THE BLOG WASTE LAND

When I first started blogging, it was in response to several factors: boredom at my job; the urging of old friend "Fast Eddie"; and a mountain of self-loathing that was rising within me.

I started off the way everyone else does: naive, open-minded, clueless. I wandered through the blog-o-sphere, searching for likeminded folks. I found some, but it took a long time to make any meaningful connections.

I went through an extremely angry phase, where I visited websites simply to stir up shit. I left confrontational, acidic comments on people's blogs. My own posts were sometimes venomous and rancorous. This coincided with my being laid off, moving back home, cutting myself off from my friends, and feeling generally hopeless.

And now, I can't help but note the reversal of fortune. I am now a Happy Blogger.

I have nice things to say. I feel fine. Life is treating me as good as it can right now, considering what kind of messes I am constantly getting myself into... but wherever I browse for new blogs and new contacts, I find that the blog-o-sphere is becoming a waste land of sorts.

People are shutting down their blogs. Some people keep blogging but are forced to shut down their comments, thanks to spammers and stalkers. Others haven't got the time to write. And the moods and dispositions of formerly happy bloggers have turned sour.

I have alienated enough former readers to know why they are silent when they used to visit my blog every day and comment on my posts. I still read the blogs of people who have de-linked me, and it seems like everyone is miserable. There is no joy to be found in Blogville, I suppose.

Some bloggers carry on, doing the exact same thing that they were doing when I first came across them. Progress is stagnant for these bloggers-- they have no desire to transcend their mindsets. They are perfectly content to never change.

I've changed. But then again, the more things change the more they stay the same.

I'm still as ornery as ever. I'm still quick to blast someone with faulty logic or unsound arguments. I won't hesitate to shove my opinions down someone else's throat.

I guess I've just mellowed out a bit.

Love has something to do with it, yes. I will admit as much. It's funny how something like that will mellow you out. The world is still fucked up and insane, and it is perhaps even more so now that Bush has another four years on us. I still care about inequities and injustices and outrages... but I've spent so much of the past two or three years railing against them that I think I need to take a break and enjoy life for a spell.

I'm not going to stop blogging-- I can't. It's in me, like poison in my bloodstream. I am tainted. I am afflicted with the disease, seeking the comfort that confessional writing provides. But I know that my posts will be weak and soft, so long as things between Eve and I remain normal, or at least as normal as we make them out to be.

Eve is like me-- she wants to be happy but can never really take her eye off of the things happening on the sidelines. She can't help but notice how fucked up things are. But her approach is the opposite of mine: she prefers to run away, hoping to distance herself from the disturbing aspects of humanity. I tend to wallow in the disturbances, almost as if I thrive on suffering and chaos. I am looking for gold in the cesspools, and she can't understand why I don't get sick from the stench.

Because I love her, I am beginning to realize that maybe I should run away occasionally. I can run away with her. I will live to fight another day by doing this. I will live to love her another night by not always going off into cyber-battle with perceived enemies.

She gets a kick out of my argumentative nature, but I know she would prefer if I just rested my head on her shoulder and said nothing. She knows that I read the papers, and she and I agree on politics for the most part, but she sees it as a futile endeavor, to attempt to change the world through sheer will. She would rather strive to make her own life more palatable, more tolerable.

I need to listen to her regarding this. I need to stop trying to solve world problems and concentrate on making our lives more comfortable.

I am an Aquarius, so I will never outgrow this need to be the global humanitarian. I am a Libra rising, so my sense of imbalance and fairness will never be sated. But she is an Aries, and she runs the show. And I am the air that makes her fire burn, and she is the fire that consumes me and keeps me warm. She is my long-lost muse, and I am the first man she ever loved. We are reunited, and we intend to make something of ourselves.

The both of us have a lot to prove, in that respect.

She doesn't go online, she doesn't read my blog (hell, she doesn't even know or care what a blog is) and she doesn't have the time or resources to check her e-mail consistently. She is cyber-illiterate, and there is something endearing about that.

She paints with watercolors and acrylics on small canvases. I told her that, when she finishes her next painting, I want to hang it up on my wall. I would love to paint her a picture. I wonder what kind of things I would paint: would I indulge my dark id and depict the grotesques of my imagination? Or would I create something pastoral and serene?

As I roam this blog waste land, I see the ruins of greatness, I see once-proud strongholds left in ashes, I see the remains of virtual empires abandoned like shanties in the ghettoes of the 'real world'. I see people retreating, leaving the country for the solace of their former homelands. I see people regrouping, replanning, remapping the course. I see people nursing their wounds, looking for alternatives. I see animals hiding in their caves.

There but for the grace of God go I. You don't know how much I relate to all of that.

I'm not going anywhere, but pardon me if I seem a little bit different for the next few weeks. I am experiencing something that I haven't felt in a long time, and it is almost as if it is brand new to me, even though I have felt this way many times before.

One day I will rage again, I am sure of it. It's not like I am suddenly not angry anymore. I just don't have anything to be angry about right now. I should, but I don't. And that's okay.

Amidst the sorrow of a land mourning the death of its political ideals, I am a soldier, no longer walking alone. The cross is born across my shield, my armor, and I am weary from crusades past and present. By my side is the woman whom I fought long and hard to reclaim, but it was only when I had given up all hope that she returned to me.

I am sounding a little pretentious here, maybe a bit too mythological for my own good, so I will quote one more time from Joseph Campbell. I used this quote as my blog slogan for a long time:

"FOLLOW YOUR BLISS"

There was also the quote from Willy Wonka, one that I stopped using after someone informed me that another blog was using it:

"WE ARE THE MUSIC MAKERS, AND WE ARE THE DREAMERS OF DREAMS"

Sage advice. It's about time I followed it. What took me so long? Why did I have to go through so much in order to realize that I should've been applying those mottos to myself all along?

Forgive me, folks, for the times when I get cheesy, because it will happen. Believe you me, it will happen. It will be embarrassing, and you'll be wishing that I was mad and outraged again in no time. I'm just warning you.

I am trying to move forward, to make progress. I am thinking of the future. I am stuck in my thoughts as they look forward into time that hasn't yet elapsed.

I am confounded by my own joy. I cannot get my head around it.

No matter. I will embrace it, for all it is worth.

Have a nice day, people. Keep your heads up-- as the good book says, this too shall pass.