Blog "The Other Place"

I've been thinking that being in the blogosphere feels a little like being in seventh grade. Worrying about one's clothes and teeth, one's walk and talk, one's popularity (those comment button stat numbers are just like a stroll through the cafeteria... he's a zero; she's a fifteen).

Without the numbers, one could be free to take a table without stares. Open a notebook (electronic, albeit), and begin.

Here's the power of a notebook from Mary Oliver's Blue Pastures...

"Some of the phrases and ideas written down in the notebooks never make the leap into finished prose or poems. They do not elaborate themselves in my unconscious thoughts, apparently, nor does my conscious mind pluck at them. This does not necessarily mean that they are of a casual or fleeting order of things; it could be that they are seeds broadcast on a chilly day—their time has not yet come.

Now, to use a blog to gather such seeds. Would that not be sweet deliverance?