- that may, indeed, be plunged deep into me with embarrassment: tonight was the first time ever that I've been introduced, when giving a talk, by someone making reference to my blog. Lesson 1, o fellow bloggers, do not ever refer to the place where you are speaking, and where you are, indeed, happy to be, as Nowheresville (for I have now seen more of College Station, and I can, indeed, affirm that there is a here, here. Indeed, there is a huge campus here. A huge campus. Imagine all of Rutgers's campuses moved onto one flat space of former farmland, with huge Texan stars over the parking garages).
However, it is Texas (and I should come clean about my anti-Texan prejudices, largely drawn from the way out-of-towners drive around Santa Fe too fast), and when one buys a nail file in the hotel gift shop (for I had snagged a nail so that it had the unpleasant serrated edge of early barbed wire), it comes complete with a little embossed metal initial, like a cowboy belt. So I have lined this up with my lapel-pin knife (essential for departmental meeting wear), since they certainly suggest a choice of weapons. Lesson 2 - until Apple makes an iPhone with a flash - take pictures in daylight when you want detail.
In fact, I am unlikely to turn these weapons inward. They are more likely to be driven, with vehemence, through the door that separates me from the room next door, in which it sounds as though there are seventeen cheerleaders, nine football players, and an uncountable number of bottles of vodka.
Here in the midst of National Poetry Month, I empathize with this post entirely. And you've touched upon the blogger's dilemma, which is that gradually you discover that you DO have an audience, and begin to be aware of what you can and can't say. I feel stymied (in my blogging life) by this limitation. Do I monitor any critical comments I'd like to make, or do I just have to be willing to risk offense? The easiest answer seems to be avoiding my blog!
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