Blogscapes

Before I started blogging, the three blogs listed at the right were the only ones I visited with any regularity. Camilla's Wallflower.nu came first; I started visiting there sometime in late 2002. Sammie's sdfsdf.wox.org was next, first spotted in the wee hours of January 1, 2003 - pathetically, I spent New Year's Eve that year drunk in front of my computer, but geez, the letter of introduction I wrote to her while still semi-drunk is a work of art.

I knew Bill through our mutual friends John and Rose for a few years before I knew he even had a blog. I've been stopping by IndustrialBlog pretty regularly since then, trying to smack some sense into his Dominican-corrupted head. (Jesuits ROCK! Go, Jebbies!)

Fran's funky blog 'o' love is one of my latest additions to regularly-visited blogs. Fran lives way on the other end of North America, in the province of British Columbia in Canada. She was kind enough to post a comment to my site a few weeks ago, and we've been ping-ponging back and forth since then. (Her husband bOB also has a blog, Citizen Paranoid.)

I just found out about Jen's site, Virtual Jen, about a week and a half ago. I know Jen through Bill, and from a lot of weekends we've all spent at John and Rose's. I haven't seen her in ages...not, I think, since the dreaded Vodka incident.

Each blog is different. Each one has its own texture, its own flavor. Even as Camilla redesigns her blog with near-frenetic frequency, there has emerged a continuity of what can only be described as style. The same is true of Sammie's blog, which has only been redesigned a few times since I started visiting. I think Bill has changed servers since I started visiting, but he has maintained a similar design, I think. And I have not been coming to Fran's or Jen's sites long enough to notice any changes. Of course, my own blog is just over two months old, and aside from a few minor modifications, it's just a basic off-the-shelf template.

I expected when I was thinking about starting a blog that I would be using it more as a soapbox, a place to broadcast my opinions about society, politics, movies, books - whatever crossed my mind. But that hasn't happened. Maybe it's because I spend so much time thrusting those opinions in people's faces in the physical world, I don't really feel like doing it here. No, instead what I'm doing is writing down the everyday stories I would normally tell my friends. "Getting involved" was delivered orally about four times last Friday, to various people. It's seven pages long, so you can see how my blog can save me time. "Hey, did I have something weird happen today. Check my blog!"

So what do these blogs feel like? Well, I only know what they feel like to me.

Camilla's blog is like having a conversation in a cafe with a cool and clever friend who always keeps you at arm's length. You're welcome to hang about, as long as you keep your distance, and while you're there she might regale you with snippets of cleverness or bits of coolness. Or she might just growl at you and make you wonder what's going on. But I always want to come back for more.

Sammie's blog feels more like when I was a little kid listening to my big sister tell me stories of her daily adventures. There's a warmth there, and also a touch of weirdness, a sense of other-ness which is probably inevitable when I realize that she and I live on damn near opposite sides of the planet. I hope Sammie will let me and the rest of her fans hang out in her room for a while yet, listening to her stories. (Like the time she had to drive through town with no windshield in her car...)

Bill's blog is more like what I thought mine might be like, a sort of open roundtable discussion of politics, baseball, society, and home-buying that sees a lot of information get exchanged and occasionally erupts into brawls - or at least slap-fights.

Fran's blog feels more like a bunch of seven-year-olds who have squeezed into a closet with a flashlight. Fran is holding the flashlight under her chin and giggling and cackling as she tells us goofy stories.

Jen's...I really haven't been able to get a sense of. There's definitely a girlish quality about it, in the way that the Lifetime channel or a Lisa Loeb video have a girlish feel to them. Which is not surprising, given that Jen is, in fact, a girl. Woman. Sorry. Woman.

And me? What about Another Monkey?

Well, I don't really have the same distance from this blog that I do from all the others, considering that I'm the one writing it. But the feeling I've gotten from it, and the feeling I want to convey, is this: it's a Sunday afternoon in late Autumn. The sun is sinking among golden clouds, and soon everybody will have to say goodbye to the weekend and get ready to go back to work and school. But for now we sit on the back porch in rockers and garden swings and Adirondack chairs savoring our last hours of freedom, watching the sun get lower, listening to the breeze and the leaves and the birds, and laughing as crazy old Uncle Echo tells another rambling story about his mundane but nevertheless amusing adventures. And there's lemonade and brownies for everybody, too.

Of course, it doesn't just have to be Uncle Echo telling his stories in this Bradburyesque/Rockwellian idyll. Everybody else is welcome to chime in, too. And when you do have to go, know that you're welcome back anytime. Bring a friend, if you like.

Y'all come back now, you hear?