Fragments From Floyd

Two and a half years it's been now since my first very hesitant public post in the first month of Fragments. The writing in those early days came largely from two sources: my uncertainty of who I was going to be, changing in unpredictable ways when I left physical therapy; and a discovery and celebration of where I lived.

Readers became my field trip participants. They were invited into our home. They saw the world, smelled it, heard it through my senses. One day soon after beginning the weblog, I was finally able to post one of my pictures. For the first time, people from around the world could literally share my vision, touch what I touched, and share what kinds of light touched me.

I've been giving all this a good bit of thought in the past weeks, having shared four meals with three bloggers in this time. I think there is a helpful connection in this: the sitting at table, the breaking of bread. Getting to know a web-writer through his or her weblog can be very much like sharing a meal. It seems very like visiting them in their homes.

Think about it. You have two kinds of acquaintances: those that you know, perhaps well, but have never been to their house; and those you know, and you have been to their home, perhaps to dinner, and they to yours. It is with this second group that you may feel most intimate.

in meeting with Lorianne and with Tim for the first time, the lack of introductory small talk was apparent. Such was unnecessary because we had already revealed who we were, where our center of importance was, in our writing. This kind of instant connection varies with the blogger--by how much or how little we know of them through their words; by which of their many authentic personas they present or hide in their writing. If they post their pictures and make no secret of the towns and surroundings where they live (as Lorianne certainly does), the bonding seems more immediate and perhaps deeper than for those who hold themselves at some anonymous distance from their readers.

I look back over the early months. It was so necessary for me to tell my stories--far more necessary for me to read them once told than for readers to know of them--as I began to "reinvent Fred." I gave much away, spoke in specifics of the small events of ordinary days. I often wrote deeply and with some little bit of premeditation, often thinking ahead a week or more about what I wanted to tell this new group of friends who were welcomed into my very thought world. I felt at times then that they carried away something for the trouble of their visit--some small shared thing that helped us know each other better.

Lately, since the teaching has taken so much of my energy and time, I have the sense that I am doing little more than scrawling hellos on scraps of paper left on their windshields or slipped under their doors in the dark.