Blogging is its own kind of neighborhood. You share the road, the same convenience store, snowstorms and sports teams. When someone suddenly moves away and leaves no forwarding address, it’s like you lost something that didn’t really belong to you but felt like it did.
So here’s celebrating the return of a former denizen of my blog ‘hood, David Marshall. His previous blog, Joe Felso: Ruminations was one of my favorite hang outs. David is a man of many parts, with a strong voice for both the visual and the verbal. He is a teacher, a poet, an artist, a philosopher. His postings were always meticulously crafted (students, take note) beautifully tuned and content rich. What stands out and makes David particularly special for me is his ability to be a well defined presence and yet humble, opinion-rich while still open, a delicately balanced blend of hard won wisdom with the ever teachable “don’t know mind” talked of in Buddhist texts.
His new blog is Signals to Attend. This is his description of what that name signifies:
The title of this blog comes from the Howard Nemerov poem “The Dependencies”:
Change is continuous on the seamless web,
Yet moments come like this one, when you feel
Upon your heart a signal to attend
The definite announcement of an end
Where one thing ceases and another starts…
Nemerov uses a spider’s web to meditate on times we awake to the world and recognize, at least momentarily, “intricate dependencies / spreading in secret through the vast fabric / of heaven and earth.” The essays on this blog arise from similar incidental discoveries, anything that lights synapses between one mystery and another and remakes the world.
Welcome back, DM. We’ve missed you!
Yay! (Is that a Haiku?)
How I have missed him, as well! Thanks for shining the light in his direction! YAY….2009 has had some nice surprises already!
Group hug, or that’s how it feels!