With another new calendar year, here we go again

Jnana Hodson

Jan 2

Hard to believe this blog is now in its second decade.

With the Barn, a new year usually signals a slight shift in focus and content.

2023, for instance, will see a series excerpting dreams I've had over the years. Mine can be surreal and inexplicable and yet, I feel, illuminating. They'll likely give you unexpected glimpses into my psyche even though I'm thinking of it as literature. Meanwhile, the prose poems that have been appearing on Saturdays have run their course. Hope you've enjoyed their compressed impressions of my earlier life and feelings, especially when they've reflected your own, too.

Dover's 400^th anniversary will continue to be a major theme, including things I've learned since the release of my book based on the town's Quaker heritage. And there will be announcements of presentations based on the book as they come up through the year. The ones I've done so far have been a blast.

Now that you've been introduced to Eastport and its ways, the tone of those posts will also turn, shall we say, more casual? Or at least more of the everyday experience around here rather than a record of the connections I've discovered. Besides, living on an island in Maine is some people's fantasy, at least through the summer. I'm hoping to add a streak of reality to that vision.

Kinisi will continue with their off-the-wall, quirky, flash slashes. Some fall into the realm of concrete poems, a la Aram Saroyan, and others take the trippy flashes of the sort Richard Brautigan produced. Others can be seen as prompts for others to build on. These minimalist notations do reflect the way I've often heard and seen the world, slightly askew, even though I have to admit I don't "understand" many of them. They're intended to dance to their own beat, OK?

And I have to admit my Tendrils on Tuesday are great fun to investigate and offer. I never thought of top ten lists as entertaining, forget the factual dimension. They definitely have much more to dig up as we go.

One big shift will likely be in photography, from my Olympus camera to my S-22 Ultra cell phone. We'll see what you think. Eastport and the surrounding environment are certainly visually rich subjects. Click, click, everywhere you turn.

Overall, though, I'm intending to have fewer posts this time around, yet it still looks like that still means at least one posting each day. Or, as one renowned writing teacher taught his classes, "Write 300 good words a day." Not that I'm keeping count, even as I keep hoping to cut back. Does keyboarding really become compulsive?

My life and outlook have certainly changed over the course after signing up for a WordPress blog, which then led to four related lines. Thanks for sharing so much of it here.