to blog or not to? anonymity vs. telling you about me

Is it writer’s block? Or is it too many choices for blogging and baaad internet access in the mountains of California? I am currently petitioning to get DSL where I live and hoping to not lose phone, internet and electricity again during these snow flurried days. I love the 1/2 mile hike to the car, if I can even drive it on the public street, right now my 2 wheel drive is stuck under 3 feet of snow. If I go anywhere besides the white beauty blusters, I hitch. Like I told my Californian childhood friend today, all the trees around my house look like that toxic spray on snow for Xmas trees that we begged our parents to spray. I’m not from the snow country originally, I guess I am now. Ooh, feel the wind through the double paned windows…. As for the satellite, I may lose it, candlelight is nice. If you are employed or inspired by the abundance of the internet — do not choose to live in a place that doesn’t have high speed internet access. Unless you have relentless patience and nothing else to do of course.  I still haven’t decided what exactly this blog is for. My grandmother died in July, I promised to write for her. This blog is named after her, which is my middle name. I like the idea of anonymity and writing to an audience that doesn’t really know me except through my words, pictures, media and whatever else.  Back in the early days of World Wide Web hype – 1994-1996, I had a great blog, I was even able to change the color and pictures, that’s because that’s what I wanted our programmer to allow for The Village Group’s MyOwnHome web profile, web forums, web mail, chat and more. I even had a java fractal at one point as my profile picture….. People responded to my blog, what an amazing experience that was!! I had different categories of inspiration, I was a philosophy student, and no one I met online knew me in person. That felt like freedom to be me.   In those days, when I was real young, I dreamed of the day that is here now, when laptops, PDAs and wireless would be the norm, where we’d be able to travel the world and communicate globally with each other, back to family and friends and share the news we loved to share. This is the time. We have the ability, but the infrastructure still lacks. I want it to be easier to put it all together, I want to be more presentable, I don’t want a million passwords and a million blogs. I want one central space that I control everything from. I want my internet vehicle that I pilot through this web of information and collect what I like as I go. I want to know the sources of this information, as I know who I want to trust and who I don’t want to trust. I don’t want to be followed or baited with sexy buttox clothing that just isn’t my color and may as well be porno for the guy visiting my blog.  I want to write and not feel like someone is mining my words or using my thoughts for their proposals, I want intellectual property rights and degrees of sharing. If you are a friend + association, I may reveal pictures and thoughts, if you sign a non-disclosure I may share my novel or my specifications, if you are an employer, I’m not going to show you my hoolahooping pictures, nor do I want you to know when I’m connecting with a friend on my Tribe blog.   So what to do? Have an anonymous blog with someone else’s cool design? Or actually work on this one? Bring it over to my own domain and not delete any of these message? Or start a new blog for each of my personality expressions and try to draw the line between each posting and my thought process? Egads, that sounds like it will just hold me back for another 5 years.  Can you just promise to read postings that are categorized for your relation with me as opposed to others?  Probably not. 

oma – gaat goed?

I started this blog around the time my Oma (grandmother) had her 5th stroke. I’ve since been able to visit her while trying to work on laptop in Amsterdam — that didn’t work out so well as I was staying at my family’s houses without my own car on their schedule and the internet didn’t work. Next time, I’ll get a hotel, with good internet access and rent my own car — independence is important, especially when you live in the U.S. where one must work work work in order to live okay.

That’s what I’ve been doing, the pleasurable times, I know will arrive again, and they are trickling in, as well there will be more travel, more swimming, more yoga.

I am happy I was able to visit my Oma, we have beautiful pictures on my phone of her and me…. Which I don’t know if I’ve ever had before. I need to buy that cord to upload it to my computer soon….

Yesterday morning, my father called me saying that his sister called him from Nederland, and that Oma was admitted into the hospital, she had gone unconscious with her teeth falling out, she had a book in her lap. She is always reading and doing crossword puzzles my Oma, to keep her mindhealth alive. She always has her wits, though she can’t move one side of her body well, she can still wheel herself around the home she lived in and talk with us about the grace of life.

Yesterday, she told my aunt “Ik ga nu dode” — which means I go now dead. She’s been kicking for 93 years, she specifically wanted to see the family in the U.S. before she went. We all got to visit her. My visit with her was amazing and inspiring. My Oma is like me and me like her, it was just in time to reignite my awareness of the gift that life is.

Thank you Oma Truus.

May you either survive so that Dad can visit and I can too next summer. You told me you were going to live until 95, you are not yet 94. Or, pass on to the beauty and rest of the next place beyond this realm. Thank you for your spark, your egg, that created your children, your grandchildren and their courage.

Love en houde
de grote-docther D. Truus

What is identity?

Identity is as abstract as –Who am I– as a question for yourself and as simple as — My name is Denise, I am female — .

In this day with technology verging into new realms of space, where we sit in front of a box typing, talking and even smiling to an entity at a distance away, we do not come into contact with each other physically. We cannot smell or touch each other, nor see the slightest gestures of hand, arm or head movement. The sound coming through the phones are different than what we hear when we are in a physical space. Everything is changing. Any one of may be speaking to someone in email, forums, blogs, collaboration spaces, chats, etc. and not really know who we are speaking to, who their friends are, their family, what their job is, even what they look like and sound like. We all know this reality now. We see pictures in communities, we type long letters of deep-thought to strangers, we find often ourselves communicating beyond our physical selves.

And then we may find out that who we were talking to was a faker, a fony, a liar. You thought you were talking to a woman about woman things and it was a man, you thought you were talking to a fellow employee and it was a kid playing around with you.

So much could happen in the future of the world online, this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Who am I in cyberspace? And who are you.

Who is Truus Muse?

Truus is the shortened name to my Oma’s birth name. It is my middle name. My Oma lives in Amsterdam, survived in Amsterdam and helped feed her family through world war II by bicycle riding food to the city from her father’s farm. Truus is 92 years old. Having had 5 strokes, she is partially paralyzed and tube-feeding, yet she still gets around in her wheel chair and her mind continues to be sharp. She is proud of that. My Oma says I am like her. We are hard working strong boned and willed people with integrity and perseverence. We enjoy life, the people in it and love to have a positive outlook in general. Yey Oma! May you continue to be vital, may I visit you soon. From Northern California, USA, your grand daughter, D.Truus.

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