Blogging thoughts

While I felt like I was on a roll in November, now I feel like I'm winding down. I think this may be because a) I'm not reading other NaBloPoMoer's daily blogs, but mostly b) I'm not taking time to write. I keep thinking I will and then the day gets away from me (I just looked at the clock and it's 9:45 - what?!?!). I have a couple posts bubbling in my head, and a couple of one-liner subjects, but they will take some effort to write and work this week has been followed by some event or another (just as next week will be also).


Maybe I'm just slowing down this close to the finish line.


I picked up my journal a couple days ago and thought about how I haven't written in it much this year. I know that's because I've been writing so much here. I also know that in the posts that are more like journal entries I'm leaving stuff out - I don't want everything out here sometimes. So my journaling is suffering even if my writing is not (and that could be debatable I suppose). As strange as this blogging thing is, it's a little stranger to realize that so many weeks go by between writing anything down. There were two incidents in particular that didn't get written about at all - I chose not to write about them here, and I didn't write about them in my journal either because my "writing energy" goes into this.


I must pay better attention to this blog again.

Mother Altar

This was the Mother Altar Shaneleh set up for the Mama/Baby Shower.

Lost Lyrics

My mother, your mother
Live across the Bay
Sixteen, Seventeen
East Bay Way. . .

I swear this was the start to a jump rope song when I was growing up, but no one I've asked seems to know it, or even know of it. I don't remember the rest and I really want to know how it goes. I've always assumed it's a San Francisco song, though I suppose they might have sung it in Wisconsin, too.


I remember the middle of this one, which I know was much more common:

. . . Twenty-four robbers knockin' at the door
Asked 'em what they wanted, this is what they said:
Spanish dancers do the splits, turnaround, touch the ground, out the back door.

Back back sit on a tack
Read a book but do not look. . .

Despite the popularity of Double Dutch, I didn't do much rope-jumping when I was growing up. At Dudley Stone, I was busy playing on the big climbing structure the PTA had purchased for the school. It had a wobbly bridge, a climbing net, tires attached together to crawl across, and spinning logs to stand on. It was perfect for playing Adventuring In The Jungle, and the jump rope songs were usually drowned out by the playground noise of balls being bounced and the screams of kids playing Tag. This is why I can't remember the songs very well now. Do you know them?

The Man From the Child

I'm four or five years older than Saj, and I remember when he was a toddler comparing our hands. His big finger was the size of my pinkie finger. Saj was small when we were growing up, and really quiet. He was the youngest kid in the old neighborhood so he must have just been observing and learning it all. He shot up when he was in high school (which I don't really remember, because I had left for college by then), but remained slender until he started working out and beefed up - I don't even know when that happened.



No and Paulo were talking about Saj this evening with me. Paulo and No, and Dre and KT, have spent a lot more time around Saj as an adult than I have, and everything they were saying about him sounded so unfamiliar to me. Even though it's been years now, I find I still have this strong image of Saj as small and quiet, though he is neither now, so it's kind of a trick in my mind to think of him as an adult. I kept thinking, "this doesn't sound like the Saj I know," just as I thought during the conversation we had when we were in Mexico.


When I think about talking to Saj, I don't even know where to begin. Just as I am unfamiliar with him as an adult, he's probably unfamiliar with me as an adult also.

What To Do, What To Do?

The end of 2007 approaches and I find myself wondering what I will do with this blog next year.


I don't really want to continue writing every day. Though maybe I "should," for the "discipline" and practice" of it (of what?). I've been thinking maybe setting a goal of writing three times a week (which would give me an out on some very difficult Wednesdays). Or just posting whenever I feel like it, like normal bloggers (is there such a thing?). I could even pick a theme for 2008, but I don't know much about any one thing in particular to build a whole blog around it. Many of the posts I like best are the ones tagged "memory" but a blog dedicated to my childhood and growing up seems kind of silly.


Some NaBloPoMo'ers have set themselves up to blog every day, starting December 1 I think. I sent the organizer an email of support and some ideas I had and methods I used, but I told her/him that I won't join. The main thing though is that I've been down this road already and I'm not sure I want to do it again. I didn't add this, but for one thing it's another Ning thing and as I said before, belonging to Tribe.net is bad enough.


Writing this blog is strange. . . Usually the daily writing exercise is just for the writer, but I haven't been writing this that way, most of the time. I've been writing for an audience, which I suspect is larger than I actually know. I have written a fair amount of crap on those days when it's forced, though I've never done what Peter Elbow recommends, which is when you get stuck, just keep writing the same word over until the next thing occurs to you you you you you. . .


What should I do? Like the Christmas card thing, this is one of those things where the decision will be made for me if I don't make a decision.

Meeting K-Bob

In 1995, Bink, Jujubi, and I each agreed to attend our fifth reunion at Homecoming if the other two would go. Jujubi and I drove up from Portland and met Bink on campus. It was early November, and Mrs. P had just given birth to K-Bob. We went to the Ps' house to say hello and meet the baby, since they lived nearby.


K-Bob's birth had been difficult and drawn-out, with the OB finally coaxing K-Bob out with a pair of forceps around his head. Mrs. P was sitting in a rocking chair, looking as exhausted as I'd ever seen her. Mr. P stood by the baby wrapped in a light blanket - as in a blanket filled with lights - because the struggle of his arrival had given him jaundice. He glowed in the light blanket, which Mrs. P said made him look like an alien. He was a really funny-looking baby, with green-yellow skin and a head that was kind of flattened on the sides. He was almost the first baby I'd ever seen and certainly the first I'd seen that new, and I found his non-standard looks totally charming.


I sat on the floor under the picture window in the living room and Mr. P brought K-Bob to me, wrapped in a regular non-glowing blanket. I held this tiny child and blinked away tears. I nuzzled his skull (which I still like to do to babies) and said, "Welcome to the world, little one!" Then I whispered, "I will be your best adult friend."

What Would Happen?

I've been thinking a lot recently about the power grabs, or the grabs for continuing power, on the part of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, and about Dick Cheney's black heart, so secretly located no one knows where it is.


I wonder: What if BushCo canceled the election in 2008? I know the election is a year away, and it's frustrating to me to see so many Senators not doing their jobs because they are running for president. It's also hard for me to tell who's going to wind up with the nomination, but I'm still not used to seeing so many contenders, either.


All of that could go away if Bush declared himself President for The Course of the War on Terror, which in its Orwellian way is endless.


Would college students stare down the National Guard? Would lawyers smash police cars? Would fourth grade teachers sing Three Ring Government in their classrooms? What about a general strike? Would just the usual cities host mass marches, or would there be protest in the smaller communities in both blue and red states?


Would people just put their heads down and pay the mortgage, the power bill, the credit card balances?