eleutheria

Meeting the bloggers

Heronbone vs Urbanomic Country

We met Heronbone and Ben (who had cycled over from Camden), at 2, and after walking for 5 minutes H recommended that we should probably sit down somewhere as we had been walking for quite a while. I was bemused by this, as he'd kept a straight face. Stranger still, we didn't sit down but wandered off the Greenway past the giant fossil and onto the canal. We'd all finished introducing ourselves by then. H told us about the purple flowers on the river bank that gave off a strong smell that he liked. Ben told us about his job in film editing, and about Bumwars (programme on satellite tv where 2 tramps are invited to fight each other for money). TV really is pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable before it becomes psychological torture, or illegal. See also the sleep deprivation programme, and the recent programme reported in the Metro where boys have to get drunk on liquor chocolates!

The walk took us from Stratford to Limehouse along the canals.

Even the scummiest canal ever (the Limehouse Cut) is going to be a bankers' paradise. Jettys are being built outside the new appartment blocks. It makes sense when you think of it as an extension of the limehouse basin, but not in context with the area. The burnt out stable and the sacred burning ground are still there. But the area under the bridge nearest the Basin has been newly paved over. The last time I was there, the old bumpy cobbles were still stained with the huge patch of blood that had been left to dry untouched. I cycled up and down there each day for work, and discovered the blood thick pulpy and fresh red one morning. Murder, to my mind, but no one cared.

Walking towards the Limehouse Basin, we followed a giant fish swimming fins above the water like a shark. It followed a determined path until it stopped under a low pier of decking. Though a sad sight, we shouted at a cormorant to catch the fish. Like one of those infected snails with a worm in their tenticles, it was begging to be swooped down on and carried away for dinner. The cormorant kept its distance, to our disappointment!

We went to Booty's wine bar, and had a laugh reading The Wharf newspaper (local paper for Wharfers [residents] of the docklands area). Also, I was impressed to find a description and picture, in Heronbone's book, of a very unusual beetle I'd found here in Cornwall - a stage coach beetle or something - with pincers like a scorpion.

Heronbone, keeping his eyes averted at crucial meeting and parting moments, broke through many years of of memories of determined eye contact, especially built up for going to job interviews and trying to be confident and generally trying to get away with seeming as normal as possible. It's strange to realise that I am now fairly comfortable with eye contact - as if my eyes have become hard, weapons darting out of my head. People don't mind if you are shy, blushing and keeping your eyes down. Like Nigel Barton changing class, you have to change yourself - not from the demands of other people (who think you are charming that way), but though your own agressive self improvement, a necessary way of coping with that attention.

Us three got the DLR back to Stratford at rush hour, so I was squashed flat against a door for the whole journey (at least facing away from everyone). The trains came every 6 minutes, and no-one - including us - could bear to wait.

That night, we met other bloggers Infinite Thought and Glueboot for the first time, at a Thousand Plateaus Reading Group meeting in North East London.

Meeting the people themselves was not like meeting a real representation of the person I knew over the blog. The reality of the characters I met seemed to be additional to the person I knew through reading. I wondered if I would maintain the 2 characters (virtual and actual) in my head, or if they would they merge into one. On reflection, I think the former. The actual person becomes an unexpected bonus (to quote Undercurrent) - a second person. It's the best way to meet people. Hooray for blogs!!

"It's weird meeting someone who you only know through blogs though, because it's not that you've met the 'real' person, more that the real-virtual entity has spawned a weird twin in the physical world so it's a double bonus really." Undercurrent

Posted by Eleutheria at August 28, 2004 01:06 AM