Why I have not blogged...

I have not blogged in some time for two reasons:

1) I have not felt the need to blog since my depression went into remission। Remember, I started the blog in Mexico as a way of enduring my trials, having white space in which to order my thoughts about my experience. Later, it became a therapeutic aid to enduring depression, to such a an extent that Kathleen and close friends questioned whether it was actually extending my depression by reinforcement; that, happily, was not true. In writing about my chemical distress I was able to objectify my diseased feelings during the act of writing and thus obtain some temporary relief by means of my blog. The comments were helpful, too. The contact. The affirmation. It was a discipline I practiced in order to hang onto some sort of stated reality, which you suffered with me when I wrote well.

2) I have run into discouraging technical problems and don't know how to fix them. When I post at my blog now, any change at the posting itself results in a translation into an unknown language whose script reminds me of Cambodian, though it is not Cambodian. How such a glitch developed is beyond me.

It has never been about numbers, but since I stopped blogging, visitors have dropped only 25% because of the long tail of references I left behind in former posts, so that searchers looking for a quote from Churchill or details on Freud's vasectomy unwittingly enter my blog space.

Only two close friends questioned why I wasn't blogging; I told them I no longer felt the need. I have contemplated a new blog to rid myself of the present glitches in this one, a blog dedicated to joy as in my last post, a place of hope where there was darkness. If you want to see such a blog, please comment.
Meanwhile I have been gardening, performing music, writing poetry, volunteering as a docent at The Botanical Gardens, leading music therapy at a ministry for the homeless and mentally ill, attending men's groups and debating poetry at various forums, where I defend Eliot again among other things। I've also been nursing Kathleen, who has suffered a gum infection from a botched root canal that also plunged her into a depression. She is a unipolar, I'm a bipolar. That doesn't mean her depression doesn't scare me, but I keep whistling through the graveyard of life. I'm confident enough to support her, as she did me for two years. As for bloviating online, here are links to recent discussions in which I play a primary role: �

Lost in the Shallows,� a discussion of contemporary verse

Defending Eliot at Babilu Forum

Critique thread at Alsop's Gazebo

Recent publications, including YouTube (posted before):

http://web.mac.com/tomkoontz/Site_18/Chaffin.html

http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=282

http://www.umbrellajournal.com/spring2008/how_divine/C.E.Chaffin.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozymixtdcfs

http://www.angelfire.com/zine/bluefifth/Winter2008/poems2W08.html


All for now, I fear the quasi-Cambodian interpreting ghost at my typing fingers' heels.


Two Kilobunnies,

CE