could have days when we could get together and cook and talk, you, me, Brian, Kathy, others? to actually get into the “cafe” mode but not in a public place, where we find out that, “oh, you go to the Cape to be alone, and revisit another life, walking beaches, remembering that time at seven when a striped dart swam at you and you ran to get out of the water, embarrassed at being startled by such a little fish; and now, how different is the bay from then? when the shore at low tide seems to look the same, and people are better about picking up trash.” I found plastic in the dune grass and carried it back to the barrel by the cars. Sometimes people make these sculptures on the sand out of weird pieces of junk as a reminder of all that goes into the water that does not belong; so much plastic.”
I walked maybe three-quarters of a mile at the ocean down to below where Camp Wellfleet once was to see if the storm may have uncovered a treasure from 55 years ago, proof of the stories I tell and some indication that a memory is not just to be forgotten and cleaned up, that nature would give me a tidbit of albeit sentimentality, though for an old man who may have served training at Camp Wellfleet, it would be another kind of thing, an artifact of substance.
I know this is like a journal entry I am sending you. Think of it as ‘for friendship sake’ I guess, since we mostly have bits of slight or desperation on Facebook, we meaning all of us, looking for connection. After all, most of us want to be in a real place, creative, discovering something about life, planets whirling around us, discovering a part of ourselves we had forgotten, and share it. We learn the road even on cyber street, this blogging cafe Suzette, where we can carry our banners of resistance, we can reinforce each other, tear down the walls, Fred.
After a strange summer period of recovering from a dead computer, and loss of files, the press has managed to bring out new titles. It seemed appropriate to give the blog a new look as well. I didn’t completely like the organization of the old theme, and after a few tries settled on this one.
Some new covers, all available from the Website.
Deerbrook Editions 
I love this post and the look of the website. You’re a very talented person, Jeff. This is the kind of blog that OUGHT to be written. Excellent!
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You are a kind reader, my friend.
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