an ode to you guys.

(Wherein the word "guys" is understood to function as a gender-inclusive term.)

Yes, you guys.

I know many bloggers have a code, sometimes implicit, but sometimes declared in HUGE letters in their corners of cyberspace, that they will NOT post about blogging. I, however, am all for the meta. Today especially.

Today, especially, because I have many a thing I want to write about, and not a thing that I have the energy--physical, mental, or emotional--to put into expressing, yet all I can think of is to put something out there, just something, so that I can connect with you, all of you, that have become fixtures in my universe over the course of the past seven months or so. Because sometimes I just want to say hello. Sometimes I just want to invite you all for tea.

Or maybe, to a huge party at my house wherein there is a variety of homemade ice creams, and toppings, and various liquors from which you can all make your own decadent drunken sundaes--like the grown-up version of those birthday parties my parents would have for me as a kid. And I can talk to each of you, face-to-face, about whatever it is that we have been discussing in fits and spurts in cyberspace.

(Heh. I just said "spurts.")

And some of you I have had the grand and delicious pleasures of meeting and breaking bread with--or bowls of french fries, as the case may be. (Though not any ice cream that I can recall.) Or sliders. Or pots of tea. Or shots of various clear and/or unclear liquids.

And with some of you, there have been plans to meet which unfortunately fell through. I have physical pieces of a few of you, and emotional pieces of others, and GRAND HULKING PSYCHIC CHUNKS of a few more. And I know that some of you have some of me somewhere, and all of the pieces of me are safe and comfy and well-fed.

Some of you grace my inbox, at all hours of the day and night--because this whole idea of buddies strewn across the time zones and around the world? BRILLIANT. I can be awake at any hour and know that one of you is somewhere, awake, and writing. Or reading. Or killing time. Or something. And I can awake at an time, put on my cell phone, and have emails that make me laugh. Or emails that put naughty ideas in my brain. BUT EMAILS NONETHELESS!

A lot of people in the world would scoff at the idea of having "friends" you've never met--and shouldn't you be "worrying" about your "real life"? If writing isn't my "real life" then what is? Many writers became as well-known for their correspondence as they did for their artistic endeavors. Can't our dialogue be just as vital? I still have a corporeal existence populated with awesome folks, but can't this parallel universe be just as real? And can't paths cross?

Can't I text message one of you, while emailing another, after commenting at the site of a third, and still keep an eye on the sitemeter and recognize familiar IPs just as surely as I recognize from across a shadowy room, the silhouettes of bodies I have touched?

Does this make me a blogslut?*

And can't I just, now and then, because writing is emotionally draining and I enjoy so much the company and support and insight and feedback of those who understand, post a hello and a thanks and a HELL YEAH?


P.S. I know this is not among my most poetic work, but please don't take that as a sign of lesser affection, okay?


*I just finished Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde. It is the second in the series about Thursday Next, a literary detective. What's that? Just read the books. Point: she is called "bookslut" by her enemy--but I was thinking, it would be wicked awesomeness to co-opt this pseudo-insult and wear it proudly, the way certain racist and sexist words have been re-claimed by the offended parties.