Up, Then Down

The first thing greeting me on my blog feeds today was the return of alembic, Maria Benet's superb blog. I've been missing her voice. But the thrill was soon dashed upon reading what she had to say.

There's a lot of mean, crass commercialism going on in today's blog scene, and I've been bitching about it in my crude way for some time. But Maria's abilities at word-smithing far eclipse mine. In her usual poetic fashion she expresses the melancholy that I feel but haven't been able to articulate.

I've been trying to combat the melancholy by my attempts, however feeble, to revive this blog and keep it going. Whether I can manage to keep it up, it's too early to say. Blogging's not nearly so much fun, at least for me, when you've lost most of your audience.

On the one hand, there's the view of people like Frank and Syaffolee who say, "So what? Writing's what it's about, and writing has always been a solitary activity." Then there's the view, expressed to me in person by Dervala, "Just keep putting it out there. People will find you."

Well, they used to. But the atmosphere is so different now, I'm not so sure. Yes, the buzzards will find you, as they've found Maria, apparently. She's disgusted, disheartened. Says she may take down the whole thing, domain, archives, the lot.

Say it ain't so, Maria.