of mice, men, and motorbikes

This is a shot across my literary bow, a dipping of the toe, sniffing of the air and a wetting of the finger, held aloft in flurry of nothing sliding down the barometric slide, or perhaps a man just walked in to an isobar....

I have seen blogs before, and read a few that were intriguing, irritating and somewhat, at times at least, revealing. In fact perhaps if more of us could just conduct our relationships via blogs, we would be more able to reveal that which is within, without having to take emotional responsibility for it, owning it or fessing up to a real person with a face and an opinion that can shoot back in unexpected ways we fear. A kind of intimacy by proxy, or being a moron by oxy perhaps?

In fact the current desire to be "known, " the type and tell mania evidenced by the rash of sites like facebook, my space, blogs podcasts and the like, is an interesting phenomena enabled by recent advances in communication technology, but really powered by something even more inscrutable than a chip, enormous memory space or super cool semi conductor, double gated processors and all that...It is the inherent and powerful desire to be heard, known loved and received for who you are. To know and be known. What a powerful thing that is, what a very human condition.

A few years ago, I shared with a Sunday school class at church the revelation to them, that in the modern suburbs the biggest problem we face is the privacy that we think we enjoy. It starts with automated garage door openers that keep us cocooned in our metal tombs on wheels and that have us traversing our daily existence in one smooth movement from bed through breakfast to work and back again without even so much as tasting some fresh air or enjoying a word with a neighbor on the way to work.

It seems however that we are becoming aware that people, and the relationships that should ensue from meeting them, are not so much threats as treasures that we need to nurture, by wasting time with them and hearing their stories, rather than making up our own about them, however kindly we feel we do it.

Maybe this then is the first stage in pushing back the insidious power of the planners, giving us our private space, that has become more cell than range, and more cloister than community.

So here is my opening salvo to the new freedom, the open range of cyberspace and the open wagons or two wheeled horses that propel us in to the new frontier of communication, collaboration and open communion around a blog,walking the dog, or riding the Hawg.
God Bless Americans.