200
Monday, March 17, 2008 at 04:43AM 
i giggled when i read your comments on my last post. of course you had already read the "ghost" post! of course you had. thank you for your reassurances (and your good wishes on one year here!). and for your funny reactions.
the conversation was ironic, on so many levels. and i knew that you would get that. but i also knew, once i re-read the post (a few times), that the nagging sense that i was being judgmental was not going to leave me. and that's why i decided to take it down.
melissa said it so well, in an email she sent me last week. i was being judgmental - in the sense of "hmm, that's not for me," rather than "that's wrong, period." but without all of this processing, the post wasn't clear. and so it's gone. a ghost. a laughing ghost.
one more thing. you probably don't remember the image of the internet neighborhood i mentioned in my last post. but i haven't been able to let go of it. in fact, i've been referring to it in emails all weekend. the image has become so clear to me, in a very concrete, visual way, and i wanted to see if i could bring it to life for you, too.
so here's how it goes. i imagine that the internet is the whole wide world. and shining egg is my home in the whole wide world. and you, you are my neighbors. some of you live next door. some around the corner or down the street. others live a few blocks away. some of you i know. some of you i've seen around town. some of you have lived here for years. some are new in town. but all of us - whether we're mothers or artists or crafters or writers or photographers or food-lovers or whatever it is that we are that brings us here to share our lives and read about each others' lives and make connections and learn and grow - we're sharing this neighborhood on the internet. this is our neighborhood. you are my neighbors. and i'm so glad to have found this house, on this street, in this slice of the internet, surrounded by all of you.
(incidentally, this is my 200th post. and these photos are from my photo-a-day project.)
Reader Comments (23)
I had the exact same visual of the "neighborhood" concept as soon as you mentioned it last week. It was a word that I immediately felt a frame of reference to.
and, just last week i was thinking of our blogs as our homes on the internet, and our banners as our front doors. yet another facet of this idea of the neighborhood!
I told Heather this same thing: thank you for being here in this space, because if you weren't, I might have missed out on our friendship completely.
BUT you ARE, and I didn't. :)
And I love that top photograph. It and my current photo on 44 are, I think, related :)
And I saw the ghost post, and even clicked over to say something, but can't for the life of me remember what I was inspired to say!