Every once in awhile I get a comment from someone who says "I'm glad you're still here!"

Usually that's from someone who has left Xanga for 5 or 6 years, has come back, and finds me an anchor 'here' .

But 'here'--where is 'here' really? 

Reminds me of a time when I was recovering in a hospital ICU and, awakening groggy from anesthesia, I begged the two nurses making smalltalk between themselves nearby to let me go back to my room.  They coyly replied: "Sure, if you can tell us where you are right now."  I was drugged and perplexed.  I wasn't sure....  I looked around and then volunteered: "Well, I'm, I'm...here."  Ha ha--I felt that I had won my freedom with that sharp, crisp pronouncement.  But to my dismay, they continued the interrogation: "And where is 'here' exactly ?"   I couldn't help myself.  I had to tell the truth, the whole truth--the damn sodium pentathol was still an active residue in my veins. "Planet Earth," I blurted, in a cathartic rush of honesty.  "That's what we thought," one spoke in a putdown hush. And they resumed chattering between themselves--and ignoring me--for the next half hour.

So I'm drinking a cup of coffee and eating a White Chunk Macadamia cookie while I wait for life to provide a better clue about what to do next.

*just finished cookie*

No, I will not submit to another.

So, instead, should I: a) read a good book, or b) get drunk?

Or read a good book about getting drunk?

Or get drunk by reading an intoxicating book?

Or plunge into drunkenness and become the fodder that good books are sometimes written about?

Or plunge into writing an intoxicating book absorbing all the world's sensations much as might a drunken Irishman who has fallen into a vat of stout?

Or just shout: 'Isn't love what it's all about?" and acquiesce into the night... ?

   "I don't know what you mean by 'glory,' " Alice said.
   Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!' "
   "But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument,' " Alice objected.
   "When I  use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone,"it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
   "The question is, " said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
   "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty. "which is to be master—that's all."

Blog fluffer : a blogger who habitually bloats the blog with copied quotes and anecdotes from the internet with little or any value-added, i.e., a cut-n-blogster .

"Love one another, but make not a bond of love" ... With about 6,500,000 return hits from Google for this line of verse from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, my xanga blog, notforprophet, ranks #1.   Kahlil somewhere no doubt is wondering "Who the hell is this notfor-Prophet?"

Love one another, but make not a bond of love - Google Search

      it is the moment of our disconnect.
      I absorb the silence at the other end
      as my heart leaps back into my chest
      and words yet unsaid scurry about my brain
      like little children unrest with the zest
      of a treasure hunt that’s never-find.
      and I eat those words like a witch
      might swallow a fidgeting Ginger Bread-Man.
      then finally my mind is still
      and I regain the will
      to pluck the receiver from my ear,
      yet my throbbing heart is all I hear
      and the fear that is aloneness
      huddles in the coolness of my shadow once again.
      and I  ache for the softness of her voice:
      this distant, long-distance lover-friend.

Rosemary - MommaRose

*Rose is gone*    more details on Nanny's post...

Rose was a remarkable person and fantastic friend. I always cherished the comments and insights she had for us and the warmth and love that she shared through her journal and in conversations. In the earlier days of Xanga, I had what one would call "a following". And not a small one. And Rose was there always standing out with her loving support and generosity. From time to time, I would threaten online to quit blogging but she wouldn't let me - literally. She gifted me Xanga for Life one birthday telling me in a phone call that that I must forever continue on blogging. "Don't you dare leave!" she practically screamed at me. And then with calm assurance and certainty proclaimed, "I'm not going to let you." I am proud to have known and shared such loving moments with our dear Rose, my dear friend forever.