ok gang- I or we or they or you seem to have somehow inaugurated a brand new shiny as-of-yet-undented blog. all of the evidence points to this. although we've been greatly deceived by "the evidence" many times over the years, we continue to try giving "the evidence" the benefit of the general doubt. "the evidence" has a significant role to play, does it not? at least until "new" evidence "decides" to present itself. or until people grow impatient and just start making shit up willy-nilly.
matt and bill, friends since childhood, "decided," I guess, to try another approach for awhile. they've been communicating a lot back and forth recently via physical mail, occasionally sharing some of that transcribed handwritten material with matt's list of gmail contacts but keeping the vast majority of it well under wraps, as all handwritten personal mail probably should be. bill doesn't own a computer or have super convenient/reliable internet access so matt has been letting him come over at all hours of the night, fire up his 2003 vintage laptop and share some of his weird and wandering thoughts/observations with the slightly wider readership that is matt's present gmail contact list. a fine collection of about 25 human beings, by the way- meticulously handpicked over several years from the veritable haystack that is the earth's overall population. with 3 notable exceptions, these gmail contacts of matt's are complete strangers to bill, and vice versa, and for some reason bill (and probably the others as well) takes solace in that. maybe he is able to open up about certain things with strangers that he wouldn't be able to with people he sees on a regular basis. who knows? eventually he might explore some of these questions on this very blog- after all, that's what it's here for...I guess.
there's been a lot of confusion swirling around recently- yes, quite a bit of serious confusion- wait, even that's not quite correct- sorry- there's been an enormous amount of confusion swirling around recently regarding bill's 17 year old son rick who suddenly took off for siberia back in november of 2011. apparently a friend of his on facebook offered him a long term house-sitting gig over there and he took it. he sprung all this on bill one fine evening and then left the next morning. there has not been any communication from young rick since, but he told us this should not necessarily come as a surprise as the outpost or bunker where he is house-sitting is truly out in the middle of nowhere, beyond the reach of all wireless signals, delivery people, couriers, etc.
before his son left, bill asked him if he would at least send him some form of confirmation after he had arrived in russia safely, but that rascally rick politely declined with these immortal words from one of his favorite works of classic american short fiction: "I'd prefer not to."
he had a one way ticket from new york to the russian port city of vladivostok, planning to travel by ocean steamer over the course of approximately 3 weeks, and then taking a series of buses, trains, and taxis out to the actual bunker, located in the northwestern region of siberia known as " the upper masklova." chances are that rick did indeed arrive safe and sound, but bill has still been a little bewildered and anxious ever since this thing happened. as I put it in an earlier email, it's sorta like he was dumped by his own son!
they had been living together, just the two of them, ever since rick was born, in a small log cabin outside the small town of blue mound, illinois. relations between them had been...well...according to bill- fairly typical. he knew rick was uncertain and even worried about what to do after high school, but he wasn't putting any pressure on him to decide one way or another. again, according to bill, he essentially told rick to take as much time as he needed to figure out what he was going to do next. a fairly strange sounding offer in this day and age, to be sure, but bill was and is a relatively strange person and parent. it's hard to say exactly just how much of this strangeness may have rubbed off on young rick- but given his decision to suddenly go off and live alone in siberia- well, it seems safe to assume that it was not an insignificant quantity.
these are all sensitive matters that bill might begin exploring for himself on this blog- these present remarks are just by way of preliminaries. he and I have discussed several strategies on precisely how we might manage this potentially unwieldy platform, but none of those discussions have turned out to be very productive. so just today, we decided to quietly launch it with little or no advance warning, preparation, or ground rules. if bill wants to chime in, I suppose he'll find a way to chime in. he lives sort of close to a small public library with intermittent internet access, so he could post autonomously from time to time if he chooses. the theme or subject matter of this blog- which we have tentatively entitled a chair of earth in honor of a poem young rick wrote several weeks before departing- remains to be determined. like the popular 90's tv series seinfeld, it might very well be about nothing in particular. both bill and myself lead fairly boring and predictable lives, so unless we cast about for some interesting and colorful subject matter, the readership or relevance of this blog will almost certainly remain extremely low. bill has pointed out that this wouldn't necessarily be the worst possible outcome and in some ways I agree with him. apparently there are quite a few blogs up and running out there already, and we have since learned that most people's blog-reading time slot is in most cases filled well past the bursting point. the last thing we want to do is push anything or anyone even further past their own bursting point! although, again, bill pointed out that if some of these time slots have indeed already exploded, well then, the parameters or guidelines for this sort of thing might be a little disorganized- who knows? time will tell. or it won't. that's time's affair, I suppose.
in any case, our own intentions at this very early stage of the game couldn't be simpler: just log on from time to time, peck out a few lines or paragraphs, log off, and then go back to whatever it was we were originally doing. if it seems worthwhile, we'll continue, and if it doesn't, we won't. bill and I are just everyday-style people. this is just an everyday-style blogging experiment.
thanks for your time.
