For Claire
Claire Wolfe is saying goodbye to blogging and active participation in online political rabblerousing:
Now it’s also time to put Wolfesblog into suspended animation — with thanks and fond farewells to my fellow blogistas, Debra, Ian, Penguinscareme, Silver, and Thunder.
Time to move on.
If you’ve known me for long, you know I’ve never been comfortable being in the public eye — even in a squinty little sideways way. Eight years ago, I tried (and for a while vaguely sort of succeeded) in making a disappearance. Today I looked at my long-ago goodbye statement and was surprised to discover how little has changed.
But I’ve changed. After a whole lifetime of being “political,” I’m just not anymore — as I think has been apparent for quite a while.
I’ll miss her pithy, often sarcastic, always well observed posts on Wolfesblog. Many were the moments when a just-timed-right glance at that blog could cheer me up or put me in the mood to do something other than sit and be mopey.
But I’m happy that Claire is placing her attention where it truly belongs: on her good individual self. The only proper ‘Freedom Movement’, I’ve long maintained, is the movement of individuals away from the mindless masses. Away from group think and group feel. Into their own interests and wants and needs.
Claire has meant alot to me since the day we officially ‘met’ several years ago: she has been a supportive fellow writer, an example of a fellow writer who made a living from words without compromising her principles, and an unabashed champion of my own writing. She was, in fact, the first professional to ever tell me I had the stuff to make it in this madhouse of a vocation. She kindly wrote a flattering and interesting introduction to a collection of mine that will be released soon.
More importantly, she was there when I needed personal advice and plain, old fashion cheering up. She never failed to be my ‘Sister in liberty’, as she put it once.
I haven’t heard from Claire since I left TCF, but that’s not such a big thing. We were never daily chat pals or anything. But she knows where I am and how to get in touch. She also knows that if she needs anything, I’ll be there. And, soon, I hope to give her a hug and talk to her face to face.
Take care and keep in touch, Claire. Here’s a word from my favorite poet, to make the trail a little lighter:
THE ROAD AND THE END
I SHALL foot it
Down the roadway in the dusk,
Where shapes of hunger wander
And the fugitives of pain go by.
I shall foot it
In the silence of the morning,
See the night slur into dawn,
Hear the slow great winds arise
Where tall trees flank the way
And shoulder toward the sky.
The broken boulders by the road
Shall not commemorate my ruin.
Regret shall be the gravel under foot.
I shall watch for
Slim birds swift of wing
That go where wind and ranks of thunder
Drive the wild processionals of rain.
The dust of the traveled road
Shall touch my hands and face.
— Carl Sandburg
I love you, sis.
