harrumph!

.
(late friday)
so i'm sitting here crying. shush not like that. i'm at 'the farm' and i was just playing with the woodstove and i sorta got my face too close and i smoked myself. so there's tears running down my face and yet i'm in a perfectly acceptable mood.

also not sober very much at all.

i let so much smoke out and i totally didn't mean to. i was kind of staring at the fire in a bit of a wasted daze and suddenly the kitchen was all smoky. i know it's a woodstove and the draft doesn't work with the top up but i wanted to stare at the fire.

i love fire.

i think it's actually a response to fear. i'm terrified of this shit. it's scary and it burns and you never have control of it even when you think it's contained and there were a couple of fire incidents in my youth.

but lord is it ever beautiful as it dances through whatever you feed it. it licks and darts and flames as it wraps itself around everything and slowly consumes it.

how can you not watch it for hours?

shut up, i know i filled the house with smoke.

but it's so pretty. right now it's sort of quiet and just quietly cooking the log on the bottom. the top log is hot too but the bottom one is all coals and shimmering redness while the top one is just showing glints of redness even though it's turned black and shiny like charcoal.

every now and then a little flame will lick out and sort of tease at a piece of relatively unscathed wood and you can see the shape it will have in an hour or half an hour or even as it collapses into ash.

and you imagine how the two pieces will slowly fall together and melt into red coals and black charcoal as the fire eats them and you find yourself wanting to watch.

for hours.

ask anyone who has ever sat around a fire with me, i can stare at that shit for days... and if there's drums? and some dancing with bare feet and no morons with beer bottles?

mmmm bliss.
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(saturday evening)

offensive drivel regarding bloggers as posted in the globe and mail (one of canada's national newspapers)

My reply:

Dear Ms. McLaren's editor and incidentally Ms. McLaren;

I have been a relatively regular reader of Ms. McLaren's column for several years. In fact her "Just one thing can change your life, sort of" of June 30th, 2001 is still posted to my personal website as a marvelous piece of writing and inspiration.

I mention this to illustrate that I am a) not the type of being who writes to a newspaper regularly and b) that I didn't just find her name in some chatroom "full of bitter unpublished writers venomously slagging published ones."

That said; how dare she! How dare she paint me and the people that I consider part of my personal blogverse with a brush covered in "terrible spelling, poorly constructed sentences and outrageous amounts of displaced hatred and envy..." We are none of these things.

For one thing? I am fully capable of spelling AND of constructing a sentence as are a majority of the people in my intimate circle of bloggers. We are absolutely connected and definitely have something to do with each other regardless of how many of us know each other offline. That she doesn't dig a little deeper than celebrity trash demonstrates only her own lack of depth and not ours.

For another? I am neither a professional commentator nor a "talented up-and-comer." What *I* am is a Pilates instructor with a grasp of language and the gift of insight. In spite of counting professional writers, English professors and journalists among my regular readers I do not ever expect to be offered a book deal. Additionally, none of us expects or seeks to be published because of our blogs. That said, if I were offered my dear miss lost me as a reader McLaren's column I would take it in a second and begin with a rant about newspaper writers who take swipes at things that they cannot be bothered to understand.

I also feel that I must address the question of why the blogger blogs. Not that it was a question, more of an excuse to insult couched in question and answer rhetoric. Her assertion that what I have to say is unfit for publication is grossly insulting and rude and she then adds insult to injury by informing me that I teach because I cannot do. Clearly she has never tried teaching or she would stop speaking disparagingly of a difficult and often unrewarding profession that very few people can do well.

I do not blog because I cannot publish, I blog because I like to find out what I am thinking about and because the comments on my posts allow me to see my own thoughts and actions through the eyes of others. It's called self discovery and self expression.

Just because she doesn't look past celebrity trash and people who don't like her writing (and suddenly I find myself immensely sympathetic to their feelings) is no reason for her to disparage the rest of us.

I am grossly offended that the Globe and Mail sees fit to publish such ridiculous drivel and understand better than ever why traditional news outlets are losing their audiences. Of course you are, you drive us away with your lack of respect for us. People who blog are literate and interested, we are the people you're writing for and to call us bitter and untalented is particularly uncalled for.

I would be delighted to furnish anyone who asks with a list of blogs written by smart, talented, interesting people who also happen to be capable of writing in English but I'm afraid that no one would be interested.

I expected better of the Globe which has provided balanced and well written articles for me to enjoy.
-angela xxxxxxxx

(and yes i posted this to my blog here: http://sassinak.blogspot.com/2006/02/harrumph.html)

If you choose to publish this letter or parts thereof I ask that I be referred to as Sassinak as I do not publish my given name.
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look boys and girls, auntie sass actually knows what capital letters are for! :)