An eMpty blisS BeyoNd tHis worLd

house graphic by Cottage Row Graphics

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re-encountering the older internet is like re-learning your mother tongue, like you've been away for many years and you're suddenly very self aware of being different than your actual mother who speaks with fluency and uses words you've forgotten. deargoodness, have you noticed what a skill it is to contribute to dreamwidth and forums? It's sort of astonishing, a different kind of noticing and a different kind of awakeness - not smog, not drifting, but actual presence - and the absolute horror of realising you can't click like and you're going to have to...write an actual response. like just "I notice you" is not enough, you've got to think a little bit, not grazing or consuming, and deargoodness you have to find something to say. For all that social media is supposedly social, I find the conscious work of replying to my DW friends posts, like, i have to put time aside for it like you would an email.

I'm passionate about Bob Fisher's Haunted Generation and through that, read Marianne Dreams. I'm reminded of it because Mark, a little boy with polio, is struggling to relearn the use of his legs - which is rather what this is like. Something I could once do but have forgotten how. But perhaps that comes to me because Marianne Dreams is about a bedbound girl who draws a house, and whenever she dreams the house is where she goes - and she meets Mark there, another real person, but one who is somehow sharing the dream she created.

Welcome, stranger, to the house I drew.