Sniffing out a virtual trail...

September 29, 2006

Here I am, pondering the bits and pieces of technology that I am trying to band-aid together before our very real travel begins, trying to reach out of the past as I have known it – I am pre-moonwalk, after all – and into this strange and tenuous digital future, where words are sent out like puffs of breath in a pre-dawn sky, received by a few listening ears (maybe), then dissipate as quickly as they have arrived.

When last generation’s poet wrote a book, it took physical form, it rested in and warmed the hands of its reader, and then sat on the shelf. Maybe it sat forever, never to be opened again; but it took up bodily residence in our world, and as likely as not, was visited again in a moment of boredom or nostalgia, or by another, perhaps younger reader. In a tangible way, that poet’s words took form, were given life, where these few words of mine are shades, part of a rather cold and ethereal world, where bodies glance at one another but never meet, hands reach toward each other but never touch. Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, where the Lord on High waves to Adam across an insurmountable rift.

Clearly, I share the same love-hate relationship with this bloodless and intellectual digital brain – of which I must now be considered an infinitesimal part, having been turned on to the ranks of the unedited-published – as does every other living and breathing creature on the face of our somewhat smoggy planet. What an incredible world of information and seeming connection!

I could have chosen an existing blog space, and created my shadowy self there. But I am a technologist, among other things, and take some satisfaction in owning the home where my words lightly reside. And while it is a brand-new home it is, like most new homes, made of cheap materials and tied together with string. You will notice the light leaking through its walls in places. You are welcome to send me an email (while welcomed, another 1-dimensional connection) letting me know where the foundation is cracking… on the other hand, it is similar to telling a driver one of the headlights is out: I am sitting in this car every day, believe me, I know which lights are burned out.

So, in support of my 17th-century wanderer’s heart, with a notebook that will follow me wherever a cybercafe can be found, I christen this little web site with a few idle words, the first of rather too many, I am sure, and look to a couple weeks more of tinkering and toying with the magic that creates this ghostly world.