| A few days ago, Sparky told me that he saw what I was trying to do with the wavelike pattern on my weblog. "Huh?!" said I. "Tilt your head and look..." he said. "Double huh?!?!" thought I. Sensing my bafflement, he did a screen grab, edited it in Photoshop, IMed it over to me, and voila. I saw it. Do you? I like the "found-ness" and serendipity of the pattern because it reminds me quite keenly of the way waves break onshore as surf, over here in Hawaii. A gentle swell offshore approaches, and soon enough, as the shallow bottom intercedes, the wave rises, crests, and falls in curves and quantum foam onto the reef or sandy bottom.
So yeah, that was a cool observation Spark, and pretty clever, really... and if I were less scrupulous I'd claim credit. *chuckle* But no, that was entirely unintentional, that wave-like pattern or frequency, in the curves of the names on the left. All I was doing was going by length of name in positioning them wherever, with some arbitrariness and randomness thrown in. As Spark correctly observed, he saw that, over time, the smooth curve was giving way to a bit of edge-jaggedness as I became less conscientious about lining things up properly. Having to do that every day can be a chore, and so the curvature of the various categories are becoming mutable, even over a matter of a day or two.
Anyway, there is a larger point to this seemingly random note about my weblogging space. It's obviously inward-looking, for one thing. To write a weblog about the physical contours and particulars of one's weblog seems to me a mite self-conscious, doesn't it? Narcissistic even, if Candace is to be believed. ;-) But like I said recently, it's a good thing to look into mirrors once in a while, and the same goes for this weblogging comunity, which is fast approaching its first half-year anniversary.
So what, in fact, do we have here?
To continue the environmental metaphor, we were a weather system born in early summer... and that system has now generated waves (or ripples) that are moving far beyond the original space and impetus of the beginning. Sure, the vision was there at the start, but visions without follow-through remain just that. Visions, or pipe dreams. And to see what has happened over these last six months in this weblogging community, no one can tell us we've just been sitting around smoking pipes. *snicker* ;-)
We have been writing, engaging each other, listening to each others' stories, bringing others into the weblogging circle and extending it. Putting a little bit of the fabric of our lives into this medium, and seeing where it goes.
Is there a larger meaning to be gleaned from this? Well, it's too soon to tell for sure, but I do get a definite sense that this weblogging community -- while anchored during the summer and in an actual place, Berkeley -- has taken on a life of its own and is moving forward in cyberspace. Like a spreading of energy over the open ocean, this particular set of forces is generating waves that will reach some unnamed farther shore, reshaping some landmass in time, rebounding back into the open sea to meet other waves, defining other patterns.
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