¡Chismosa!

This change in theme was long over­due. The other was dark and fore­bod­ing. Though it speaks to my less hos­pitable sometimes-tendencies, the point of this blog is to have an open and wel­come atti­tude toward find­ing and embark­ing on local adven­tures. It isn’t really the place to indulge my inner 16 year old goth. That’s what Live­jour­nal is for.

Oh snap. My renewed vision for an under­cur­rent theme among my posts is that of back fence gos­sip. I’m not by any means sug­gest­ing that I’ll be engag­ing in nefar­i­ous, degrad­ing or oth­er­wise dis­rep­utable behav­ior. How­ever, I’m struck with how infor­ma­tion is exchanged. A basic build­ing block of this con­stant, nec­es­sary exchange is also char­ac­ter­ized by the attach­ment of opin­ion or judg­ment. It’s often shared in casual, semi-intimate moments among peo­ple with enough shared back­ground and com­mon knowl­edge to under­stand a nuanced per­spec­tive. It may involve mak­ing fun of some­one, either lightly or scathingly. It prop­a­gates both truth and inac­cu­ra­cies. It’s called gossip.

As it ties together a com­mu­nity it has vary­ing effects at dif­fer­ent lev­els. The last few months have shown me, how­ever, that events that seemed oth­er­wise far-away and removed from my life by many degrees were actu­ally as close as a next door neigh­bor. It mat­ters a lot that we’re part of a greater net­work. Our lives are impos­si­ble to iso­late from each other. A fence is but sym­bolic, and often the nexus of the most inter­est­ing, valu­able sto­ries and news. Hence the new theme, actu­ally. It’s a snazzy look, I think, and cheery enough to make any goth kid scram.

What’s the most inter­est­ing thing you’ve heard recently? Are you close with your neigh­bors? Do you gos­sip with your sib­lings or par­ents to catch up on the quo­tid­ian aspects of friends and family?