Golby's on Fire

Mike Golby's latest on this obsession we call blogging:

"Playing conkers with words, smashing them together until the one breaks, dropping them as memes into containers or packets this side of the Web and my head and watching where they go. Weinberger opens us to the realization that space as a container does not apply on the Web. Time becomes that which we measure with a clock and space with a rod. Yet, because we live in the real world, our ideas seem to somehow conform to real-world values. So, on the Web I imagine packets of memes. I pop 'em in, send 'em out and see what happens. This place is eerily open to the most mind-bending phnomena, phenomena that have their origins in us."

Marvelous!

Mike, dictionary.com tells me a conker is "the inedible nutlike seed of the horse chestnut." So, what do you do with them, I mean, if you're not smashing them together. Or eating them, which, apparently, you can't.

Burn, Baby, Burn

Doc defines marketing in terms of the elements today in one of the most simplistic and inspiring uses of logic I've seen. He says:

"Somewhere back when Cluetrain was forming out of primordial conversations, I told Chris Locke my Theory of Marketing, the logic of which was slyly intended to scare potentially boring clients away from my consulting business. It went like this:

Markets are Conversations; and
Conversation is fire. Therefore,
Marketing is arson."

I suppose that's why I came away from my reading of Gonzo Marketing with this impression:

It's okay.
incite.
spark to flame.
ignite.

Why does fire seem such an appropriate metaphor for what we are doing right now, right here, on the net? The reasons are plentiful:

Conversations are as primeval as fire, one of the earliest discoveries of mankind.

Aren't we sending smoke signals to anyone who will listen?

Fire levels and clears, readying the land for fresh growth.

Fire evokes fear; those who handle it wrong will get burned.

What we are doing is hot, dangerous, exciting, thrilling, and romantic.

Fire is destructive, but what succumbs to its force is often rickety and unstable.

Enter the arsonist, who creeps through the night, explosive power under wraps, until, POW! The only way to wake up whitey....

The only way to lay business as usual to waste, clear the land, sweep away the debris.

We're burning and building right now.
Burning, building, and blogging.
Can't you hear the sirens?

Spark to flame, ignite.

Team Blogs - The Organization of the Future?

I've been thinking lately about the team blogging movement, one I feel somewhat responsible for nurturing, if not launching. There weren't many when I started Reading Gonzo Engaged, at least not many like RGE. When I started the blog, it wasn't a team blog at all. Today we have more than a dozen members with a range of talents from marketing gonzo-style, to developers, to public speakers, to journalists and authors, and even a lawyer. We discuss meaningful issues about business, the economy, humanity, who's a fucknozzle and who's not.

Since RGE's beginnings, other team blogs have emerged--Blog Sisters, a spot for women bloggers to talk, engage, and become, and most recently Small Pieces and Non Zero, both team blogs to discuss books of the same name (and take it from there).

As I see these organic groups take form and congeal, I have started wondering if the team blog might not be an organizational model for the future--a bloggernization if you will. Gonzo Engaged the most mature of these team blogs in its sixth month, has all the makings of a really smart company. Denver Fletcher mentioned early in RGE's genesis, why not start our own thing. At the time, I thought, man I don't even have time to do what I'm doing, let alone think of how to turn this into a viable business. I'll just sit back and wait for the Gonzo prophecy to be fulfilled, when sponsors come knocking at our blog asking to underwrite and support us.

But maybe one of the iterations of blogs in business will look a bit different than the sponsorship and underwriting model, which I still believe will--if we all stay strong--feed micromarketeers in the near future. Perhaps team blogs are a precursor to some sort of loosely joined organization. (No, I haven't received the book yet, but I've joined the blog already!)

Think of how easy and smart it would be for companies to throw us some work over on RGE. They might leave us a post in some yet-to-be-made blog request box "Need help communicating from our audiences inward, from the bottom up--we want a web site that talks like people talk--you guys have any ideas?" Then we launch a private team blog off of RGE, add the client to that blog with the specialists from RGE that are the best at solving that particular problem, and the conversation moves forward. Ideas, applications, web sites, collateral all spawn from that. Of course, the client pays to join the private team blog, and for everything we do to put our ideas into action. cha-ching.

These bloggernizations won't look much like today's companies. We won't sit in cubes. We sometimes won't wear clothes at all. The team members may have never even met. Or spoken. We will remain connected on a deeper level, one where conversations take the place of staff meetings, and water cooler discussions take place on our individual blogs, linking as we drink. We will care deeply about one another. No one will need to be fired, though they may be encouraged to start a team blog of a different flavor. Our paychecks won't be signed by our bosses; they'll be earned from our ideas.

It's a work world I think makes a lot of sense. Anyone listening?

creature of resolution

I've always been of a mind that anything can be fixed--unless it's a fatal disease, and even then, sometimes you beat the odds. Maybe it's that 4-0 looming just a couple months away, or maybe it's the fact that my extended family is trying to do me in, or maybe it's that St. Patty's day is right around the corner--that hated day my dad died despite my sack full of get well cards from my kindergarten class--or maybe it's my mom's birthday coming up a week after that, or maybe it's that I'm overworked and absolutely broke, or maybe it's all of these things. The point is, I'm getting the sneaky suspicion that more things than I ever knew can't be fixed.

Why didn't anyone ever tell me that there is no resolution to some problems? That the best you can do is go along all broken? Someone could have left me a blog comment to clue me in. Really now.

But no, I yell into the canyon--"Hello? Can this be fixed?" And all I get back is, "Hello? Can this be fixed?" That's no kind of answer.

It's about family you thought you knew all your life, and then one day, enough crap is shoveled on top of you, that this movie starts playing backward. And as the movie runs in reverse, you see these scenes you never saw the first time around. I'm not sure what I was doing that I missed them the first time around. Out getting popcorn? In the ladies room? No, I was there, because I see my child self, perplexed but resilient. Adapting. Growing. But not growing up.

SLAM, fist to table.
SLAM, fist to table.

It wasn't the movie I thought it was.

Falling up stairs.
Dishes crashing.

And I'm not sure now that it will ever have a happy ending.

Power to the Loosely Joined People

Today, David Weinberger discusses his upcoming keynote at an Instant Messaging conference (Do they really have conferences about IM that you travel to and stuff? Why don't they just type to eachother?) David invites commentary (he's always been a smart guy) to bullet-test his ideas, which I think are great. Among them: "While the persistence of IM messages is quite low, the persistence of IM groups is quite high. In other words: buddy lists rule. We need to make more of buddy lists. First, we need a way to move threads among all the different conversation forms (and he sites the threads ML initiative)."

This is all true, and as we join together in these small (and growing) conversations, I don't know how IM will scale, or if it should. To me, it's not a technology that should connect one to many. It's a technology that's best at connecting one to a couple or few. If IM is, as Tom Matrullo says today, "more like typing through a telephone; it can be intense and tends to grab all my attention," then it is perhaps akin to the "three-way" or "conference call" phone features many of us use today.

But David's premise that IM at home is a lot like IM at work strikes me differently. I am someone who uses IM both at home and at work, and they are different beasts to be sure. While I welcome IM interruptions at home, because it is a lot like a phone call from one of my friends that I'm happy to receive, I'm not always so glad to get "brrrringed" by my clients, who tend to look at IM as our online umbilical cord. One of the first questions I get in working with a new client is, "What's your IM screen name so I can add you to my buddy list?!" (the exclamation point is purposeful--they ask the question with glee.) Because I'm online virtually round the clock, this is like giving them my home phone number (which I also do), except that I can close my IM and they don't know I'm online then, just like I sometimes don't answer my calls.

For me, IM in the work world has become less like chatting and more like an air raid siren--red alert, incoming incoming! I need help putting out a fire. Which is all fine--that's what we're paid for. But it's definitely not like my home IM experience.

The day my client figured out how to talk at me through yahoo messenger, and I mean literally talk to me, I really got the jitters. I sat peacefully playing with my daughter in the living room, when my laptop, from its usual member-of-the-family spot on the couch, yelled at me. "Jeneane! Can you hear me? Are you there? I need some help." Huh? My daughter, who's four, was undaunted. "Make your computer talk again, mommy!"

So, although the occasional IM with my aunts is a blast and all the playful fun David talks about in his premise, to me IM at work--while it bridges distance and time and that is great for business--isn't always so much fun. It makes me feel more like a responsibility-laden adult then an adolescent. In fact, it kind of gives me agita.

"brrrrrrrring!"

AKMA Almost Lets It Fly

and in the process, coins a newer, gentler term: "flopnozzle." I wonder if daypop will let that one in? Perhaps AKMA will become the family-friendly filter for RageBoy. There may be some money in that one day. Look at AOL.

Marek's got a big red button, or something...

The important thing is, he's back!

Oath of the Cult of Cluetrain

The typical first step for cultists throughout history is the taking of an oath. For Cluetrain enthusiasts, who have of late been labeled cult members, the time to put up or shut up is now. Are you man enough? Are you ready to take the oath?

Well, I am, and that's why, like any connected chick, I turned to google to find us a good one. Luckily, the Swiss Imperial Navy has a long-standing oath. (I’m assuming from days of olde, although I was too tired to search back on the history.)

What I like about this little oath is that it’s simple, powerful, and it maps directly to Cluetrain and the most vilified Cluetrain defender, RageBoy. It also maps nicely to the online universe we are creating among all of the blog constellations, which are growing in number and luminance even as I blog this.

Without further delay, here is the Cluetrain oath. (After the oath, I’ve provided a little “key” to the words I changed in updating it for Cluetrain purposes).

Put on your Nikes and say it loud and strong, People of the Earth!



Oath of the Cult of Cluetrain

Sworn by a mystery cult surrounding the warlike deity RageBoy, especially popular among Corporate Outcasts

I, _________, as a citizen of the Internet and ordained a soldier of Cluetrain, do hereby swear, now and forever, to serve and defend the Net and all of her citizens; I swear not to rest while there is evil in the universe; and I swear above all to serve the sacred and fundamental ideals of Humanity. I swear these things on the holy altar of RageBoy, the Bringer of Victory and the Defender of the Home, RageBoy the Wrathful, and RageBoy the Just, in the presence of my sworn comrades and the God Himself.


Mapping from original Cult of the Swiss Imperial Navy:
Bellator=RageBoy
Exped Forces=Corporate Outcasts
Swiss Imperial Navy =Cluetrain
Greater Swiss Empire=Internet
Empire of Switzerland=Net

I expect complete compliance in taking this oath, or I'll send Bellator after you.

The Derivation of Fucknozzle and other Life Mysteries

It goes something like this: Wired runs an article in which it reports that Xybernaut's CEO--offended at some random posting that said something about the fact that the company has never turned a profit and so he must be an idiot--decided to sue the poster. For my part, I've noticed that companies failing to turn a profit are often led by incompetent short men with napoleonic leanings. I'm just saying.

Next, RageBoy weighs in with a post urging us to decide for ourselves whether or not this CEO is a fucknozzle. Well. That is an interesting question, since you can use that same said "own mind" of yours to run through conjured images of what a fucknozzle might be. But more on that later.

Next, b!x blogs about this matter, putting RB in perilous legal danger by stating that RageBoy called the fucknozzled CEO a fucknozzle.

Rageboy sets the record straight with this post, in which he categorically denies calling the CEO a fucknozzle, although he would urge us to do so.

By now you are maybe wondering, why all this noise over fucknozzle? Either that or you've already clicked off to Doc's blog, where things make more sense.

Those of us familiar with RB know he is litigation-phobic. You need only to read his latest book to see how careful he is in his writings about companies, other authors, and especially his past employers. Kiss up much, RB? So let's dig a little deeper. Why is RageBoy--champion of the common man and business automaton--so often silent on important matters that may be perceived as controversial--even slanderous?

As with all truths, the answer is buried in his past.

When RB was 14, he was seduced by a powerful female lawyer, who shall remain nameless because I too am afraid of litigation. This unscrupulous 30-something adultress coerced RB into becoming first her pool boy, and next her underage lover. One evening, her husband away on business, she called young RB to her lair. What was he supposed to do? What would any 14 year old hormonally-challenged young man do? He slapped on some acne cream and ran all the way to her house.

She greeted him at the door, led him up the stairs, and sat him on her bed, where, expectantly, he licked his dry lips and oogled her as she walked provacatively to her dresser. As she opened the top drawer, he craned his neck to see what was in store for him. And he saw. "Wow," he gasped. "Um, what is that?" he asked, his shy young voice barely audibile.

"This, my dear young man, is a fucknozzle."

Fade to black.

I am putting this here...

...so that I remember to talk about it as soon as I can rip myself away from the lady's team blog, Blog Sisters, where I continue to add members at a rate of one an hour. I'll be back as soon as I can.

where am I?

I have started or joined so many blogs in the last four months, I'm not sure where I live anymore. It's disorienting, the discussions I'm having, or those having me. Here on allied, I talk about jeneane-centric stuff, observations, stops along my journey, my blog friends, you know. Things.

But I didn't have this place at first. My first blog was Gonzo Engaged. This is where I launched into the world of blogging, five months ago, under the wing and watchful ear/eye of RageBoy, as I chronicled my journey through his book, Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices.

When I got to the end of the book, I wasn't sure what to do with Gonzo Engaged. In his usual psychic kind of way, Chris emailed me, as I wandered my way through the Index of Gonzo Marketing, boring the crap out of readers. He said, "I bet you're wondering, what now?" He was right. I was wondering just that. So I reviewed Blogger's "Team" feature and used it to open Gonzo Engaged up to others interested in discussing gonzo marketing and business as unusual. Today we have 27 members, and the discussions remain lively.

Next, I wrote this article about what it's like to work from home, raise a child, blog, and generally live in a hyperlinked space: The Hyperlinked Mom. At first I kept it a private blog. Then something I was discussing with David Weinberger made me click the "public" button. But, truth be told, haven't posted on that blog since I wrote it. I guess I should make it a page off of allied or something. It's just kind of sitting there out in blogspot land right now. Child of allied.

Even after the "what do I do with hyperlinked-mom?" question, I guess I still wasn't satisfied that I was spread too thin. I started a blog with our four-year-old daughter, Baby Blogger. That one is fun. Probably the most fun. My best hope for keeping it up to date is sitting on our bed with my laptop while she's in the tub making up some of the most amazing songs and adventures I've ever been privileged to hear.

Somewhere along the way--after babyblogger? before?--I decided to join Frank Paynter's blog sandhill trek where we discuss any number of oddities, including Frank's oversized dog Fang, who is prone to eating lizzards among other things.

Now, I've decided that the women of the blogging world need a place to hang. To feel free and unencumbered. To talk about things that interest us and might either frighten or bore the menfolk silly. Hence, Blog Sisters.

Have I forgotten any?

So, now that I've evolved into a multiple personality blogger, I'm finding something odd. Even with all of these homes, I feel homeless. My stuff is strewn across five or six friends' houses. Where'd I put my fricking hairdryer? Which way is the bathroom? Don't they have whole-wheat bread here?

Not that this is a bad thing. Perhaps a necessary evolution. I will either land someplace I needed to be in the first place, or come right back to where I started from. Either way, I think I will be happier for having taken the trip.

But this night?

I'm still looking for my hairdryer.

multiple personality disorder

In an effort to split my attention in half yet again, I've started a community blog for ladies called Blog Sisters, where men can link but they can't touch. Women of the blog, join us there. Men of the blog, link and learn.

comment2?

In a self-posted blog comment on his own Chris Pirillo blog, Chris wonders aloud, "Hey, what's it called when you post a comment to your own blog?" Interesting and playful question. Is it a comment, or is it more like an answer, or an interjection, or maybe a comment2? Ah well, I'll leave it to those better at blogging terminology than I am.

And Chris, if you grab the Ramen Pride, they have a new "roasted chicken" flavor that rocks. The cheapest and saltiest meal on earth at Target this week--just 16 cents each!

This is why I love Kalilily

From Elaine's blog, an inspired reflection on a moment of meaning shared with her son. I look forward to looking back on memories like this one with my cherished babyblogger one day.

"Remember, b!X, when we marched on the Pentagon to protest our government’s involvement in Guatemala? That hot summer day among those thousands and thousands of banners and signs and sweaty chants for justice and peace? You were only about 9 years old and you got a bloody nose just before we got to the Pentagon, and dozens of people appeared with ice and kleenex and advice on how to stop it. And we sat in the shade on a little hill to eat our lunches and wait to see if that other bunch really would “levitate” the Pentagon, as they promised they would."

Mr. Dvorak, I Beg You to Lose Your Computer...

In my critique of Dennis Mahoney's recent take-down of the amateurish writing in blogs (earlier today), I agreed with Mahoney on something he says: "The advice ‘write only what you know’ increases the likelihood that you will know the same things forever.”

When it comes to PC Magazine's John Dvorak, I amend myself. I wish he would stick to writing about what he knows. He doesn't know blogs. He doesn't know marketing. And he's not a technologist's technologist either. I could write a week's worth on what John doesn't know, but since that's just what dorkvak wants, I will slip into silence, hoping he follows me there.

For more on the topic, see the people I love kissing up to:

RageBoy
Doc Searls
David Weinberger

Now, I must go wipe the shit off my nose.

Mr. Mahoney, I Beg to Differ...

In a recent article on A List Apart, Dennis A. Mahoney gives his take on why so many weblogs today are boring and not worth the clicks it takes to get to them. His answer--they are badly written. He also offers advice for bloggers who want to become more readable contributors to the cyber dialogue. As I understand it, the article is an attempt by Mahoney to offer positive suggestions to offset the complaints he’s levied on 0format.com.

Simply put, I disagree with Dennis, especially with his basic premise: that amateurish writing in the blogging community is a bad thing. He says:

"Amateurs are writing as they’ve always written. Self-consciousness, self-doubt, awkwardness, and overcompensation are perennial hallmarks of the beginning writer. The reason today’s amateurs seem more profoundly un–profound could be a simple matter of exposure.”

Let me start by admitting this: I am a “wordaholic.” I've made my living at writing and editing since 1982, and I’ve come across the range of writing talent (and lack thereof) over the last two decades.

I'm not sure whose weblogs Dennis has been reading, but they must be different than the ones I’m reading. It makes me wonder, are we on the same net? For my part, I’ve come across astounding “amateur” writers in my blog travels—folks who didn’t know they could write, who still don’t think they can write even though they’re doing it every day, and who today put my blog to shame. The words they choose are inspired by emotion, not by years of study in the finer workings of grammar. Their thoughts are free from corporate confines, usually for the first time. They are expressing what’s meaningful to them—from cat shit, to divorce, to Linux—in a way that’s meaningful to them.

And I can’t get enough.

Mahoney points to the lack of “gatekeeping” as a reason why we are burdened with poor writing on the net:

”There used to be impenetrable gatekeepers. Now, CNN roundtables, documentaries, independent films, MTV, and the web—which has no gatekeepers in most countries—are broadcasting every poorly crafted phrase and half–cooked idea imaginable. Patience, readers. All is not lost.”

Message to Dennis: Nothing’s lost. Everything is found.

Give me every poorly crafted phrase and half-baked idea. And then give me some more.

I want to get lost and stay lost--lost in the world of possibilities, of mining gems from this fertile online playground. I want to be the first to find the amazing, and then share it with everyone I know. I want to unearth ideas, not good sentence structure. I want to read all of the asides, all of the streams of consciousness. I want to ride those streams as they wind and intersect with others and find amazement in those intersections.

And, call me strange, but in the constructs of blogging, I’d rather read this (Mahoney’s example of amateurish writing):

”I know this is a cliché nowadays, especially after 9/11, but I live in New York, which is much cleaner and safer now because of Giuliani, who really ought to be president after handling the crisis so well, and I know I’ve had some issues in the past with the mayor’s handling of the NYPD in regard to African Americans and his war against art involving sacred religious icons and feces (hello!? freedom of expression!?), but when all is said and done, New York, as maybe the best example of the ‘melting pot’ etc. etc., is a great city, especially when it starts getting warmer and people go outside more, like around March or April.

…than this (Mahoney’s example of professional writing):

New York is magnificent in spring.

Much of the advice offered in the RULES section of the article is helpful. I’m not sure Mahoney’s rules are necessary, but they’re helpful. I don’t agree with his advice to discard the first person (“I”) when possible. After all, if we are “writing ourselves into existence,” as David Weinberger says, then it’s hard to throw ourselves aside in favor of “good” writing.

I do agree with Mahoney on a point he makes toward the end of his article, and one he makes nicely: “The advice ‘write only what you know’ increases the likelihood that you will know the same things forever.”

This is sound advice for bloggers. Blogging is exploration. Good blogging is not always writing what you know about—often it’s writing about what you don’t know, what you can’t understand, the mysteries that have been tugging at your shirt sleeve since you were a kid. Uncover those, and I’ll read you every day, I don’t care how few periods or how many commas you use.

I again agree with Mahoney in his recommendation that bloggers get personal.

”Readers crave your anecdotes and stories. They really do. So give ‘em the whole megillah. Instead of, ‘The party was a riot!’ or ‘I’m depressed today,’ carefully explain why. Elaborate. Parties and depression are perfectly good writing subjects. The Great Gatsby, for instance, has plenty of both.”

I suppose my biggest problem with the article is this: I just don’t see this level of writing lameness that Mahoney asserts is rampant in the blogging community. What has stunned me all along is the lack of lameness, the overwhelming brilliance of so many people. When I click close on my browser at the end of the day, I wonder, “Where the hell did all of these smart people come from? And where have they been?” They aren’t professional writers, but they are becoming professional thinkers. And that’s even better.

In his conclusion, Mahoney advises bloggers to pay attention to their readers:

”No matter what your audience size, you ought to write as if your readership consisted of paid subscribers whose subscriptions were perpetually about to expire. There’s no need to pander. Compel them to re–subscribe.”

I advise you differently:

Write like no one’s there. Write like everyone’s there. Write as if you have no audience, because you don’t. You are part of a conversation. You are completely and perfectly free to explore, to not care, to lose yourself in conjecture. You are free to destroy notions you’ve always had. You are welcome to challenge me and everything I thought was true. You are advised to listen, to reflect, to engage.

And then, when you are done with all of that, do it again tomorrow.

This blogger's got some scruples, huh?

Gonzo or bonzo? You decide. Tony Pierce is selling links from his blog on ebay.

What is it worth to you to get rock stars, hot chicks, political pundits, brainacs and nerds to go to your site simply because I link to it?

I guess you really can buy anything on ebay.

Tom Shugart Starts Blogging!

Check out our newest addition to the world of blogging. I'm honored that Tom credits me with helping him leap the blogging chasm. I'm glad I could assist, but the truth is, he was blogging in his head and his emails all along. Welcome Tom!

allied goes ad-free

for your reading pleasure.

what i sound like sick

wanna hear how I sound sick? wondering who's this baby blogger I'm always talking about? Gary caught us on tape! For a 40 year old who usually gets an "Are your parents home?" when I answer the phone, I can't believe I'm admitting this hard-smokin' loud-singing voice is mine. :-)

And no, that's NOT me below.

come hither "evil ones."

okay. I'm scared by this.

And Golby Steps Forward for a Solo

It's a behind-the-scenes look you won't want to miss. Oh, and the next time a good book comes out, let's toss a coin and see who sends a copy to Mike, so's he doesn't end up in the slammer. This is what he has to deal with:

“Christopher Locke. L-O-C-K-E," I said, spelling it out for the brain-dead numbskull on the other side.

The phone went down, I heard a clacking keyboard, and the phone was picked up again.

“No, sorry, never heard of him.”

“What?” I asked, incredulous. “The man has published three books, one of which was one of the Harvard Business Review’s books of the year.”

“What business review?” came back the moronic voice.

Bouncing Bombast with Marek

Marek blogs me back about Bombast and takes it further out...

"I make love to the world and the world loves back. It loves back and I am home. This life. This planet. This language. These faces. This house. These shoes. This Century. These stubby fingers. This shaved head. It's all of it and all over again falling in love with the world and I disappear my resignation and I am home. This day. Right now...."

Yes, Marek. Here, all of us one, we make it better, not because we are linked all sloppily together like this, but because we've been connected, and in connecting, have morphed, have transformed one the other.

Who is Golby now? Who is Tom, or Gary, or you, Marek? Who have you become?

Yes, we have become.

We are the ones who used to not think twice taking out the garbage Sunday night, twisting the bags tight, thinking it's a shame all this trash is going to the landfill, oh crap I forgot the fish stinking up the fridge, and will they even take this in the morning, or is it too heavy, and how likely is it I'll be picking all this same shit up off the driveway tomorrow after the bag gives way?

What used to matter, fill time, moments, doesn't anymore. Now there is a world to get to. Now we aren't just talking to ourselves. Now we are falling in love with this world, faults and warts and undeniable insanity, all over again, and because we love, things matter again. Finally. Things matter.

Things matter.

You matter, you mad fucking hatter.

It Came from Canada: A Review of The Bombast Transcripts

if you hear me in the silence
then am I real.
if you see me in the darkness
then am I music
to your music.
if your heart is empty
yet fills with joy
then are your colors
my colors.
-christopher locke


Hold on a second.
[Quick shake of the head.]
Doesn’t this guy write about business? What’s this poetry doing here?

“The solution is poetry.” That and other fundamental truths according to Locke and RageBoy—Locke’s cantankerous alter ego—are just waiting to slap you around the room as you read the team’s latest: The Bombast Transcripts: Rants and Screeds of RageBoy.

It’s safe. You can throw away that little postage-paid merchandise-return sticker from Amazon. Put the box in the trash. You may quite confidently expense this book through your place of employment. As a bonus, the book will give you the secret for appeasing the finance jockey who will undoubtedly email you upon receiving your expense report, asking what a Bombast is and who authorized its purchase.

But I digress.

Truth be told, Bombast is more than a business book. And you should know that before you agree to read it.

From “Eden to E-Commerce,” Bombast is the world in RageBoy time, a world designed to destroy everything you thought was so, and then lift you up with the possibilities. It is a journey that crosses every border, deconstructs every widely held notion, teaches as much about what it means to be human as it does about what it means to do business in a connected world.

For RageBoy, nothing is off limits:

Language, voice, media, bandwidth,
touch, madness, the Internet, work, love,
corporations, angst, mores, TCP/IP, music,
artificial intelligence, joy, ROI, dreams, lies,
HTML, 5-GL, change, excrement, rejection,
karma, chaos, fear, creation, paradise, belief,
disbelief, disestablishmentarianism, Elvis,
people, geese, broadband, patterns, walls,
space, fiction, portals, brand, astrology,
guilt, coffee, poverty, philosophy, tear gas,
eclipse, email, addiction, science, passion,
communism, capitalism, aboriginal darkness,
oriental light, power, magic, sin, politics,
pictogram, wanting, sex, P2P,
getting it, and getting lit.

This, my friends, is some serious shit.

I could take you through this browser-free read of Locke’s famed ezine, Entropy Gradient Reversals, step by step. But I won’t, because Bombast is best read without a guide.

So if I’ve intrigued you, good. If not, let me touch on my favorite part of the book and linger here a moment longer. At its core, Bombast has one simple and profound construct, one that RageBoy delivered in a passionate diatribe at a keynote address before 2000 people in Copenhagen:

“What is happening on the net is that people are falling in love with the world all over again.”

Holy cripe.

Did you get that? Worth repeating:

“What is happening on the net is that people are falling in love with the world all over again.”

You see, in the end, it’s not about the net at all. It's about what’s happening because of the net.

As RageBoy tells the good crowd in Copenhagen, we have been here before, with cave paintings, with bone axes, with mythologies and arts. All of these, so distracting in their own right, only tools--tools that help us fall in love with our world—again and again without end.

And that, in a few words, is the beauty of all of this.

Without end.

Tune in, turn on, stay tuned…

Find out what’s next – subscribe.

and while you're there....

Radical Suzuki would like you to check out this little number (click the next buttons to work your way through). tee hee.

Funky Radical World

I don't know if you've seen this, and heck for all I know it could be a meme past, but I'm on google searching up "radical" - yeh I admit it. How I got there, I forget, but it started with searching up pnemonia (which I spelled wrong and still think I'm spelling wrong), which led me to any number of frightening lung disease sites, from which I surfed unhindered into therapies and philosophies until I somehow got to "radical," where I found my jewel: Funky Radical World and if you've already been, then shut up and let the others enjoy it. Click around for a journey of wierd images and only sometimes English text.

Some renderings follow:



and



and, consider this--could I have put it better myself? No.


Angelic nudes wink bashfully as you gaze upon their exquisiteness.
Stylin' ladies show you what they've got on the dance floor.
This is the peach-fuzz fizzy delicious world of Radical Suzuki.
Step into the Funky Radical World!

happy saturday.

Heh + Heh

Dean Landsman has a good Lay cartoon and commentary in his DeanLand blog. He also emailed me some good song ideas for that string of Enron "I Plead the Fifth" copouts that I'm hoping someone will turn into a catchy little medley. Dean suggests:

"Take The Money and Run" (Steve Miller Band)
"Money" (Pink Floyd)
and...
Cheney and Bush are probably singing a Police song when they think about their buddies at Enron, "Don't Stand So Close To Me."

Of course it is all the Texas Two Step, isn't it?

Yes, Dean, I think it is. I hear that's how b'ness is done down in Texas.

Thanks Denise

for pointing to Sir David W. who does a great solo off Pirillo's Blogger Manifesto. We are hoping Sir David links to us. At some point again. For something we may say or have once said.

RageBoy's blogging again!

sick and tired

yes, that I am. Coming off steroids, antibiotics, and still sick as a dawg. But I've started reading blogs again, and the doc says that's a good sign indeed.

How fun would this be? Anyone going? I am hoping there will be some stuff for kids to do--I know Vegas ain't a particular kid-friendly place, but we'd have to come with babyblogger in tow, and after all, she is a babyblogger. If kids are welcome, I really think we'd try to do it. How fricking cool would that be. If you register your possible inclination to maybe perhaps attend, you get to see the others who've registered. Leave it to the cool cats a blogger.

I am up to nothing else right now, except waiting for master husband to return with pizza.

night.

I plead the fifth

Could someone string together all those Enron "I'll have to take the fifth amendmant" answers into a string and set it to music, like the Balmer "monkey boy" video? might draw quite a crowd, as memes go. I'm lame at this web stuff or I'd do it myself. What songs might we use:

You dropped the bomb on me
Another one bites the dust
Take this job and shove it

or maybe...


A simple question makes you look away
Your hesitation gives it all away
There's some protection in the way you move
If there's sadness in my eyes
It's coming from your lies

Hey little liar I believed in you
Hey little liar I believed in you
Hey little liar I believed in you
I believed in you
--Little Liar (joan jett)

Others guys??

the web site you never hope to start

I'm not sure what I think happened to this little girl, but the web site they've launched since her disappearence on 02/02 is a marketing marvel:

"Pat & Oscar's in Carmel Mountain Ranch
Will donate 15% of the cost of your meal to the
Danielle Search Effort
If you bring in a Pat & Oscar's Flyer"

...still developing. In the mean time, let's all keep our eyes open.

"With others if we must; by ourselves if possible"

Why do I still wish he would have won? Maybe because he's smarter:

"The evil we now confront is not just the one-time creation of a charismatic leader and his cohorts, or even a handful of regimes. What we deal with now is today's manifestation of an anger welling up from deep layers of grievance shared by many millions of people."

Can I have a recount?

The Blogger's Manifesto

Chris Pirillo has constructed his own Blogger's Manifesto (gee, that word's re-cropping up all over isn't it--thanks cluetrain guys), a list of 25 principles Pirillo blogs by. My favs on his list are:

8. You don't have to agree with everything I say.
9. I egosurf Daypop, Google, and Blogdex nightly.
10. I share what I want to share.

Nicely done, Chris. I want to think on this and maybe come up with a few of my own. Why don't you, too, fellow bloggers? Let's shoot for, oh, I don't know, 95?

Gary Turner Personifies Voice

Gary reads aloud his blog on voice today, as we all learn what he "sounds" like. I'm not sure if I can weave the scottish accent into my head as I read him from now on, but I definitely have incorporated the tenor and cadence of Gary's impressive spoken voice into my reading. See what the guy had to resort to when no one called him? THANKS gary!

Nerds Shall Overcome

Blogging empowers, brings confidence. I am who I say I am. Suddenly popularity is bestowed on the braniacs who missed being the life of the party the first time around (unless you were a young Chris Locke passing out your homemade jug of acid to the student body of the UofR and single-handedly changing the genetic makeup of western New York). Aside from those always-bold web personalities, many of us who make up the blog community (and the good folks at google) are just smart, really creative, unassuming, regular people. Not flashy... our messages are our meaning. It's not java script or flash intros that make us say "Ah ha!" It's good thinking, good writing, and good humor. We fight; we make peace. We joke; we laugh. We learn; we link. We create; we appreciate.

And you know, the Real World could learn a lot from us.

Learning

If I keep my self-control,
I'll be safe in my soul.
And the childhood belief
Brings a moment's relief,
But my cynic soon returns
And the lifeboat burns.
My spirit just never learns.
-From Genesis - In the Cage

Work hard to recreate yourself. Let yourself be new, brand new.

Uncountry

Understand
that everything isn't so,
it never was.

between the forms
and shapes
crystal clear moments
unfold.

where was I then
that I missed them?

hideous, dangerous
monster memories
swipe and slice
lion claws
that leave deep marks
in young flesh.

Unlikely to untangle,
unending.
Understand,
can't you?

the wanting,
the waiting,
the hated
the hating
it was all a waste.

nothing from you
would have been better
than this.

Watching the Detectives

This one's a doosey. RageBoy talks of wearing patterns in the carpet of the local bookstore and begins to unravel the many mysteries that make him, well, RageBoy. And of course there's lots of that real smart stuff he's always saying 'bout Zeitgeist and synchronicity and triumphalism and such. Open dictionary.com and give this installment of EGR your complete attention.

Call Gary

Gary Blockstickers Turner has a great post today in his other blog further exploring the notion of "voice" in how we read one another's blogs. You know, the voice you "hear" in your head when you read these things, these personalities, these emoting demons of the net netherworld. Well all this time I read Gary as a cross between an excited Garfield and a resolved Eeyore, and it turns out he's more like Daffy Duck meets Sean Connery! Gary doesn't just stop there--he says this:

"For total authenticity in the future when you read this blog you can call my office voicemail number and hear my dulcet tones on (44) 1536 495482, if you call during office hours I'll likely answer it so unless you want to purposely embarass us both then call some other time. I'm on GMT here. Hell you could even leave me a message."

Gary, you freak, I love it! I am calling. Hey everyone, call Gary. Tell him you love him.

Bathing in Bombast

There is a lot to love about The Bombast Transcripts. Chris Locke's brilliant mind, incredible gift for story telling, mixed with his often damn-scary use of idea enhancing self medications, make for a wild ride through the worlds of business, art, love, loss, grief, and discovery. And I'm only half way through it.

What's taking so long? I've been re-reading a lot as I go along. It's a good idea to do this when you're reading Locke. Take any special passage--and there are a lot of them: The first read startles you, the second read brings forth an "Ah ha" (and often a "ha ha"). And the third read is special--it's for soaking in his ideas.

Here's one of my favorites, from page 72:

"What I believe about my writing -- sometimes, when it's not just flatulent exhibitionism -- is that it's a way to turn those headlights on myself. Not to shock anyone, but to cease ignoring, fearing, hating what I am. After half a lifetime doing that, one day fourteen years ago I stopped. And right before I stopped, I got truly angry. It wasn't anger born of fear, for once, but of understanding. Understanding how I'd been complicit with whatever it is we go along with, buy into, lay on ourselves and others constantly: the shameful guilty knowledge that we are licking our own secret wound in private, in the dark, and no one must ever see. No one must ever know."

This is what I've been doing with my blog. And perhaps what many of us bloggers are doing--turning the headlights on ourselves so we can start healing. Start living again, at first within the safety and almost-anonymity of the net. Here we can examine. We can practice. And we can fail.

We start again. We test the waters. Who am I now? And who might care? Start to reveal the wounds. *Speak* the pain. And when the message connects with someone, resonates with them, that very connection begins the heaing. The growing. The becoming.

In this process, I've had gut wrenching moments. Why is it all coming back to me now? Taking me on this personal oddessy? Converging and climaxing around painful memories and a present-tense that feels uncertain? Why is it all at once so painful and so thrilling? And why the hell am I so compelled to share it?

Because it is birth.

Creation, birth, rebirth. It's bloody and painful, it pushes you to the edge and jabs at you until you think it might be better to jump than to take the punishment a second longer. That's what I'm here to do, to give birth to myself, and to maybe do a few things better this time around. Here. With you.

Lessons

My friend Phyllis is telling me a story, my ear drips with sweat it's been listening so long. I hear a thud, bump, thud outside. Damn dogs are playing rough again. They never shut up. Gotta let them in soon. "Huh, he said what to you? No frickin way. Come on." Half hour. Hour. "It's not you. No, you need to stop calling him. Just stop yourself," I tell her. Like she ever listens.

My mind drifts, half listening I wonder where my husband is playing tonight. Somewhere in Boston. Another gig I missed. I wish I were there. Feeling like a band widow and that sucks.

"What? No, you don't call him. You forget him, Phyllis."

Think back to the night I met him. I'd been watching a long time, secret groupie. Daughter of a bassist, looking for the deep dark rush of the low end. Found him when I least expected it. Or he found me.

Now two years later, we are married and in our first house together. Somethings don't change, like Phyllis and her man problems. The rest of my life is, and will remain, one guess at at time.

Finally she's done. We won't solve it on the phone tonight, but as usual, it doesn't stop us from trying.

"Okay, call me later." We always call each other later.

Upstairs I think, he must be back from the gig by now. I think I'll call. Lemme let the dogs in first, get ready for bed.

Nothing prepares me for the shock as I open the back door.

That sweet boy--the most lovable and intuitive of our two mutts--still and lifeless, a single link of his metal choke collar embedded in the fang of our problem dog, Ikea.

I stand there for what has to be a solid minute, bathing in the trauma. "NO!" I try desparately to untangle the choke colar from Ikea's fang. On the other end, Peanut flops lifeless. Ikea in a primal panic bolts and pulls, tighening the chain around his neck until I'm sure it will sever his head.

It doesn't matter. He's been dead for an hour.

These are the lessons we learn.

While we engage in the useless, the meaningless, the profound and often deadly is unfolding quietly just out of view.

now

If in running past, we miss that big something we should have crashed smack-dab into, who's doing is it? sigh. All by design. To fail to falter is my biggest mistake. Don't let yourself bleed half a lifetime before you look down and notice the wound. It's harder to heal that way. Cut, bleed, cry, rage, stomp, cuss. Do it all right then and there. Delay is nothing but false harbor. No one is safe. Let it wash over you. You are not safe. Accept it, feel it, know it, and push on anyway.

That is my job today.

Clinton Drops Da Bomb

On a related musical note, this just in from the Onion. Actually, it's not just in. In fact, it first appeared during that other little mid-east tiff we had, when Iraq succesfully dodged UN Weapons Inspectors, much to Mr. Clinton's dismay. But look how cyclical life is! This game plan is just as relevant today as it was the third time around. In fact, I'm going to have to run right now so I can fax it forthwith to the asses of evil for their consideration.

Every American should do his part. Funk on...

Get Your Funk On

If you've never seen George Clinton in concert, you should ask yourself why not. It's an extraterrestrialfunkified experience that is sure to delight. In the mean time, flip on over to the right nav bar, baby, because it's funky february here on allied. Listen to that slappin bass and groove on with yer bad self. Youssou N'Dour is a stretch for funky february, I know, but since we listen to him every day in the car, and our daughter can almost consistently tell you where "1" is on those odd-metered tunes, he deserves top spot this month.

n'joy.

Did you try too?

"The axis of evil." It kind of grows on you, doesn't it? That's why I set off to see who grabbed the domain name, figuring it would be gone, and it was:

Congratulations to johnboy, the proud papa of axisofevil.com, born January 29, 2002!

Helgeland, Clair John
johnboy@visi.com
2151 COMO AVE
SAINT PAUL, MN 55108-1807
US

If he puts up a site, let's hope he sides with good and not with, well, evil.

Oh, and b!x, you should know that assesofevil.com is still available. Hurry, supplies won't last!

Name Calling Among World Leaders Escalates
New insults take the form of Yo Mama jokes

film at 11.

the asses of evil

This from the one true b!x, who encapsulates the mighty one's state of the union in his latest blog:

Bush, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft -- the Asses of Evil -- are asking these nations, begging these nations, to try something. Try anything. Hit us again. So we can wipe you off the face of the then-bloody Earth.

Madmen. Every single fucking one of them. Theirs and ours alike.

If it weren't so true, it would be hysterical.

This blog has gotten far too depressing. For me at least. Let me take a cue from my fellow blog chroniclers and summarize some of my more interesting findings this fine Friday. Let's run through them, shall we?

You got your everyday "lady nurses a monkey" story. What is there to say?

Craig at BookNotes is incredibley prolific. [ed.--I thought I remembered reading that he was the last liberal in texas, but on further exploration of his blog, I'm not sure where he's from, but his blog is indeed awesome.]

Doc's talking about Jackson Browne, and then gives us a disturbing hollywood update--Jeff Bridges sings?

RageBoy's back--He's going to the movies.

Helen Razer made me a really cool graphic for this blog, which I have to figure out how to incorporate, and I will.

I am completely digging Mike Golby's blog, and his human nature.

Marek hasn't blogged since his soul food for thought. You okay Marek?

I think this is b!x's mom.

That's all for now.

My friend marge calls from Rochester. I miss her so much it still hurts. She says, "Are you okay? I've been reading your blog." Think about the connections in our connection. I had just finished posting--she's at the other end, looking at her monitor, sees my pain. My flat screen, a two-way mirror. The kind where concerned social workers watch family therapy sessions, invisible, observing the grief and anguish from a distance. Then we reconnect--coversation--over the phone, voice to voice. Ah--refreshing. I tell her ya, I'm okay. Margie, I'm okay, well, except for wanting it to be okay.

I miss ya Margie. I miss our camelot, the biosphere, oz.

Damn that wizard.

In hiding
I lie silent at last
I am free from my past
I walk among the tall trees
This is beauty I know
I am in love with it all
I have the freedom to love
In hiding

-Genesis, In Hiding

Split, twist, engage, extend, morph, converge. Sometimes, you're 40 years old before you find out that something you always thought was so isn't. Shall we say I had a revealing therapy session yesterday? Yes, let's just say that. These truths that are emerging about my life--what do they have to do with blogging? I think everything. In writing ourselves into existence (as David Weinberger describes this little exercise of ours), we have a chance to change what was wrong the first time around.

Born again blogging.

It goes like this. You reach inside your soul--where else are you going to get all this material, the stuff that matters--and you pull out all of your collective experiences, understandings, rights and the wrongs, all better known as baggage. You approach this clean slate--the net, your blog--and you begin to define yourself.

Come out from hiding and share your life with the universe.
Man, there's no better way to see how fucked it's been.

And it's not always the things we write about--sometimes the significance is in the omission. The things I don't blog. But still, they inform my writings. There is no hiding in good blogging.

So back to therapy. Things are happening, coming undone. Lies and Truth have intersected and I stare at the axis, blinking. Amazed. confused.

Where have I been?
W-h-e-r-e have I been?

There is comfort in pretending, in hiding, which is why I think a few posts back--in leaving my read of Cixous--I was comfortable to stay in exile. Remember that? That's where Cixous left me. Wrapped in the notion of exile. And I thought that was where I needed to be.

With no camoflage left
Naked I stand shaking
Waiting for rebirth.

All I'm saying is this: The connections we make on the net are helping us rewrite our real world selves even more dramatically than our online selves. Yep, I need to explore further, and I will give personal examples, but not tonight. For tonight I will say that connections alone are not enough. They are not the end, they are a means. Something happens, is happening, to me and to you because we're here. Something not defined by google search results or inside our blogs. It's physical. It's tangible. What is resonating with you? Where will it take you? How are you different because you've been? Who are you becoming?

I am not who I was. And I'm not alone.

What do you do when you're tired to the bone, waiting for that one more thing to push you over the edge? I'm pretty sure my one more thing is coming, and soon. Consider this a pre-blog. I'm not blogging about what was or is, but pushing the blog-forward button, telling you another shoe is about to drop. Look up--see it? I do. What's yours look like? White? Brown? Dirty with some gum stuck to it? Mine's one bigass sole (with cleets I think). Poised.

Nothing left but fruition.

If it doesn't stomp me to death, I'll let you know what it brings forth.

In the mean time, I blog. Why not?

David over at JOHO has some interesting ideas on blogging and what we are accomplishing by bringing forth these net voices:

The importance of the weblog phenomenon isn't so much that it enables people to publish their breakfast menus or even their genuine insights. It's that we now know what our "avatars" on the Net are going to be: not graphical cartoon representations but our body of writing. You are what you write. On the Web we are writing ourselves into existence. This introduces into the self the same issues of control, inspiration, invention, deception and play as have always been present in the relationship of authors to what they write.

I think Dave's right on with this, and I think we can take it one step further, and a hyperlinked thought it is: As our fingers wind around the keyboard sketching our online selves--filling in the furrows, the wrinkles, the gleam, the raised eybrow as we go--that avatar we create *recreates* us in the offline world. It is a circle of creation and recreation. That is the joy in it for me--not so much the voice, the self I have created through blogging, but how that unleashed voice is transforming me, the person, the flesh and the mind.

Food for thought. An ecosystem, a food chain, an infinity symbol... I don't have all the answers, but I do know that the hard-copy me, the one who created these five pages of search results on *me*, has been changed by that very act. For the better. I think.

joy. don't forget the joy. it's gotta be here someplace (now where did I put it?)

-night

Gone to the ocean
where the pelicans fly,
gonna soak in the sun
with my kid and my guy.

Away from the city
the crime and the smog,
what the hell will I do
without my blog?

(see ya in a few days...)

Top ten reasons I wish RageBoy would blog more:

10. I don’t have to blog if I’m busy reading his.
9. My dire straits album is getting dusty.
8. I need an excuse to read The Harvard Business Review.
7. I got my war on with no place to go.
6. One word: Zeitgeist
5. Every once in a while, I kinda, sorta understand him.
4. What good’s a meme if no one’s there to propagate?
3. That "Grumpy Fuck" Winer is starting to make sense.
2. Can’t get enough of that funky stuff.
1. I’m still waiting to find out how the LoveLeash worked out.

Whitsuntide

screaming to the edge
I stop short
and take wing,
sweet ascension.

I knew you yesterday,
the someone else
you were then,
something in your
laughing eyes
made me believe.

Rising with a star
night-dark rage
angry Aries,
was it something I said?

Without the death
no resurrection,
so untie me then.

And in the end,
will it matter to you
if I leap and lose?

Cixous writes: "I want the word depays (uncountry); I am sorry we don't have it, since the uncountry is not supposed to exist. Only pays (country) and depaysement exist. I like beings who belong to the removal (depaysement)."

--------------------------------------------------------------

I leave Cixous and my journey down the three steps here, in my own uncountry. Although she writes more, on naming, on sex and the presence/absence of gender, on dying and flowers and Kafka's deathbed scraps of paper, I'm not there yet. I have read it, but I am not that far in my own journey. I will stay for now in the School of Roots, somewhere between Exile and Uncountry. You go on without me. Because this is where I need to stay, at least for now.

Unbeing is hard. Transitional, but I don't know to what. "Un" is not forever, because there is the dying to be done. And thank you Helene Cixous. I haven't found any other writer as curious as I am with dying and its inherent tangles with writing, with the writer.

So as I close this portion of my blog to Cixous, you know me. I am the one who lost early and often, and then almost for good. I am the one who dreams of creation and babies who are born, lost, and sometimes never found again. And I am the one struggling with my roots, what they mean to me and my daughter, who is calling me back, just now, as I finish this:

"Mama?"

--------------------------------------

Cixous Break

Reader-friends, I have a favor to ask. If you happen to be online on Saturday before Midnight, take a trip over to GarageBand.com and check out the Funk/Soul/R&B track of the day from LeadBelly. My husband produces (and lends his nimble bassist fingers) to the band.

The song is in the 100s within its genre now, so I'm thinking some extra attention might keep it climbing up the charts. I'm not sure how the number of downloads/listens figures into their popularity contest over there, but I suspect that it does--and it sure can't hurt. (After midnight, you can still listen, but the tune's run as track of the day will be over.)

Much appreciated. Meme on.

--------------------------------------

the school of roots

Cixous writes: "Exile is an uncomfortable situation, though it is also a magical situation. I am not making light of the experience of exile. But we can endure it differently. Some exiles die of rage, some transform their exile into a country."

----------------------------------------------

I see the place named My Exile. I should embrace that place, but I don't want to go, don't want to be apart. Exile is terrifying until you are apart so long you forget the pain of the rebuff.

More and more with the offline world I am wandering into exile. There seems less reason to reach out, to travel outward physically. And there is, for me, less and less reward in it. It's the online, inward journey I'm interested in right now. Traversing the web of discussions and connections that make the old world seem one-dimensional and flat. How ironic that this flat screen leads into a world thick with dimension and energy, while my own front door leads to a bland, disconnected place--a place of far less joy.

What of this? When the touch of the keyboard feels more familiar than the touch of a hand. When to leave, to exile yourself, becomes more compelling than staying.

When the light out there
is much too bright
and the day too hard
to bear.

the school of dreams

Cixous wonders what men dream about. If not creation, she reasons, which is at the core of every woman's dream self--conception, birth, loss, separation, our babies who are sometimes as small as beans and other times disguised as puppies or plants--then what? What colors the dreams of men, especially men who write? What do you birth in your dreams, through your dreams?

In my dreams, I am the child, the mother, the one who loses and the one who is lost.

Cixous finds more comfort in her dreams than I do, or at least draws more creatively from them. For me, lately, my dreams simply mirror my angst. If I could open the door to my blog and climb inside, I think I would. For a while at least. Escape inside the comforting shapes of text and space, of colors and the absence of color, of people who know me well enough to make me laugh, but not so well that they can hurt me.

Here. Here is where nothing happens until I write it, nothing comes undone without my permission. Lately I need to write more than to dream. Lately writing is that dream.

------------------------------------------------------------------

the school of dreams

Cixous writes: "A woman who writes is a woman who dreams about children. Our dream children are innumerable. The writing time, which is like reading time--there is latency, there is pre-writing--is accompanied by a child state, what Tsvetaeva calls the "state of creation." The unconscious tells us a book is a scene of childbirth, delivery, abortion, breastfeeding. The whole chronicle of childbearing is in play within the unconscious during the writing period."

--------------------------------------------------------------------

I weep all the way home, and once there, I'm plagued by dreams. My baby is born, no she is still unborn. I hold her and then lose her, or she is not mine at all. I swim through them, dark nights of pain, and wonder too long about what could have been--should have been? Most days I am not sure what's real.

And then my baby comes back to me. To be with me. With us. For me to take care of, for real. I can't pick her up because I'll rip in two. So I return to the bed, for a time. I settle with her there, to stare and wonder: what do I do now? My memory of her is gone, my scent isn't on her. Who's is she?

And then it starts. I feel her again, I feel that place inside so wounded by surgeons, where she once lived, that place of the memory of my child. It happens a little at a time for good reason; to happen all at once would kill me all over again.

And I am finally mother.

I am mother, I am writer, I am dreamer.

And she is with me, she is in me, she is me.

I'm home.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
the school of dreams

Cixous writes: "In order to go to the School of Dreams, something must be displaced, starting with the bed. One has to get going. That is what writing is, starting off. It has to do with activity and passivity. This does not mean one will get there. Writing is not arriving; most of the time it's not arriving. One must go on foot, with the body, One has to go away, leave the self. How far must one not arrive in order to write, how far must one wander and wear out and have pleasure? One must walk as far as the night. One's own night. Walking through the self toward the dark."

--------------------------------------------------------------------

As bad as nearly bleeding to death is, the secondary infection is what almost kills me. Ten days on the edge begin to tear apart mother and child bonds, my bond with my baby, my mother's with me. And just there, I have arrived at a truth I hadn't known until I set out, wandering, as Cixous says. The depth of killing in the parent-child separation.

But in the end, I do get up from the bed, and I cry as I leave it. I cry because to die is easier, to be immortalized a heroine, "died in childbirth," the headstones that stop you as you wind through cemeteries. Easier because the damage done to the family from my near-death can't be undone.

But instead I rise from the bed, at the moment of staying or going, I both stay and go at once. I rise from the bed to write. I stay to dream.

the school of dreams

I wake up before I leave the OR, before any pain medicines hit my veins. I wake up with a hurt so strong I wish they would kill me--take me back in and kill me. The agony is unbearable.

Because the surgery takes nearly seven hours, the anesthesia is light toward the end. You cannot hang that long between life and death, while anesthesia balances the body there as the soul dances in and out of the light.

This is a state of dreams. Of needing to leave behind a pain so intense that to not leave will kill you. So it's not surprising that I wake up too soon, before they wheel me into recovery, with the rawness of every cut and stich so fresh I can only gasp, "help."

the school of the dead

As I waver between life and death in my own hospital bed, 30 years after his death, on his birthday in fact, I am somehow not surprised. Terrified, yes. Facing death is not something I'm prepared for. My new baby is just 9 weeks old. How did I get here?

When you lose a parent early in life, you wonder if you'll make it past the age they were when they left you. Every child of death wonders this. That's why I'm not surprised to be near death myself at 36, the same age he was when the luck of the Irish eluded him.

In my hospital bed, hemorrhaging uncontrollably, I am violently enrolled in what Cixous calls, "The School of Dreams." Because I don't die; I live. But in walking the line between here and there, I dream. Images as vibrant as those five-year-old memories, scenes that will carry me through the next half of my life.

Bleeding to near death. Watching helplessly as my lifeforce leaves my body, playing tricks with my mind and taking small pieces of my soul with it, my sanity too. The emptiness is unfathomable. As a new mother, instincts of self-protection battle with the responsibility of caring for this new life. I don't want to see her; don't want her to see me, not like this. My one gift to her: protect her from images of her dying parent--I know how they haunt.

But she comes to visit just before surgery. My sister carries her down the elevator toward the operating room, this small life that has almost cost me mine.

Anxiety gives way to resolve. Once again, I cannot control. I cannot fix myself, I cannot fix my family. I let go, I go to sleep. And I dream. Dreams of pain. Dreams of loss--where is my baby? My husband is gone--no, there he is. And I hear talking, outside of myself.

I am a dream within a dream. A death within a death.

None of this should matter to you. Because it's mine. It belongs to me. My loss, my gain, my death, my life. And yet, others who descend the ladder of writing with me must absolutely experience this school of loss-gain, death-life, grief-joy. If not, we have no common ground. If not, my voice will not resonate with you. If you have not taken that step down, then you and I live in different worlds. Sometimes I glance your way, and it's envy you feel heating your neck, and sometimes it's sadness for you too.

Don't be sorry for me; be sorry for you. I saw the open door and walked on through.

----------------------------------------
the school of the dead

Cixous writes: "For a long time I lived through my father's death with the feeling of immense loss and childlike regret, as in an inverted fairy tale: Ah, if my father had lived! I naively fabricated other magnificent stories, until the day things changed color and I began to see other scenes--including everything I could imagine that was less consoling--without overinvesting."

-----------------------------------------

I tell all my friends growing up that my father died of a gallbladder operation. Because no one tells me otherwise, even though he lived another six months after that operation. My fourth grade teacher tells me it is very unusual for someone to die of a gallbladder operation. She says, "Are you sure?" And I wonder if I'm hiding something.

I'm 21 before I ask.

My mother tells me the truth then, about the day he had his operation and the doctors took her in a room, there by herself, to tell her that her husband's gallbladder is fine, but his pancreas isn't. The diagnosis is pancreatic cancer. The prognosis, much as it is today, omonous. Six months maybe. My mother tells me the news rips her apart, and her first and strongest instinct is to wail for her own father. "Bring my daddy here. He'll know what to do. I need him." But there is no comforting to be done for this family.

There will never be comfort again.

-----------------------------------
the school of the dead

Cixous writes: "Of course, I'm only talking about the death of the loved one, it's only a question of love here. And of everything loss brings as it takes away. We lose and in losing we win. This doesn't happen together, it can happen in a deferred, sustained, or continuous manner... This misfortune or fortune--which will make our lives an unending struggle to be fair--is that in losing we have something to gain. Mixed loss and gain: that's our crime. This is what we are always guilty of, guilt we can't do anything about with these unexpected and terrible gains."

---------------------------------

The days and months that follow are a mix of images without resolution. Technicolor hyper-reality cinema interspersed with sudden fades to black. Black stays for a while as I knock the side of my head trying to remember. Then the show starts again, a new scene, the exhaustion of not knowing how the last scene ended.

The most vivid memory is Saint Patrick's Day, 1968. Mrs. McCarthy knows my father has been ill. She asks if I think he would like some get well cards from the class. I'm pretty sure he would. And that day, we all make shamrock cards for my father, luck of the Irish for a Sicilian, and I am sure that day I have become a kind of kindergarten celebrity. More than once, I am glad my father is sick. I am glad for the attention. It is a wanting that will haunt me the rest of my life.

At the end of the day, Mrs. McCarthy bundles the cards up in a sack for me to carry home on the bus. I can barely stand the ride home, so excited to be bringing some St. Patrick's day luck for my father.

I fly in the front door and up the carpeted steps toward his bedroom, where I know he'll be resting. My mother meets me at the top of the steps. "Look!" I shout, as happy as I've been in six months, "I have cards my class made for daddy!" She doesn't let me past her to the bedroom door. She takes the sack from my hand and tells me my Aunt Penny is in my room--she wants to talk to me.

That instant I know.

My luck is too late.

Slowly I walk to my room. I pass a TV where I hear the soap opera drama of "The Edge of Night."

I love my Aunt Penny. She is my second mother, and would grow to be more so over the years to come. She sits me down and tells me that sometimes God chooses special people to be in heaven with him. He needs them for reasons we don't understand. She really is trying.

"My dad is dead, isn't he?"

The wind knocked out of her, she whispers a soft "Yes."

My father, her big brother, dead at 36.

I don't cry. She tells me I can if I want to. But I really don't want to. I look back often and wonder why, and I find that my thoughts that day are still sensible some 35 years later: He's gone. There's nothing I can do about it. He didn't even get to see the cards. He's gone. Okay.

When I come out of the room my mother is waiting. "It's just you and me now, and we'll be okay." And at that moment, I quake with fear that my brother and sister have succumbed to death too, because she doesn't mention them. I still don't know why she chose those words, but she was a 33-year-old widow with three children, no life insurance, a farm to sell, a job to get. That she chose the words she did is somehow okay.

-------------------------------------------
the school of the dead

Cixous writes: "The first book I wrote rose from my father's tomb. I don't know why; perhaps it was the only thing I had to write then. I had to write then, in my poverty, in my inexperience, the only asset: the only thing that made me live, that I had lived, that put me to the test, and that I felt because it completely defeated me. It was my strange and monstrous treasure."

-------------------------------------------

In school on the day of his operation, it was a kindergarten day like any other. I remember the smells the best... exhaust from the school bus, the mixed aroma of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, balogna sandwiches, cheese and crackers, and 30 little half-pints of milk all pulled open at once. My mat, where I take my nap. My teacher, Mrs. McCarthy, who knows my father is getting rid of that gallbladder and who touches my shoulder a few more times than usual that day.

And then it stops. Fade to black.

----------------------------------------
the school of the dead

Cixous writes: "The dead man's death gives us the essential primitive experience, access to the other world, which is not without warning or noise but which is without the loss of our birthplace. So it gives us everything, it gives us the end of the world; to be human we need to experience the end of the world. We need to lose the world, to lose a world, and to discover that there is more than one world, and that the world isn't what we think it is. Without that, we know nothing about the mortality and immortality we carry. We don't know we're alive as long as we haven't encountered death. These are banalities that have been erased. And it is an act of grace."

------------------------------------------

A bad gallbladder. The doctors tell my mother, my mother tells the three of us. I'm five now. Not knowing what part of the body hides the gallblader, I know it must be somewhere in the middle--because I see him doubled over from the spasms, I watch from behind the couch as he climbs the stairs after dinner to lie perfectly still, bearing the rhythm of pain. No one seems worried. I take my cue from them. The doctors are ready to take this gallbladder out, and my father will be able to eat sauce on his pasta again, not butter. He'll be able to sit through dinner. He'll feel like playing his bass again. The dark circles, the sullen look, the whites of his eyes growing bigger, his stare more distant--these are things doctors can fix with gallbladders, I believe. But I don't forget the red brick building.

I'm four years old, in the back seat of our oversized station wagon. It's 1967 and all the station wagons are big enough to swallow a child whole. Without a seatbelt, riding is more like rolling, swimming around in cool blue cushioned seats.

This day, I'm more carsick than usual. Windows rolled tight against the upstate New York cold, the smell of hair spray and cigarette smoke, mixed with whisps of black coffee, make every breath uncomfortable, and I teeter on the verge of gagging and vomiting most of the way there.

When we pull up to the red brick building, my sickness turns quickly to fear. I'm overwhelmed with panic and the primal urge to flee. Danger. I know we're in terrible danger. And without the words to express it, I do what four year olds do. I wail. Hysterical, high pitched screams fill the car. "Don't go in there! You won't come out! P-L-E-A-S-E, Daddy, don't go in there! Mommy, he won't come home! He won't! He Won't!"

Husband and wife locked in a glance I remember to this day, they slowly turn to me, there on my back-seat ocean of blue cushions, and give words of comfort that shroud their dismay.

"It's just an appointment honey. Don't get so upset. He'll be back in 15 minutes. Calm down, honey, calm down."

My mother climbs in the back seat with tissues for me, and together we watch my father, 35 years old, pull his collar up against the wind and walk briskly toward the building.

As he walked he was dying.

But we didn't know that.

I did.

It was my first day in "The School of the Dead."

------------------------------------------

Ahhh. Blogger's back up. This is good.

Can't blog much right now--I'm having a sort of epiphany, and it's never good to blog in the middle of one of those; you can ruin it--much better afterward. The epiphany is coming to me courtesy of a book I'm engaged in:

.
I won't give away much, but consider that blogging is writing. And consider today that you are dying as you blog.

Love among the blogs

Well, well. Seems that one of my predictions for 2002 is already outdated. No Miss Chloe, I admit, still I thought I was being really forward-looking with my prediction of blogger marriages in 2002. Seems I'm behind the times. Got this email from Medley at Uncorked...

Assuming you're talking about people who write weblogs in general, and not just those who use the 'Blogger' tool, there have been a few weblogger weddings already!
My own, for one.
Rebecca's Pocket to JJG
The authors of BackupBrain (if I'm remembering correctly)
... and I'm sure there have been a couple of others.
I'm just sayin'...

-Medley -- A weblog about IT, policy, current events, and more from an INTJ-feminist-geek perspective. http://uncorked.org/medley/

How cool is that? So now they are on notice--we're waiting for the conception part, guys!

Friends, family, workfolk, they all ask me--who is this "RageBoy" you keep talking about? (same folks who keep asking what a blog is). To understand someone, I always say, take a look at where they came from. This week Steve Larsen gives us poignant glimpses into RageBoy's early rants in chapter 1 of a book he's working on, "What Were We Thinking?" Locke has posted the chapter in an EGR Send. Here's an example of the sensitive, empathetic and sometimes passionate character we know as RageBoy:

"I've been stuck at IBM for a year with my thumb up my ass and I'm waiting for someone to figure out what the fuck is going on and they've got plans I give them all the time and they file them and say 'Yeah, Chris, that's great,' then they take me into some fucking egg carton room and tell me what I've got to work with, which is nothing, no money no equipment no staff, and then they give me a check and I fucking go home and sit there, where I've got better tech stuff anyway than IBM where it took me three solid months to get an internet hookup, and this is what they want me to do, see, they want me to do the internet thinking, and get them into it, but the first fucking thing they tell me is you've got no resources and 'Oh, by the way, don't talk to anyone about this stuff without clearing it through channels.' A fucking year. And I sit here and some of what I'm hearing is how to work in the system. Well I say fuck the system -- it's dead it's stupid it's non-responsive it's counter productive it's fucking socially evil and if we put any more of our goddamn time into propping up these dead-ass morons we deserve what we fucking get."

Blog Predictions for 2002

Some iteration of instant messaging and chat functions will merge with blogs for folks to talk amongst themselves--taking 'blogback' to the next level.

More idiots will begin blogging, annoying the hell out of blog pioneers and increasing the velocity of insult hurling.

Doc Searls will announce the first blogger wedding mid-year, when friends who met blogging decide to tie the knot. The conception of their first child will be bloggerized. RageBoy will be all over that shit.

More celebrities will jump on the blog bandwagon.

RageBoy and Winer will go at it again, likely using biological and chemical weapons this time. There will be no winner, but lots of memes.

Corporations will get wind that employees are blogging during work hours and issue anti-blogging policies.

Smart companies will get wind that employees are blogging during work hours and imagine the possibilities.

A major motion picture will feature a character who blogs. The character will be a psychopathic alcoholic intellectual head case.

The part will be offered to Jack Nicholson, who will turn it down because bloggers don't get cute chicks.

Some company, somewhere, will take Gonzo Marketing to heart and underwrite some blog, somewhere, somehow. Please.

Community blogs--or "party blogs" like Gonzo Engaged--will grow in residents and in numbers, morphing into their own form of blogging. These forms will separate from one-man blogs, which will lean more toward journal and journalism than community.

David Weinberger will stop blogging again, only to start again in 2004.

tis the season to take pot shots
fa la la la la la la la la

Wow, someone got up on the wrong side of the blog today. Wouldn't have come across this rant by Cameron Barrett on Dave Winer's blogger of the year contest, but RageBoy in a rare two-EGR-send turned me on to the Contest, and later in his blog, to Cam's rant on the unfairness of it all.

My first suspicion: That Cam's relying on memic propagation to boost his OWN standings in the contest as we rush in large numbers to Winer's defense... In other words, me thinks he doth protest too much:

"I was not surprised then, to find my own site (CamWorld) nominated in the Blogger of the Year category. I have a feeling that Dave wanted to include some non-Manila weblogs in his list of nominees, so as to appear less one-sided. Well, thanks but no thanks Dave. I don't care one bit for this awards contest. My site has been around for a long time now, and I have never once asked for it to be nominated for any kind of award. Nor have I ever intentionally submitted it for any awards consideration. Even for awards that actually mean something like the yearly SXSW Interactive competition, where Web site excellence is actually celebrated by a large group of well-repected peers, and not by some overly self-important, egotistical, software programmer in Silicon Valley with a Web site."

Because if he really means what he says, then Cam needs to summon the spirit of the Blog and remember what we're in this for. It's not about democracy. It's not about uniformity. And it's certainly not about being "unbiased." The days of pretend-not-to-have-an-opinion journalism are over.

Blogging is all about what I think. What Dave thinks. What RageBoy thinks. What Doc thinks. What bloggers who've not yet blogged think. It's saying what I want. How I want. It's making up whatever fucking contest strikes my fancy. It's about the Five Fish Blog Award and the Scripting News Awards. And if Cam decides to throw up a CamWorld contest, then I'm down with that too.

And one more thing. You don't see us blog-girls taking pot shots at each other. More proof that blogs imitate life? So boys of the blog, take a deep breath, make peace, and go get your vote on.

-later

If the words of Osama Bin Laden recounting his joy over the WTC attack doesn't leave a lump in your throat and a dull ache in the pit of your gut, the poem he recites at the end of this videotaped meeting with his counterparts will:

I witness that against the sharp blade
They always faced difficulties and stood together...
When the darkness comes upon us and we are bit by a
Sharp tooth, I say...
"Our homes are flooded with blood and the tyrant
Is freely wandering in our homes''...

And from the battlefield vanished
The brightness of swords and the horses...
And over weeping sounds now
We hear the beats of drums and rhythm
They are storming his forts
And shouting: "We will not stop our raids
Until you free our lands''...

A co-worker today asked what a blog is (we get that question a lot these days, don't we?). I said, "It's a cross between journal and journalism." I said what I liked, liked what I said, and blogged it here. More later.

online narcissism

Funny. Just before reading Mike Sanders' entry about being Number One on Google, guess what I was doing. Go ahead, guess. Yep, I had just done my every-few-day jeneane sessum search on Google to see if I had shown up anyplace new. Unlike Mike, no one else has my name. So my personal goal with Google has been different than Mike's goal of making his way to the top Mike Sanders spot. Instead, I've been racing my husband, with the fairly unique name of George Sessum, to see how many pages of google search results we can accumulate. I'm up to five. I've left George in the dust as he anxiously waits to bump to page 3. The difference? I blog. He, on the other hand, hasn't gotten a grip on this time-consuming sport just yet.

Before I started blogging in October, googling Jeneane Sessum brought up one sad result: My unsubscribe to the Acid Jazz mailing list. Disgusted with making other people famous throughout my career in PR, I took a liking to this blogging deal (ordeal?). It gave me a chance to be author, not ghost writer. Thinker, not gopher. It gave me a reason to BE. And now I am someone. Like Mike, it's not really "power" that I feel as I push through my google results. I guess it's a feeling notariety. Respect. Acceptance. Fame. These are good feelings--and something that the day job usually doesn't afford the common guy or gal.

And as I ponder, I'm glad that all the stuff that comes up about me on Google (so far) is good. No humiliations suffered yet.

I wonder how long it will be before search engines start to offer a paid service for NOT listing specific search results... Say you posted something rather explicit on an offbeat site, or posted an online rant about your boss or mother-in-law, later to learn that Google has outed you... Would you pay to be "unlisted," like some folks do with that old hard-copy behemoth known as the white pages? It's a thought. Maybe an odd one. We'll see.

So thanks for making us think Mike. Personally, I love the idea of leaving a legacy to my daughter... One day she'll search up her mama's name and show her friends what I thought. What I wrote. Who I was. And that I talked about her an aweful lot. Hopefully she'll be over 18 though.... I think I've dropped a few curse words here and there. :-)

later...

One of the few moving pieces I've read about the war is this piece by Robert Fisk on his experience as a journalist beaten by an angry group of afghan refugees. A historic piece of first-person journalism, this piece depicts the character of the journalist, whose job as he sees it is to understand more than one side of an issue that has been dramatically oversimplified for the masses.

"They were uneducated – I doubt if many could read – but you don't have to have a schooling to respond to the death of loved ones under a B-52's bombs. At one point a screaming teenager had turned to my driver and asked, in all sincerity: 'Is that Mr Bush?'"