Proxemics

This is English 584, right? A writing class about nature and the environment, right? Right. And what is environment? What is nature? These are two of the most pressing questions we'll be considering this semester, questions I'm considering already as I stare at a new blog, a new "environment" for my writing. A new "place" for me to exist online.

What does it mean to feel comfortable in a place, physical or imagined? Held together by binary numbers or or created from stardust and heat, a result of the action in outer space, what are the places we pick, and how do we find our places? What draws us?

Well, this isn't my real online home, and I'm not so sure why it matters, but it does. We humans don't like being crowded into or out of our sacred spaces; we Americans especially set up and enforce our own personal space. Having developed a new found need for finding the accuracy of myself within my real, physical space (what is reality, anyway?), I'm trashing against the bubble that has now enveloped me in cyberspace.

I don't really like technology; iPhones, Avatars, memes.. social networking.. I have fallen out of what society deems today's grace. I'd rather have face-to-face communication than a digitized voice and a the emptiness of a texted page. I don't like faking it--online or anywhere--going through the efforts just because feels like just getting through the day. I don't keep up with the Jonses, or the Kardashians, or even the newest version of iTunes (ever notice how Apple makes the human i less important than the technology of the Phone or Tunes?) or Explorer, for that matter.

So I'm sulking and pouting and you'll see that the name of this blog is simply English 584. I'm not at "home" in this place, and even this posting makes me sound like a petulant child (I'd rather be fired up and inspired than bland and vanilla), at least you'll always know that my writing is honest. It's all part of my nature.