Blog Writing

I've mentioned, in apology, my "policy" of not having a way for people to respond to my BLOG within the Blog. Fortunately many people have found their way around this to give me response one way or another. One of those mailed of a story in "Harper's Magazine" (Oct. 2009 pp. 64 - 66) by Jonathan Lethem called "The Dreaming Jaw, The Salivating Ear," in which the blogger, Jaw, tells of the perils of having The Whom and justiny moving around in the blog world.

The story, both amusing and alarming, takes you into the never never land of the blogesphere, where the pros and cons of blog life are examined. The Whom is menacing, and the Jaw extremely reactive to the menace. justiny wants to praise the Jaw, but seems to drop away when support is sorely needed: "A first appreciation has come. A tentative thing, a shred of sensibility, something that tiptoed in on little cat feet and graced me with praise. A he or she, I can't tell from the byline: justiny. i wuvvv your blog, justiny said, in a note, a seashell-pink crayon scribble on a fragile curl of tissue, the equivalent of a whisper, a thing I found stuck to my boot as I made my proprietary rounds, polishing brass railings and marble doorknobs and such like, and which I might have failed to notice."

Continuing, The Jaw says: "My blog loves you too, justiny, in its way. But I think my blog's love is more cosmic or Buddhist, more impassive and impersonal, than the need always to answer. My blog is for all ears that might listen, and who know how many might be? justiny happens to have piped up. (Barely.)" Dreaming Jaw, Salivating Ear.