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True Grounds in Ball Square, Somerville

Some of you may remember that on the last day of NaPoBlog I wrote that I had begun rethinking my blog. In my opinion, my blog had lost focus. I started blogging intending to explore a broad guiding question: how have I, have all of us, fashioned identities that are simultaneously local, rooted in limited, specific communities and cultures (culture with a capital C), and global, extended by our interdependence, even enmeshment, with other cultures and nations. Over time, I began to lose sight of this guiding question. Eventually, I completely derailed and was blogging almost primarily about my personal life. While writing about my personal life kept me blogging, it is not what I really want to do.

Then back in December, laid up in bed, unable to walk, in a slightly drugged state, it came to me that if my blog was going to refocus on my original question, I would need to do the following: get a topic, let go of my desire to comment on everything under the sun, and blog less but more deeply. But what single topic was both intrinsically local & global? What single topic was open and expansive enough to maintain my interest, perhaps for a very long time, and yet definite enough to provide an anchoring center? Perhaps it was the painkillers. Or the boredom of solitary confinement. But the answer FINALLY came to me. Coffee. Caffe. Kahveh. Qahwah. The bean leads everywhere; it’s been everywhere; it is everywhere. Coffee was going to be my topic.

Years ago I told Vinnie, an aspiring actor working as a bartender in a dingy restaurant in Philadelphia, when I sat down at his bar to have a cup of coffee before I began my luncheon wait shift, and he asked me, in his deep Italian voice, “Jennifer…what is it…what is it that gets you up in the morning?” (Translation: “I do this because my passion is to become an actor. What’s driving you?”) I stared at the mirror behind the bar for a few seconds and then blandly responded, “Coming here to have a cup of coffee?” Vinnie set the coffee pot down and shook his head, “That’s not good. That’s not good.” I laughed.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, “…use your faults; at any rate use your knowledge of them, and don’t run your head against stone walls.”

If aimlessness and coffee are my two greatest faults, why not put them to use? Blogging tends to have an aimless quality about it. And a blog about coffee that meanders about the globe following the path of a beverage brimming with a xanthine alkaloid compound better known as caffeine? If I didn’t know better I would say my plan sounds practically purposeful.

So check back. The coffee grounds say my blog will be changing in the months ahead…

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Yeah, I made it! Even though I was a total curmudgeon the last few days. NaBloPoMo has definitely given me a new appreciation for people that post every day, especially the single working moms & dads out there that blog regularly. I definitely did not enjoy posting every day and I am SO glad that I don’t have to post tomorrow. =) In a way, this month has caused me to ask myself why I am blogging. I read many new blogs this month (new to me) and have been impressed by the writing and whatnot that bloggers are doing on their plots of virtual space. I’ve been inspired by some of the stuff I have seen and I have a feeling that my blog will be getting a revamp in the future, but not tomorrow…or even the next day! Thank you to everyone who has been reading and commenting this month! I appreciate your support! And congratulations to all the NaBloPoMo bloggers out there that made it the full 30 days!

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Photo from Cadence

Hands poised above the keyboard, wrists down, fingers curved, lowering, lowering, pinkie pressed down…it begins! Today is the first day of National Blog Posting Month, a blogging event that I decided to join in a moment of impetuous commitment. (Can you be impetuously committed?)

Since I decided to be a committed blogger for the month of November, I have been wondering, “what the hell I am going to write about every day?” The NaBloPoMo site suggests choosing a theme. Hmmm. What about the theme I had in mind when I started this blog? You know, what does globalization, or glocalization, look like in our everyday life? What global connections are we blithely unaware of, even though they are at the tips of our noses? I like that theme; I have not written about it enough on this blog. But the truth is I am too selfish to write about globalization for a month. Some nights I just want to write about Boston, why Comcast pisses me off, or what I ate for dinner.

Still, I like the idea of a unifying theme. Then it came to me. At its core NaBloPoMo is about saying, “Yes, I am going to write. I don’t know what, and the posts maybe be incoherent, spelling defected, logic addled rants, but damn it all, I am going to write.” But for me its more than just the commitment to write. Not only am I going to write, but this month I am going to write honestly. Or, as honestly as I can.

I used to think I was an honest person, but I’m really not. The twists and turns of my own self-deception first became clear to me at a time when I wasn’t writing much prose. During my twenties I channeled my desire to write into songwriting. Not very sophisticated songwriting, mind you. One day I mustered up the courage to play one of my songs to a man I loved, who, as a consequence of being much more accomplished than me, was often critical of my small achievements. This time, however, he checked his critical tongue. As I lowered my guitar he simply said, “You’re getting honest. Keep writing.”

From time to time I think of his words. “You’re getting honest.” What does that mean? It definitely doesn’t mean telling all. A guts fest on the page. Although I have been known to do that. I think writing honestly at the very least is about having the courage to write with a voice shorn of insecurity and self-pity. So there you have it, honesty, the theme that will be guiding this month’s NaBloPoMo blog posts.

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