Communicating through writing

It is a joy of magnanimous proportions for someone to visit my blog and say:

"Hi! Was curious to see who was actually following my blog so I got here. But now I'm just honoured! I love your blog, it's a fabulous read. You write really well. I can identify with this post so much. I'm exactly like you in this respect. In fact, I used to be painfully shy as a kid and people who know me now find that hard to believe. I do love my time with myself but I agree with you when you say "...I am too curious about life and people to be permanently withdrawn."

or

" 'Mostly to observe and maybe to partake, but still observing through participation.' - that could be me talking."

Eespeciallly when those two persons are writers of blogs that I myself like, and whom I have never met. The first person is the writer of the blog The Cloudclutter Chronicles, an Indian writer, based in Bombay (now Mumbai for the rest of the Non-Indian world). You need to see for yourself why I am such a fan of hers.

The second person is the UK Based author of blog Razor-Blade Life, who is amused by Jamaican expressions and idioms, and writes about her family life. I met her through another blog on which I made a comment, and she thought I was a "he" and the rest is lost in funny gender obscured history. I follow her blog too. She doenst even know that her Bolognaise and Carbonara post made me cook thin spaghetti with meatballs in a rich tomato sauce.

I also have to mention commentator Michelle Frost, Scotland-based writer of Crows Feet and brand spanking new author of First Light, who articulates so well, the struggle of being true to who you are. I follow both her personal blog and that dedicated to her new book. Michelle, I will read that book as soon as I can get it shipped to me on this Island Behind God's Back!

So I am meeting my fellow man (or woman) through blogsphere. Not a bad place for like minds to "link up." For so long this bog has been a secret shared only with close friends and family... it's good to share it now with others.

I hear that stats show that most blogs are wirtten by well-educated people who often have another source of income and happen to be men. I disagree. It could just be that I have always unknowingly had a thing for women writers (even though there is a space reserved for the Derek Walcotts and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's of the world). Women just feel more and write in a way in which you actively share that experience. So yes, I have been consumed by the profundity of good male writers, but they have never made me cry.

A woman's lot is a unique existence that only other women or their very feminine, sensitive and sometimes gay male friends can appreciate. As we say in Jamaica "Woman luck deh a dungle heap and fowl come pluck it out." It means that we have been given shit luck as women sometimes, just the remnants of things that men don't want, and on top of it, the chickens rummage through the garbage to take away what little we have been given.

That does not say that we are any lesser of the sexes, but that we have a unique burden to bear. Every woman can identify with this. The burden of nurture and nature...and sometimes, societies and families that impose one more than the other.

But we transcend cultural and parachial borders, the plural experience of womanhood. And as writers and lovers of the arts, we find common ground that dumb separatist people cannot identify with in their advanced stages of myopia.

So, thank you for coming. Thank you for sharing. My heart is full.