speaking of which....

One of my respondents was telling me the other day, while talking about ties with a friend of hers--that they don't talk much, but that she reads the friend's blogs; and she puts in her comments sometimes. But it's not that they meet so much or talk so much. But my respondent said that she is always checking on the friend's blog, and they communicate that way.

And she wondered aloud the nagging, quintessential question--is it good or bad?

I have a couple of friends with who I might not exchange notes through email or scraps in orkut, but whose blogs I will always visit; some of them were quite good friends in college. Some are people I barely know. Sometimes I do put in my blahs on their imprints, and sometimes I don't.

And I wonder, is the above-mentioned process a farcical mode of communication in the sense that we actually don't communicate, but do it on a somewhat forced skewed direction by feeling the civility to say something when thoughts are written aloud? Is it akin to small talk on a blogger level? Is it page 3? (and me ain't Konkona) Is it stalking and saying "Hi" when you make eye contact with your person of interest (it's easy to see who visited your blog....)?

Is it preferable to anything or should it be nothing?

That reminds me: I have someone coming from Baton Rouge on a regular basis and I don't know who that is; I just know that this person first came to my blog following a link in orkut and now s/he just types the url from memory (thank you and bless you) and reads my blog. Silently, without communicating through comments.

With all due respect to Ms Dorothy Smith, it doesn't take long to realize that writing is a reflexive process and a two-way communication; you think of what you want to write, and you also think about the reader who is going to read that and while that defnitely shapes your writing, the reader also communicates with you while s/he is reading your lines on and interpreting them, understanding them, nodding (or smirking) or skipping or re-reading them.


Not that everything must have some utilitarian values per se, but does it actually create/maintain/strenghten any links? This kind of "communication?" Or is it, just there, as a product, to be tasted and/or tested according to availability of time and whims? Does it make others know or understand better?

Or, does it help to understand the mind of people with who you don't communicate as a matter-of-fact in the traditional sense, but which you might do, in a less tangible way, considering you read their blogs (and supposedly, a piece of their mind).

Is a traditional mode of communication a necessary condition to get to know a person? But then, the most basic questions, such as, "How are you?" have always got the most parochial of answers.