This online blogging world is very strange and wonderful.
It seems like you get to know other bloggers very well, sometimes.
You discuss things that are often not discussed at casual get togethers in the ‘real’ world – important things like the politics, family conflict, mental illness, nuclear proliferation, the holocaust, cancer, and the list goes on.
You read poetry, stories, raves and rants about all manner of personal subjects. You read about the good, the bad and the ugly 😉
But, you haven’t (usually) met any of these bloggers.
And when a regular blogger stops blogging suddenly and for an extended period of time, we can’t help but wonder – are they OK? What’s going on?
My online buddy Selma in the City stopped blogging a couple of weeks ago, and many of her loving and loyal followers began to wonder where she could be. She blogs most days of the week, so a break is unusual.
But a tweet arrived on the 9th of November @selmainthecity from her son.
Hi this is selmas son, she is in hospital but she is ok. She will be back online soon.
So Selma, I hope you are doing well and I love you and miss you heaps.
There’s gold out there in that there blog land and I’ve found me some 🙂
Selma Sargent from the blog Selma in the City (that would be Sydney, Australia) is gold and diamonds and spun sugar and marshmellows all wrapped up in chocolate and fairy dust and … you get the picture.
Her blog is so popular it’s like central station over there. Her readers love her to bits and pieces and would walk over hot coals to help her out of a jam or to kiss her feet.
Selma is a writer by trade (publishers take note) and a blogger by nature and as Molly would say ‘do yourself a favour’ and pop over there for a squiz. Her motto is ‘holding on to hard won hopefulness’ and that is the essence of her lovely writing. She writes the most magical short stories and life tales that take you from the depths of despair to the heights of ecstasy. She is also as funny as hell – as you will soon realise (p.s read her ‘about me’ on her blog for more laughing) .
Introducing Selma, my favourite yarn spinner and most splendiferous of human beings:
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When Gabrielle asked me to do a guest post I was honoured and a little nervous. I mean, here I am a silly little blogger writing my stories with their quirky characters or talking about the vagaries of my life and everyone else’s. Or philosophising. I like to do that. I like to pretend I understand what Hegel and Socrates and Nietzsche were going on about which really is a laugh because everyone who knows me knows my real frame of reference is the world of pop culture. Can one understand the nature of existence by watching Seinfeld reruns or by memorising the skits from Little Britain (I’m the only gay in the village)? Or even by imagining if it is possible in a metaphysical sense to Keep Up With The Kardashians?
I often wonder.
And because I wonder about such things I also wondered if I was a suitable candidate for guest posting. I mean, Gabrielle is a proper poet. She is smart and literary and knows about all sorts of things. And so do her readers. Not that I’m saying that my readers don’t know about such things because they do (and then some) but above all my readers understand my idiosyncratic writing style and continue to forgive me for it, which is a relief, for as we all know eccentricities are not everyone’s cup of tea. And -GASP – sometimes quirkiness is even made fun of.
Come on, you know you’ve done it.
You know you’ve made fun of the fact that whenever Aunt Sadie comes over for dinner her dress with the cornflowers print always smells like mothballs. And she wears those shoes that squeak when she leans to the left. And she talks about embarrassing things like the mating habits of the great southern crane complete with mating calls and neck undulations. You’ve rolled your eyes at her, haven’t you?
You’ve also laughed your head off, running into the kitchen to chortle behind your colour coded spice rack when you’ve asked Aunt Sadie if she’d like a cocktail and she’s tried to be hip by asking for a mojito but has pronounced it mojeeto instead of that sexy Latino way with the breathy kind of ‘h’ – moheeto – which can sound all Enrique Iglesias or as if you have a problem with your thyroid.
So I thought when you read this post you might call your local mental health unit and say: ‘We’ve got a live one here’ but then I thought excentricidades de ser condenado which means ‘eccentricities be damned’ in Spanish (see how I linked back to Enrique? Sometimes my train of thought astounds even me. But come on girls – and maybe even some of you guys – who wouldn’t want to link back to Enrique? Know what I’m sayin’? Muy caliente.)
So let’s get to it.
Gabrielle asks the tough questions when she gets you to guest post.
WHY DO YOU BLOG?
That’s a hard one. I could say it’s because I want to improve as a writer, get a presence on the web, get into a community of writers and so on but that’s not the real reason I blog. I’m going to come out right now. Hold the iPhones. This is a moment of true confession.
It’s all to do with hard ‘g‘ sounds. I am a sucker for a hard ‘g‘, especially a hard og. Can you imagine how deeply satisfying it is for someone who has loved words that end with a hard ‘og‘ all their life to learn of the invention of a BLOG?
I love the sound of frog and log and bog and fog. Often I am all agog. For many years I had vitamin deficiencies from being frequently unable to resist a hot dog and egg nog. There have been times where I have neglected to clean the leaves from my gutters just so I would have the opportunity to unclog. The best thing about Hamlet is the monologue. And I do love a film with a good epilogue. From a polliwog to a cute hedgehog, there’s nothing I love more than a word ending in –og.
I blog, you blog, we BLOG. My jaw snaps on that hard ‘g‘ with relish. You can be burned by love, you can be bruised by disappointment, you can be chafed by shattered dreams; but you know where you stand with words that end in –og.
Always.
One more question to go. Thanks for staying with me.
WHAT DO YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT BLOGGING?
Well, apart from that double hard ‘GG‘ sound (yeah, the double GG, hard ‘g‘ porn…) it’s the people and the sense of community that develops.
In this high tech world where so much of our life is electronic it is easy to convince ourselves we are emotionally self-sufficient.
But we’re not.
People go on about the Mayans and Nostradamus and even that guy who stands on the corner with the sandwich board saying the world is going to end when the UFOs from Nexus 59zero6 come down to earth but I can tell you that when it comes to prophets or soothsayers or people just telling you like it is, there is only one person who counts.
Babs.
The one and only.
Barbra Streisand.
People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.
Barbra was right.
Blogging has shown me there are people like me out there. It has made me feel connected in a way I hadn’t expected. It has shown me people can make a difference. It has revealed the incredibly rich vein of creativity and independent thinking that still runs through society. It has shown me that even though we have all this fancy digital paraphernalia at our fingertips we are still trying to do what we’ve always tried to do – communicate.
Because we need people, people.
And that’s the truth.
And without blogging I would definitely have missed out on getting to know some incredible, stupendous, spectacular, astonishing, extraordinary people.
People that I actually might kind of love a little bit.
Today, I am guest posting the wonderful artist Benedicte Delachanal from Montreal, Canada. She displays her drawings and paintings at her blog Carnet de Dessins. Make sure you pop over for a squiz – she is doing a Christmas ‘do’s and don’t’ cartoon series at the moment (she did one last year that was just brilliant).
Regular readers of my blog will know that Benedicte is producing the illustrations for our series of childrens stories (Aletha Kuschan is in on the act as well) about a ‘rock chick’ chicken called Pompadour and a hairstylist hamster called Blanca (who has 9 babies!).
I asked Benedicte the questions ‘why do you blog?’ and ‘what do you like most about blogging?’ and this is her answer (in the unique Benedicte style):
Why do I blog? (by Benedicte Delachanal)What do I like most about blogging? (by Benedicte Delachanal)
Gabe Feathers McGee 
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