Writing, Life, Blogging, Realisations, and Birds in Blue Skies

The MiContent Blog amongst many topics is a blog about blogging, and blogging often involves writing about one’s life. I’ve recently come to a realisation that I’ve been writing a lot about blogs, but I haven’t blogged much about my life or about writing, which is one of my main loves in life. In blogging about blogs, I also need to touch on these ultimately important subjects, as they are the main reasons that I, and most other bloggers (I presume) are writing. When I ‘Blog the Blue Sky of the Blogosphere’ I not only focus on blogs but on the blue skies, the life that is led beneath them, and the power and beauty that thoughts turned into written words can relate to others about life’s experiences.

Today I went for a bike ride. I live in the suburbs of a fairly sizeable Earth city and as of yet hadn’t found much nature to connect with (something I need for inspiration). Today I kept riding and riding. Earlier on I had gone to write and nothing would come out. I felt stuffed up, airless, a bit like a puddle of stagnant water with mosquito larvae swimming around (the larvae were my thousands of thoughts trying to break free of the slime and sludge).

Today was different. I found a river. I sat down next to it and because of what I witnessed, was forced to write…I also wrote again on the journey home. This is the poem that flowed through my synaptic gaps down into my hands and then out of the pen:

River’s Edge, Realising the Dancing Light

If I were a painter, I’d paint the scene before me now.

A brown river sits reflecting the world, but only for a moment.

The wind blows; small waves ripple; the Sun burns down.

Thus begins the dance of light that no artist may emulate.

 

Sparkles, stars, flick in and out of existence. Sometimes only a few,

Other moments, huge groups, galaxy-sized, flicker and float in waves

The river has come to life. From a few stray stars in pitch night

To an infinite array, so packed with numbers, fiery swirls form

As the sparks join together to become one.

 

They dance, unseen forces pushing and pulling to create wave rhythms

A storm of insects or birds imitate this natural pattern

Flashing in and out of existence faster than you’d like, but

That’s why it’s so beautiful.

 

The lights have separated again.

I can see a billion in the distance, and they’ve come to join these few.

The duck swims by, kookaburra calls, parakeet partners swoop downwards

Willy Wagtails pop from branch to branch on trees that have heard

This song that has been sung as long as they’ve remembered the Sun

 

Like a school of fish slowly floating by, the lights make their presence

Known. The blue sky hasn’t changed the river’s muddy colour.

Tiny vibrations on the water’s surface play the rhythm

That beat a drum whose life could only come from a power Unknown.

 

Tears of happiness flow understanding in streams and creeks

Upstream, underground, unseen, but oh-so-necessary for a beginning to come.

I don’t want to leave; we should remember that we’ve come.

 

Back out on the road, I cross the freeway and I realise

How many times I’ve driven by without knowing what beauty

Lay hidden beside. I see graffiti-a Star of David with a

Swastika inside, I’m back to the human realm. The pigeon just misses my head

As we fly in the same direction. The frightened colours of sacred birds are still

With me as I head back to the suburbs.

 

On the bicycle path more parakeets fly by my head, a girl talks on a

Mobile phone. Some people say hello and some don’t, and then I realise

I’m not the first to have witnessed this spectacle. There was another

Sign as I left the park behind: Wurundjeri Baluk-The traditional

Owners of the land welcomed me. No doubt many took time

To watch the Dancing Light

 

By Jesse S. Somer

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Blog Comments pages become crazy conversations

To comment or not to comment on a blog, what is its purpose? Well, lately I’ve found myself sitting on the sidelines, reading very funny forum-like dialogue between people who are simply commenting on posts from a blogger. I’ve been ‘hanging out’ at one of my favourite blog sites (‘Dilbert Blog‘) and it seems that the people who read this blog by Scott Adams are as weird as the man himself! Just looking back at the last three posts’ comments pages I was astounded to see upwards of 250 individual responses to this one person’s ‘text on a page’, some of which were as lengthy as the original post (Comments pages now seem to be a place for us to post ourselves!).

Ok, I have been talking a bit about the ‘Dilbertblog’ lately, but that’s not what I’m focussing on here. What’s remarkable is the fact that a small community is forming solely around one person’s ideas in their blog (many of the names commenting after each post are the same). After looking at several of the newest posts I noticed that chronologically, comments are like blog posts themselves, being displayed from newest to oldest. This I find a little disconcerting, as each comment is usually related to the one before it, so if you want to get the whole gist of a situation, really you have to go to the bottom of the list and work your way back up to the top (Unfortunately I haven’t done this, so I’ve learnt the strange art of discerning a topic of conversation by going backwards in time…) J

Check out these fairly recent Dilbert Blog comments.

This was supposedly one of the only times that Scott Adams blogged on a Sunday (normally he takes a well-earned break), and so he decided to try and write something fairly serious, as opposed to his normal humorous content. The main idea was, ‘Media never gives me the context I want.’, and he drew upon many different ideas and topics ranging from the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust, to nuclear power vs. fossil fuels in Iran, to the treatment of Jews in there…You should see how many opinions, ideas, and facts sprouted up from his loyal, and some obviously newly-inspired readers! Little mini-conversations come out between people who’ve read other’s responses and who greatly disagree or agree with each other.

The comments are not all positive of course. A lot of what Adams blogs about is contentious (one of the reasons he’s become so popular!?-take a note), as was found in this Dilbert Blog comments page from an older post that has produced a recurring theme based around whether or not freewill exists. People seem very passionate about this subject, and it showed that when the writer took on a difficult topic, every Tom, Dick, and Harry wanted to get their word in, whether it was emerging from intellectual discourse, fundamentalist religion, or the usual lowest-common-denominator slinging of abuse. These nearly 400 comments caused Adams to write several more posts about the subject, like this Dilbert Blog article which again received 350 responses. The readers thus took on an interactive role in what was to be produced in the blog. It was really great to hear all of the different and widely varied perspectives on a subject (even though some are more than a little bit on the comical side-some purposeful in intent, others unaware of their own ridiculousness). Get commenting people!

Jesse S. Somer believes that if we all write from our heart about what’s important to us, and others relate through comments, trackbacks, and emails; intelligence, wisdom, creativity, and even love will be transferred throughout the world like never before.

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Popular blogs, Blogrolls: You are what you read, write?

There are over 50 million blogs in the world, and this is only the beginning of the ‘Communicative revolution’. I got thinking recently about Blogrolls (those lists of links to other people’s blogs often found in a side column next to people’s journals). I was thinking about how if you took a look at my Blogroll, you’d get a little snapshot at what kind of person I am, by seeing what topics and styles of blog writing that I like to read. I decided to do a little experiment.

I went to Technorati’s (those people who try to track all the blogs in the world-sounds like a challenge doesn’t it?) Popular blog section (‘Top 100 Blogs’)  and I thought I’d pick a few random blogs out to see what, if anything, I could discover about their creators. I don’t want to come across as a typical brown-nose who wants to be noticed by the so-called ‘a-listers’, therefore improving my global ranking (something I’ve read is quite common, but not necessarily altruistic in intention that people do to get noticed). Not many people know about me now, but I hope to connect with others through honest and focussed content that people can relate to.

So, I took it upon myself to have a look at a couple blogs further down the list, still popular, but not ‘Superbloggers’…There are two ways in which Technorati rank the popularity of blogs, one is by how many other blogs have linked to the blog in question, and the other is by how many others have named that blog in their ‘Favourites’ section.

First randomly chosen Human blog: Xia Xue, ranked 97 in the world (with 5,063 links from 3,437 blogs). Ok, not a good choice…How does some ex-magazine columnist girl from Singapore get over 10,000 visits a day when she just talks about herself and the fashion products she’s been paid to try? She’s either sexy and all the guys like her, or she’s got some genuine connection to many young women out there in the Blogosphere…You’ve got me!? Her Blogroll is quite short compared to many I’ve seen, and it looks to be mainly filled with links to her close friends.

Second randomly chosen Human blog: Buzz Machine, ranked 122 in the world (with 10,229 links from 3,059 blogs). This is a blog written by a Professor Jeff Jarvis who heads a graduate program in Interactive Journalism. Ok, if anyone knows about blogging it would be this guy. He’s got a very long list of archived posts on a wide range of subjects, mainly dealing with News and media. However, I could be wrong about this whole Blogroll thing, because he only has one link (I’ve seen other blogs with a hundred or more!) and it’s to his son’s blog at Wire Catcher. Is this strange, or a deliberate choice to prove something about his blog’s identity? His son has a longer Blogroll, generally linking to technological blogs (a very popular subject in the Blogosphere, could it be because computer geeks-I say this word in the nicest of ways-make up a huge majority of bloggers as they are already always sitting in front of their computers?)

The final randomly chosen blog was: Flagrant Disregard, ranked 120 on the planet with (6,287 links from 3,108 blogs). This is an interesting one. It’s a blog by a guy who mainly talks about and takes photos of his family. Why is it so popular? After reading a few posts I can see why. He’s an honest guy who’s talking about his life, and life is weird and fun if viewed from the right perspective. With the last few posts entitled, ‘The best deal in Lego’, ‘Does homework suck?’, and ‘Cell phones and customer service: it doesn’t have to be this difficult’, you can catch my drift about the general life topics that are attracting readers’ attention. Now, time to see his Blogroll. The only link list he has is called, ‘People who I actually know in Real Life actually weird enough to have blogs’, and it’s a short list.

Where does all this leave me? Are Blogrolls as important as I once believed? It seems that many popular bloggers don’t partake in this form of link exchange/favourites list. This experiment has somewhat dubiously shifted into why blogs are popular, without producing much of a Blogroll theory or hypothesis. Looking at this tiny subsection of popular bloggers, it’s not who you read that tells us who you are; it’s what you say…You are what you write! Right?!

Jesse S. Somer is a man with a new blog and a relatively short Blogroll. He’s hoping to read and write so that the words and links on the page represent him. Isn’t that the name of the game?

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