Duck on a dock.

Sometimes I think the best thing to do with my blog is just post pictures. If I dare to comment on other blogs I should restrict myself to “Nice picture” if they’ve posted one, or “Right On!” if they’ve said something.

I say this not because of any specific thing which has transpired, but because I should have learned by now what a shitty medium the internet is for communication at a personal level. People who interact live and in person have a wealth of information to work with in assessing others, and understanding what they say. Here, just the words. No smiles, winks, nudges, hugs, pheromones, “body language,” or other non-verbal traffic to lubricate the exchange of views. I have taken offense where none was intended (at least I hope it wasn’t!). Others have taken offense I didn’t intend.

Yesterday, I found I had been, over time, bothering someone with my comments. I have a sort of “emperor’s new clothes” view of anything I see done in the public sphere by those who make it their business to want to attract mass attention, my attention (or, not coincidentally, separate me or others from our money). It matters not whether they are politicians/public officials, entertainers, athletes, “news” people (or was that covered by entertainers), musicians, writers, or anything else. At bottom, I really like, respond well to, anything done which exhibits the spark of the extraordinary, the superlative, the “divine,” if you will, the creativity of the human spirit. But I don’t say “great” when I mean “okay.” I don’t say “splendid” when I mean “don’t give up your day job.” Simple competence is not excellence, and I’m not gonna say it is.

In my personal relations with peope, the few I seem to allow myself, I do not demand much. Kindness, warmth, a bit of tolerance for my foibles. These people are not looking to make money off my attention, or to satisfy a lust for public acclaim. A shared meal, a laugh, discussions of the daily transactions of life, that’s all.

So, I found myself, in this online world, this “blogosphere,” looking to extend the “personal” part of my life. Maybe I was hoping for some of the benefits of, dare I say it, “friendship,” without the level of effort and commitment necessary for knowing someone “in the flesh.” There’s no free lunch, though, and that’s a lesson I seem to have to re-learn. all too often. Maybe it’s me.

So when I say something negative (“that movie sucked,” “that book was a waste of ink”), I forget it isn’t automatically leavened with the other aspects of my personality. Every “you didn’t do that very well,” is accompanied sotte voce, by “and I think you could do better, there is more in you,” and, indeed, other non-negative emotional and intellectual content. But, of course, as I discussed above, all anyone here sees is me putting something down. I doubt if I’m going to adopt a writing style in which I include paragraphs of disclaimers for every simple statement of my point of view, but I should understand better that if you (any person interacting with me) sit around on the porch with me and share a bite, a sip, and shoot the breeze, you are going to have a sense of all those disclaimers, those ameliorations of my pronuciamentos, but if you just read my blog, and my comments on yours, you are not.

So.